Corollas on Our Endurance Team

Over the summer several of our riders have been working to get themselves and our horses in shape for the development of a Colonial Spanish horse endurance team. We are just beginning and are not trying to break any speed records. We are working to show what can be accomplished by these horses and their riders, whether the riders are 11 years old or 60 years old.

We have been conditioning Colonial Spanish horses of the Banker Strain (Corolla and Shackleford), Choctaw Strain, horses of Choctaw and Grand Canyon lineage, two 1/2 Corollas, Karma Farms lineage, and some whose lineage goes back to the Cayuse Ranch.

Generally trotting and cantering on rides of at least five miles, the horses have been brought along slowly in their conditioning. But each horse began with a step up over most modern horses. Living as naturally as possible, living primarily off of hay, grass and forbs, no shoes, and most importantly, no stables gives them a great baseline of health and fitness before they ever begin conditioning.

For now the kids are leaning to ride distances. If we like it, perhaps next summer we will make it a much more serious part of our program.

Mandy: Songs to Sing and Tales to Tell

Do you have any idea what you are looking at in this picture? Unless you spend time at the horse lot I strongly suspect that you are seeing much more than you realize.

...You are seeing learning, but even more importantly, you are seeing teaching. Mandy has become one of my best teachers. She is a good rider, is rapidly becoming a great horse trainer, and when we are on stage her voice is the anchor that holds the songs together.

Our program is diverse. No one gets paid. Everyone is a volunteer. I hate to single out individuals for recognition because for everyone that I mention there are another 8 or 10 doing vital things to keep our program growing.

But our program could not exist without the hard work of several brilliant and dedicated young people. Were I pressed to name a single aspect of our program that gives me the most pleasure it would be watching young people like Mandy become leaders.

Yesterday I rode behind a bit and I watched three kids, ages 11, 12, and 13 ride ahead of me. A Corolla mare, a Corolla stallion, and a Shackleford gelding moving beautifully in the woods with talented riders in the saddle--loping through the woods, laughing and handling their horses well.

And I get to watch these kids become caring, compassionate, hardworking, and tough as nails.

And it makes it possible for me to imagine this program still growing in thirty years

Mill Swamp Indian Horses: This is What "Different" Looks Like

Every one agrees that learning to ride at Mill Swamp Indian Horses is "different" than learning to ride at other barns.  It can be hard to understand exactly what that means. Here are some pictures from yesterday that help explain."Different" might mean spending a little quality time rare heritage breed turkeys like this little Blue Slate hen.

It might mean watching a training session for two rare heritage breed Mammoth Donkeys that just arrived on Friday.

It might mean having your third riding lesson on the grandson of Choctaw Sundance.

It might mean coming in from a trail riding lesson sitting astride a formerly wild Shackleford Island horse while your instructor gaits along sweetly on a high percentage Choctaw mare.

It might mean using the skills that you have developed from years of practicing natural horsemanship to to help those who will follow in your path.

It might mean learning about heritage breed conservation by looking across the pasture to see Big Muddy, a Choctaw stallion out with several Choctaw mares.

It might mean wrapping up the day learning the ancient ballad "Katy Dear" on the tack shed porch with a guitar, bodhrun, Weissenborn style lap guitar, and ukulele.

And it definitely means riding. Our advanced riders have put in a total of 1,716.63 miles over the last 8 months.

 And every bit of this was done with no paid staff. We are a non-profit breed conservation program run completely by volunteers. Our safety record is extraordinary because riders begin to learn natural horsemanship the first day they are at the horse lot. By understanding the horse's mind they learn to protect there own bodies.

Fees are set to make the learning experience affordable. Riding lesson fees are only $160.00 per month, per family.



Yep, very different.

The Marsh Tacky: Appearance and Reality

Age has many consequences, I am so very glad that getting older has not cost me either my curiosity to learn knew things and my ability to be surprised. I got several pleasant surprises this morning.

I pride myself on an ability to teach and explain complicated concepts so that they can be understood by people from all walks of life. That makes it especially frustrating when I seek to explain to others what is going on inside my head. Lately the inside of my head is not a place that anyone would like to take a vacation in.

