Ask Yourself: Is This A Horse Problem?

I have to somehow protect myself from being drawn to the various horse forums that pop up on my computer. Viewing these questions is bad enough. Reading the answers is even worse.

 Why do so many people who are fairly new to horses voluntarily degrade the quality of their lives by seeking the opinion (in reality the approval) of the anonymous experts of the internet as to how they should interact with their horses?

Start with the obvious question. What has the established horse world done for horses? It has created an agribusiness that produces a food/supplement regimen that produces more obese, laminitic horse than the nation has ever seen. It is based on the horrid notion that a horse's worth is somehow related to its sales price. It has supported horse slaughter and has stood firmly in the way of efforts to improve the quality of horse's lives through natural horse care, natural hoof care and natural horsemanship.

What has the established horse world done for people? It has created a system of unnecessary and harmful "requirements" for good horsemanship that place the cost of owning a horse completely outside the budget of working families. It has taught 12 year old girls that they should sell their best friend and purchase another horse who can  be awarded a strip of cloth of a different color at the next assemblage of such experts at a horse show. It has taught people that the competition horse is of more value than one used "just" for trail riding. It has taught people that they need to have a trainer solve all the problems that arise between them and their horses.

And most of all it has taught them that their horses are disposable.

Why would I possibly want their opinions on anything at all, much less something as important as the relationship that one can have with a horse?

I am often asked why I do not encourage my little riders to become involved in more competitions. The math is simple. Competitions create many more losers than they produce winners. And regardless of the color of the strip of cloth attached to the horse's head, the net impact of competition on horses at large is a tremendous  negative.

I believe in self competition. I want riders to compete, not among others, but entirely within themselves as individuals to see how much time they can spend with their horses, how quickly they can release pressure, how healthy they can maintain their horses, how comfortably they can ride, how gentle they can be, how firm they can be when necessary,  how kind they can be to their horses and to other people and how much factual information they can learn about horses.

Forget the color of the strip of cloth.

The only goal worth seeking is to use your horsemanship to become a better person.

If We Build It They Will Come

Cyrus Lawrence was the greatest high school football player that I ever saw. Fast--yes, strong--without a doubt, but so were a lot of players. What was so puzzling watching him run the ball was what would happen when single players tried to tackle him.

Slamming his body into the tacklers as he ran--he was more of the hitter than the hittee. In many such collisions--there would be that pause of a microsecond that always occurred just before the running back went down--but he did not go down. Instead, he spun with the power of a wild boar and the tackler would come off of him the way a wet hound shakes off water.

Run hard-hit-be nearly stopped--spin hard and then run harder than even before.

If you keep your eyes open there are learning experiences all around you--insights that provide solutions to the crisis of nearly being tackled.

Now I do not like to worry about money, but in the last few weeks that worry has been hitting me hard. Gwaltney Frontier Farm is a 501(c)5 non profit breed conservation program. We have no paid staff--all volunteers. Last week we had a deep well dug and the watering system that will attach to it will insure year round water for the horses and will provide for irrigation for the pastures. It is an expensive endeavor that will greatly improve our pastures and benefit our horses.

Last month my wife and I purchased the nearly twenty adjoining acres the use of our program. It was a pasture up until about 15 years ago and much of it has grown up in pine, sweet gum and cherry trees. To clear the land commercially and to convert it back to pasture would cost about $1,000.00 an acre. A simple woven wire fence with treated fence posts would cost about $2,500.00 to $3,000.00.

We are clearing it ourselves. Wendell purchased a brush buster. The machine cost him a fortune and he has walked many miles behind it in the last few weeks. Program participants and a few outside volunteers have been of tremendous help.

I could not stand to waste all of the lumber that we were cutting down so I started a pole fence. The pole fence costs us nothing but the nails and the treated fence posts to hold the poles. Those posts are not cheap.

We were squeezing along with the donations that we had received and were on track to be able to pay for the fencing and the water system. Then we were hit with some large ticket items all for this same month.

I had run hard, hit hard, but I was about to be tackled. Yesterday I decided to spin hard, very hard and keep on running. Sweet gum will not last for even a few seasons as fence posts. Pine is better but still is not really sufficient for even a temporary fix.

No one uses wild cherry for fence posts because no one has access to enough wild cherry trees to cut any significant number of posts...

But we do. Wild cherry lasts on average about a decade when used as fence posts. I knew that it would be hard work to cut and remove sufficient wild cherry trunks to get the job done. Yesterday was brutally difficult but we cut and stacked about 200 cherry fence posts.

Skeptics will say that the posts will not work. Skeptics also thought that we could not build this fence with the work of a bunch of kids and a handful of volunteers. Skeptics thought that we could not teach little children to tame and train wild horses.

And time after time, as it looked like his knee was just about to touch the ground, skeptics thought that Cyrus Lawrence was about to be tackled.

What Is An American Indian Horse?

This is an American Indian Horse. The American Indian Horse Registry was formed in 1961 to preserve, promote and protect these horses and to recognize the modern breeds whose roots go back to the first horses brought to this continent by the Spanish.

http://www.indianhorse.com/ is a website worth understanding. After you read it cover to cover the next stop that I would recommend is the Horse of the Americas Registry's website and then I would move on the the Spanish Mustang Registry's site.

Simple history, complex politics--spectacular horses.

Feather is 34% Choctaw strain Colonial Spanish Horse. She is small, gaited, has tremendous endurance, and is very affectionate.

If such things matter to you you might also notice that she is beautiful.

Kay Kerr--Award Winning Author and Humanitarian

It is great to see Kay Kerr getting the recognition that she deserves.

 In November her spectacularly illustrated children's book on Croatoan won first place in the children's fiction category at the Equus Film Festival in New York and now she is being recognized for the program that she created for those who are in patients in PTSD treatment at the Hampton VA. This program is conducted at Mill Swamp Indian Horses on a weekly basis. Kay's work saves horses and people.

                          (Some of the books available through our website, including "Corolla's Sand Horse     Beach-Croatoan's Memoirs".)






There are very few better things that can be said about a person than that.

Her book can be ordered through our website www.msindianhorses.com

Even If The Heavens Fall

What does good training and being ridden with perfectly consistent pressure and release for several years do for a horse's confidence?

Our horses have never been despooked with the sound of chain saws. We do not practice having them stand around while trees are falling down. But yesterday morning I was deep in the wooded portion of our new land cutting down trees. The roar of the chain saw made me oblivious to any other sounds. Mimosa was cracking like a .22 going off as I sawed the big limbs off.

After one limb fell I looked up to see Terry sitting there bareback on Quien Es?, her Chincoteague/BLM cross mare, about thirty yards from me. The horse stood there as calmly as she would standing in the pasture with her herd.

Even for our horses, that was exceptional behavior. It really drives home an important part, the most important part, about safety while riding. Worst of all it is a safety lesson that is never taught.

The best way to reduce rider injury is to completely train the horse using perfectly consistent cues while continuing to build the horse's confidence by allowing it to constantly be exposed to new challenges. Along with the training comes the experience that the horse deserves. Long miles of riding in different environments builds both rider and horse confidence. Terry has ridden Quien Es? a few thousand miles in our woods and on weekend rides with other groups all across the region.

Lastly, get yourself in the best physical condition possible. On many occasions one will find that in all those episodes of nearly falling off, the thing that allows one to stay aboard is simply being strong enough to do so.

Ride long. Ride strong.


(Quien Es? was named for the last words of Billy the Kid. She is the mother of Ashley's horse, Peter Maxwell.)