Rescuing Rusty

Totally unconcerned

I keep saying what fun it’s going to be someday to teach Rusty to work cattle for real. Then I thought why wait for someday. Why not teach him to cut without riding him? Not sure it’s going to work but theoretically working a cutting dummy, or even plain old cutting is just targeting isn’t it?

My, or at least one of my, biggest problems is keeping my horses out of my space. Perfect match for a horse who has no respect for personal space and runs people over right? Not to mention that Morgans generally like to be right with you (on top of you) anyway. Those people who’s horses go away from them to do great things amaze and awe me. Because I don’t know how to manage that I decided to break it down as far as possible into something I could figure out. To heck with the horse being able to understand, first I need to be able to understand.

So I put him behind a gate. Seemed like the easiest way to keep him off of me. I stood on one side with my target, tennis ball on the end of a curtain rod, and put him on the other side farthest from the other horses. Then I played cow. I’m used to doing that, we do it with Tanna and Coyote all the time. People make the best training cow. We know what we want, can move nice and slow for a baby horse and give the turns and stops that are needed. Working real cattle with a baby horse is great, if you have the perfect set up and unlimited fresh cattle to work. We all have that, right?

I was able to play with him for a couple of brief work outs. The flies are driving him crazy, need to dig out the fly spray and work on that before anything else I guess. Other than that little problem he did pretty good. We worked back and forth a couple of times, I held the target low so it would be more like a calf. He worked pretty good off his hind quarters and turned nice.

My end goal is to be able to open the gate and do the same thing. Then play cow in the arena with him and have him work me while he’s loose. Kind of lofty goals but if we can manage that transferring it to a cutting dummy, then to cattle with me on his back should be easy enough.

It’s hot out. Not to whine or anything. But I did it, I got out and worked him.

We did some easy ground work and he was sweating. I was too of course. I had about half an hour and wanted to squeeze everything in. It was too much of course. We were discombobulated and scattered everywhere. I need to slow down and concentrate on one thing at a time, I have a hard time with that when I am only able to work with him once in awhile. Need to remember, make haste slowly and quality over quantity.

That being said, just because I start out with one goal in mind I don’t see any reason not to change goals mid stride if an unexpected opportunity arises. Like if we are chasing cows and a big scary tank suddenly pops up in our path.

We are accomplishing, or have accomplished, goals I set this spring. I thought it would be fun to have a horse who ran up and stuck his head in the bridle. He mostly has that down. So hard to take the bit when it would be much more fun to chew on the chin strap. I would like to use a leather bit, especially since he likes it so much, but mostly because I really really want an Indian bridle. have heard them referred to as war bridles but have also seen that meaning a rope twisted around the head to make a bridle/halter. Those are harsh and nasty. I just want the leather looped around the bottom jaw that is the bit and bridle all rolled into one.

Until then here is our bridling. He walks up and sticks his head in, needs some refinement. But he also hasn’t had a bridle on for a good month.

I believe I may have mentioned once or twice that I really want to get on this horse! While some things, like maybe saddling, would definitely help me work towards that goal, they are simply too much work and too time consuming, especially for the quick little work out we did today. So we find other things to amuse us.

With riding as the eventual goal it only seems right that we spend some time, riding.

Spring came and with it all the spring works. Corn needed planted, calves worked, cattle shipped to pasture and the garden put in. Rusty got put on the back burner. He got worked a couple of times, along with Coyote. But writing about it was simply too time consuming. So I will try to catch up a little.

I’ve led him to and from his pen to let him graze in the yard. We work on him coming when called and try to throw in a few feet picking upings.

Tanna came over one time and rode Coyote. They worked on leg yields, riding with leg cues and cutting. I got to play cow she figured out how to get Coyote to work a cow properly with only legs and seat. We had fun. Once I was wore out I grabbed Rusty and we went for a walk. She rode most of the way without reins and we played leap frog. One horse waits while the other passes then stands while the other passes. Sounds easy but is a little more difficult than that and is a great game for green horses.

Of course when I tried to get a video Rusty tried to run me over then stepped on my foot.

Rusty got to go to the vet. He had his teeth checked got his shots and a general looking over. He may never be welcome back, he tried to dig a well while we were waiting. But his teeth looked good and one of the baby caps fell off in the process.

I was watching a video today of a lady playing catch with her horse and started to wonder what in the world I was doing watching a video instead of doing. So I grabbed Rusty and we played.

I wanted to check on a calf anyway so we walked out through the pen. I had planned to work on fetching and targeting. Instead we worked on, targeting still I guess, but with a big scary tank instead of a ball, and rudimentary cattle chasing.

Then when we got back to the house we did have a quick once over on fetching. I can’t wait to get on this horse. I need to get back in the habit of getting out and working him. The house doesn’t really need to be cleaned and lawn mowing is bad for the environment anyway.

Or my other double swirl horse.

I know this blog is supposed to be about Rusty but I can’t not mention my favorite little rescue horse ever.

He was an ugly little two year old sold at auction. The reserve his owners meant to apply to the well bred group forgotten along the way somewhere. The two siblings he came with brought way more money. He was plain and scrawny and sold for a couple hundred to a man we knew only by his bad reputation. My mom, there only to watch and in no way looking for a horse, sent my brother to find the owner and make an offer. Their neighbor, my former dressage instructor, had bought one sibling and hauled the new horse home. Mom has been rescuing horses since long before it was cool.

