Friday, July 23, 2010

Cowboy Stuft.....


Love Daughter In Law's Palm Hat in this Picture!
Backside of Muddy Mountain looking over some Big Country!

I cannot believe it's almost August and we have been so busy we haven't even gone up to the mountain to ride yet this summer.  Bummer.  But it was such a wet year that it was not good riding until July so I guess we really only missed three weeks so far.  Boy there has been a LOT of rain this year.  The grass is up over the fences on the highway right of way.  Son #2 and his wife have been up and gotten in some good rides. 

Hubby told me a story about Horse Whisperin' the other night that left me grinning.   He has two friends who are brothers.  Several years ago the younger brother, Clyde was into the Horse Whisperin' techniques and had gone to several of Top Notch Trainer Bucky Duckette seminars.  Well Clyde also had a young horse at the time who he was breaking using his new-fangled techniques.  Fred, the older of the two, has fantastic horse pens and a old-style round pen with solid wooden sides.  So Clyde hauled Young Horse over to Fred's place.

They put Young Horse in the round pen and saddled him up.  Clyde told Fred that the main problem with Young Horse was he bucked when you kicked him into a lope.  "He doesn't know how to lope, that's the problem.  He don't know how so he bucks." Fred believes Clyde was quoting a seminar instructor from somewhere.

Clyde gets on the horse and reaches over, and with a FLOURISH, takes the bridle OFF!!  (Just like the Horse Whisperin' Instructor!) And kicks Young Horse into a lope (well a buck at first) and gets him going without bucking.  Then Young Horse starts gaining speed and pretty soon he's lapping the round pen about three boards up like a motorcycle in a velocipede!

Fred  reported with glee, that Clyde on that darn horse looked just like a Monkey on a Border Collie!!!    But you know what?  That horse never bucked going into a lope again and Clyde had him until he was an old, old horse!
Click on Whip's name above to visit him!

One of my favorite things has always been watching my husband work a horse.  His dad broke horses in the military prior to WWII for the cavalry, and an old cowboy named Hap Sankey gave my husband some horse breaking lessons also.  Hubby's techniques are military/old cowboy with some of his own techniques thrown in. Hubby has passed all this down to the boys.  Now Hubby has sworn he was too old to break horses and the boys need to do it now.  But the boys are pretty busy this summer so.....

Releasing the hind foot.

Starting to Ground Drive the horse

Going good in this photo, horse is allowing Hubby to be behind him.

Starting to Unsaddle, End of Session

Hubby always tries very hard to end with a positive for the horse. 

Since I last posted, we had one of these .................
Merci had a Buckskin filly on July 14th!  Isn't she cute!  We are going to name her AFS Ryder High Brida.  In our neck of the woods there was a fine lady named Brida Gafford who had been a World Champion Bronc Rider back in the 1920's and had traveled with the 101 Ranch.  You can read her story here.  Since the sire of this Morgan filly was a cremello Morgan named BDM Border Ryder the name made sense.  Well to us anyway!

The mares & babies are out on the pasture now.  I went out to take some pictures but they didn't want me to get close, the stinkers.  


And that's the news this week from North of Nowhere!

3 comments:

  1. Having lived on a dairy farm, I never learned how to ride a horse or been around them much. My brother had two horses, but they were used for his infrequent hunting trips. I wish I had insisted on learning how to ride.

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  2. Your horses are just beautiful!!! I like watching the horse whisperer in action!

    Linda
    http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com

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  3. Hey! I also liked your husbands technique with the horse..I used to ride a long time ago. get out and ride some before the summer is over! That new filly is as pretty as she can be:)

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