Weeks ago I finished the sentencing in a very complex case involving the beating death of a five year old boy. I finished it in the court room but it is not finished in my head. Presenting such cases with the emotion and extraordinary power that they deserve requires me to get down in it. Someone once told me that the description that I gave of the torment of a victim in one case was so vivid that it sounded like I could actually see what had happened.

Of course I can see what happened! The problem is that sometime you can't stop seeing what happened.

I am only throwing this out so you can understand the over all picture as I went out to meet Tanney Town this morning. She is a pure Marsh Tacky. The picture of her above is as a yearling in July of 2016, shortly after we obtained her from the Lowther herd in South Carolina. She had not been handled at that point. It is my preference to have every yearling well halter trained and accepting of a saddle before they begin further training in a little over a year. I saddled her shortly after she joined our program but then set her aside to grow up.

Tanney Town has spent over a year on pasture with a handful of other horses at a farm not far from the horse lot. I had not seen her up close for a very long time. Lydia brought her home yesterday. Lydia told me that she was "huge".

I feared that. Andrew's Marsh Tacky pair that he picked up the same time that we obtained Tanney Town were significantly taller than our Corollas. So I headed out to the horse lot with a preconceived notion of what to expect.

I went to the pasture and put a rope halter on her. She seemed loathsomely tall. She also seemed more nervous than I hoped. As I began to mover her around the round pen her mind was much more on getting out of the pen than in responding to me. She softened up a bit but was slower to learn the head down cue than I had come to expect horses to do.

She did not want my hands touching most of her body and where she allowed touching she did not seem to enjoy the contact.

So...I continued handling her--advance and retreat, teaching that just because something is scary does not mean that it will cause pain. Then she learned to lunge rather well. Her terror of a saddle blanket lasted only moments before she was comfortable with it on her.

In less than fifty minutes she was lunging around with full tack on. She never resisted the saddle or the girth. She never bucked. She never bolted. She showed great presence of mind when turning in the round pen and a great deal of athleticism during the session.

She did everything that I asked of her. She will be able to take a rider soon, but she will have mastered ground work before that happens. She will likely become a super horse bringing everything to the table that all of the Colonial Spanish horses of the Southeast show--agility, endurance, smooth gaits, strong bonding with humans, great hooves and a powerful immune system.

So... I had to measure her. I had to know exactly how much she was too tall. I expected over 15 hands. She appeared that way to me. I braced myself for the bad news.

Appearances don't matter--with horses or with anything else worth caring about. Only reality matters and the reality is that she is barely over  14.2 hands tall--still  taller than I prefer but within the range of being tolerable.

But the state of mind that I brought to the training session and the information that I had received concerning her size had set me up to expect disappointment.

What the horse brings into the round pen in its earliest sessions matter.

What the trainer brings with him in those earliest sessions matter more.

Why The Horse Understands What Most People Do Not

Yesterday Ashley Edwards came down from Richmond to do a session on the use of horses to teach both effective communication and to assist in dealing with severe trauma and PTSD. (Any reader who is unfamiliar with Ashley's work please stop reading and go to our website www.millswampindianhorses.com and hit the tab entitled "News" You will see a few TV clips and newspaper articles about her)

The body language used by herd prey animals is precisely the same as that unknowingly used by people who have been severely traumatized. The horse is instinctively repelled by the body language of predators. Humans who have not experienced severe trauma instinctively use the body language of predators.

As significant as understanding that vital lesson in communication is, another lesson is even more important.

Predators seek autonomy. Prey animals seek security.

Our culture teaches us that the solution to problems is to increase one's autonomy--to achieve--to obtain the things that give us more control over our lives. That instinctive drive for autonomy provides a wonderful spur on to happiness for most people.

But autonomy cannot bring satisfaction to a severely traumatized person until that person first finds security. This is the gift that natural horsemanship can bring to those whose daily existence is shaped by depression, anxiety, self loathing, and fear.

One can find security for oneself by learning to provide security to a horse. When one finds that security one can then move on to enjoy the fruits of autonomy.

For nearly seven years we have been using these principles in weekly sessions with PTSD patients at the local Veteran's Hospital.

 This is real.