Confessions of a 60-Year-Old, Horse-Crazy Kid

My title stems from the fact that the most common descriptor attached to any introduction when I was a kid was, "She's horse-crazy." At sixty, you'd think that no longer applied. But after forty years as a professional horsewoman, it still is true. I am horse crazy. Another thing; despite the battered exterior that seven decades has created, inside, I'm still that horse crazy kid.

With forty years of teaching and training behind me though I feel that I have a lot of information I've acquired that I'd like to Pay Forward to other "horse-crazy kids" regardless of their age.

The first bit of information I'll hand out is that horses are worse than potato chips, you can't have just one. Or at least not many people I know manage to keep to one horse. Sooner or later a second horse creeps into the stable, then a third and before you know it you are the proud owner of a herd.

Did I say owner? Let's be honest here, you are the slave of a demanding bunch of equines that insure you get your daily exercise regardless of whether or not you want it. Weight lifting? By the time you've unloaded fifty pound bags of feed, wrestled sixty to eighty pound bales of hay and hoisted a twenty to thirty pound saddle on to the backs of several 17 hand horses do you really need to spend twenty minutes lifting a ten pound bar bell?

How about aerobic exercise? By the time you've got 20,000 steps on your pedometer hauling the above mentioned feed and hay, cleaning stalls, turning out horses, catching horses (this activity can be good for 10,000 steps all by itself) grooming them and then adding the occasional 5 second-100 meter sprint to the open gate, a two mile walk or run seems a bit pointless. Besides you really need to get back to the barn to repeat all of the above mentioned activities anyway.

The main reason for acquiring a second horse is that the first horse is lonely. I'm not being facetious here; horses are herd animals and need companionship in order to feel safe and comfortable. If deprived of the companionship of other horses they will adopt cats, dogs, goats, cows, donkeys, deer, rabbits or anything else that is breathing and willing to be adopted. If left alone horses tend to be nervous and fretful.

Part of this stems from the simple fact that before a horse can eat, drink or sleep it needs to feel safe. The best way for a horse to have this feeling of safety is to have a buddy keeping an eye out for predators while it eats, drinks and sleeps.

Humans sometimes get annoyed because their horse won't drink from a trough at a new place. They don't realize several things are in play here and one of the most significant is the horse doesn't trust the human. That human hasn't made the horse's list of safe companions. How does it know that the human isn't going to suddenly grab it by the throat while it is at the 'watering hole'? Will the human protect the horse from other predators? Does that human have a clue as to whether or not the water is safe to drink?

If you lead your horse to a trough and it won't drink it just might not be thirsty. However, if your horse will never drink when you are nearby the two of you have a problem. The best way to resolve the problem is to convince your horse you are a trustworthy friend.

My way of doing this for many years was to groom my horse. For many reasons that I will cover in my column on grooming it still is. The first horse I trained from scratch was a two year old Appaloosa I'd seen the first day of its life. His barn name was Telstar because he was born the day the Telstar satellite was launched into orbit. I began his training by teaching him to accept grooming and lead properly.

I began with these things because by the time Telstar was two years old I'd had two years to observe a lot of people and horses react together. I was fortunate to be born in a time and a place where I got to interact with a lot of horses.

I grew up in the middle of San Antonio, Texas. And I do mean the middle of the city. I was within walking distance of the heart of the downtown area. My cousins from New Jersey were very disappointed when they came to visit. I was six or seven at the time. I lived in an ordinary house that had a yard even smaller than their yard. There were no cows in the backyard and I didn't ride a horse to school. In fact, the only horses I rode at that time were the leadline ponies at the Kiddie Park on Broadway. Those were the only horses they got to ride on their visit. A city of half-a-million people is not a good place to find horses even in Texas.

However, there were horses in San Antonio and I found them. I took riding lessons and eventually worked at the big livery stable that provided horses for people to ride on the trails in Brackenridge Park. Both of my uncles were in the military so I sometimes got to ride at the stables at Ft. Sam Houston as well. Eventually I branched out and worked at other stables that were dotted here and there at the time. Now that San Antonio is a city of a million plus people most of those stables, including the one at Brackenridge Park, are gone. A few of them still remain in business though.

While working at Brackenridge I saw something happen over and over again. People would sell horses to the stable because the horse had a bad habit that the person didn't want to deal with. The horse would be an excellent riding horse, but didn't want to be shod. Or it wouldn't load in a trailer or allow itself to be tied etc. There were dozens of reasons why an otherwise good riding horse wasn't acceptable as a pet horse. And let's be honest here, most riding horses do fall into the category of pets in that we have them because we want them and they make us feel good. Back to the horses being sold. They had bad habits. Sometimes someone would fix the problem, but since the people caring for the horses at the stable were professionals they mostly just worked around them.

Hard to shoe? Haul out the twitch. Won't stand tied? Stick it in the nearest stall. There was always an easy solution. And if there wasn't well the Union Stockyard had the ultimate solution-dog meat.

After spending a couple of years watching this I decided the best solution was to teach a young horse how to deal with all the demands people would make of it in the future. Besides that was what Margaret Campbell Self said to do in the book I had. I began by teaching Telstar to accept grooming. When I tried to start with the curry comb I quickly realized this caused him discomfort so I backed off and tried to use a brush. Eventually I was back to using my hands as grooming tools, rubbing him all over until he would quietly accept my hands anywhere on his body. I'd been told many years earlier that this was the best way to get acquainted with a horse.

The first time anyone told me using your hands to rub all over a horse or pony was the best way to get acquainted with it was when I was admiring a cute little Shetland pony that was being offered as a prize in some contest or the other. Naturally I entered the contest and hung around the pen it was displayed in. The pony was a dark chestnut with a flaxen mane and tail. The man that was with him kindly allowed me to pet the pony and even said I could groom it. When I asked for a brush he told me that rubbing the pony with my hands was the best way to make friends with it.

I didn't win the pony, but I did acquire a more valuable piece of advice that day than I realized. In fact it was years and years before I understood just how valuable that advice was. It ultimately became the cornerstone of my training program though. I didn't just teach horses to accept riders I taught them how to accept all the things humans required of them. Now I want to help other people learn how to teach their horses to accept all the things a horse needs to know to survive in our modern world. I want to teach you how to be the trusted friend whose horse will drink at that water trough.

This column is my introduction to how I began my journey with horses. I try to give a bit of my background here and I'll continue to do so as I go along. I had the good fortune to meet some of the best horsemen (and women) of the Twentieth Century. I met some of the great horses of the times. And I also met some of the worst of both. I did some good work with horses and people and I had some real wrecks. I tried to learn from all the situations, good or bad, and then pass that on to others. After all what good is knowledge if you keep it to yourself?