Mom named him Coyote, after the souix stories and true to his name he spent his time at his new home trying to kill himself with many stitches and visits from the vet then was sent out to me for training. I never sent him back and my loving mother let me have him.

He’s saved my butt so many times I lost count. He’s moved cattle to shelter in blizzards, with the snow blowing so thick I couldn’t see a thing. He stopped to gather calves I missed in the blinding white. He’s drug calves at brandings, he’s shown and done very well in ranch horse classes against good competition, he’s told me he doesn’t like to show just leave him alone and let him chase cows. He will happily work cattle all day with scarcely a touch of the reins but I got on him once without anything on his head and got off again immediately, once he finally came to a stop. There was the time the angry mama cow ran under his belly, he reared, striking at her as she charged him. She went right under, he bit at her as she came and he was biting the other side as she ran out. He tried to kill me, crow hopping down a tall, steep hill with no way for me to escape. He stayed upright as we galloped across ice and mud as slick as grease to turn the herd, never even slipping.

He responds to the lightest touch, leaping to obey, sometimes. He has strong opinions and lets them be known, especially if  my request goes against them. He thinks for himself what would be best for us to do and often comes up with ideas on his own. He taught me my first “trick”, when he decided on the right way to get a calf up and moving. I often call him my big red heeler as he drops his nose to the ground and scoots some slow moving calf along with his nose. He carried me safely while I was pregnant and gave my children their first rides.

He’s getting some age on him now, his hocks are a bit stiff, though other than that he doesn’t let it show. He’s still hot and a little crazy and so much fun to ride, even if most of the time we ride around the yard bareback in a halter. I can’t believe it’s been sixteen years now, he’s nearly twenty. Where did the years go? I will never be able to replace him, no other horse will be so trustworthy and so completely crazy all rolled into one. He’s my Yoder and I hope he makes it to forty.

We’ve been going for walks our last couple of sessions. Everybody, but me, has been sick and dragging a saddle out is just more work than I can handle. So I put on his bridle, instead of a halter because, sadly, I want him to get used to being bumped in the mouth. Honestly I’m not the best rider and I know it will happen. We wander through the yard looking for scary things to check out.

He does pretty good especially if food is involved.

I was going to ride him, the weather was good, someone was home, the wind wasn’t howling and I had been working him regularly. The time was perfect.

I pulled him from their pen and he spooked his way through the gate. I saddled him and lead him to where I planned to ride him to start with some ground work. He took off running and bucking. Where was my horse? The one who responds willingly and happily, who doesn’t care about tarps and balls or anything else I could throw at him.

Today was apparently not the day.

We worked through it and I bounced the ball off his saddle for awhile but decided the coming weather change had blown his mind and I was not getting on just yet. A perfect time will come for real, eventually.

I took these after he settled down quite a bit.

Some girls, I am told, like jewelry and things like that. I think I got the greatest present the other day, not the fanny pack though that was great too, I got a tarp! You know one of those big plasticy things that go over, things.

I took it out to play with with Rusty the other day. Our first try:

By the second day he had settled down though

My daughter chose a ball for us, pink and purple of course. We had been targeting a ball getting ready, now we had a ball specially for this, it had stopped snowing and I had a moment.

He walked up to the ball and touched as soon as he got in the round pen. I clicked him but he didn’t want a treat, there was some grass. I guess that works. I left him to eat some grass so he wouldn’t be so desperate for it when we started working and got the rest of my stuff.

When I came back we got down to it. He immediately grasped the concept and within a couple of minutes he was kicking the ball. He was doing it loose but the grass was such a distraction I wanted to make sure he was paying attention.

This is the way to sack out a horse. He thinks it’s a fun game, things are bouncing around under his belly, life is good. I have been thinking lately how well this ought to transfer to teaching a horse to work cattle properly. Teach him to target the cutting dummy and he’d be working it in no time. It really isn’t any different than a ball or the end of a whip. The possibilities are endless.

That is the question.

It’s been cold, raining and even snowing a little outside, that has given me time to catch up on some much needed house cleaning, sadly it must be done once in awhile, and to do some thinking.

As training methods evolve some parts become obsolete. Even if “everyone does it” how do we know if we need it or if we should let it fall by the way side? By we I mean I of course.

I teach all my horses to step over to a fence, gate, the pickup, what ever for mounting. For training purposes it allows me to sit on them long before their first ride. They see me out of the other eye and on both sides and feel my legs around them. They get squirmed all over, legs across their butts and toes in their sides. Basically they experience being ridden without the commitment to staying on the mounting requires. I’ve only done the ground work on a couple of horses that still bucked after doing it this way.

So, They still need to learn to be mounted. Don’t they? Or is it taught through the rest of the process? I was standing in the stirrup leaned over Rusty’s back the other day thinking how nice it was to be able to click him and offer a positive reward for what seemed like such an uncomfortable thing for me to be doing to him. It’s got to be uncomfortable with the uneven weight twisting the saddle around on his back. We’re trying to teach him that riding is ok, that I wont hurt him. How am I accomplishing that by, not hurting him maybe but not making it enjoyable either?

I understand and agree with the original purpose of the exercise, to get them used to seeing you out of the other eye and used to weight on their backs and a toe in their girth. I can see where they need to learn that method of mounting, maybe, maybe once they’ve been ridden for awhile and dismounted a few times it would just fit into the rest of the training. Because if they’ve already experienced all that is the practice still accomplishing anything? This is all philosophical, I’ve already done it and don’t think I will be doing it again with Rusty, but for next time and the sake of argument is there any point to it?