Argentine horse tamer Fernando Noailles lies on 'Madrid' a five-year-old jet black stallion and puts the horse into a state bordering on the hypnotic at his farm in La Cabrera. Noailles is an expert in equine behaviour and clients from Patagonia to Paris seek him out when a recalcitrant stallion or mare needs breaking in. AFP - Wed Dec 21,10:58 AM ET

A lifelong horseman, Noailles relates how he learned taming techniques through non-violent means just as he entered his teens—

"I'm not an inventor, nor a witchdoctor. I simply use techniques which have been around for millennia, from a time when the man-horse relationship was closer."

Continue reading "The horse tamer" »

Posted by Kimberly at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nearly every evening for a couple of weeks, my husband and I went down to the paddock and simply … sat. Now that may not sound very inspiring, I admit. But the change in this abused horse's behavior was.

Initially, the horse stayed as far away from us as possible. Each time we entered the paddock, she would very proactively turn her back to us until all we could see were those speckled, branded hindquarters. Her message was a clear, “I can’t stop you from coming in here, and you can’t make me look at you or have anything to do with you.” Then after a couple of days, when the horse realized that we were merely going to sit and not try to approach her, her natural curiosity began to get the best of her.

Continue reading "Horse sitting :: part 2" »

Posted by Kimberly at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over at Horse Bliss, Darren and Mary write in Curiosity Creates Confidence―

“A secret recipe to horsemanship is to create curiosity. Rather than you approaching the horse, try drawing it towards you. This may take time depending on the horse’s conditioning. Horses that have not been exposed to human interaction or have had negative encounters with humans may let the fear drive them away more than a horse that has been handled humanely by humans.”

I knew that reaching our rescue horse, Teyla, was going to be quite a stretch. It was obvious that she’d had bad experiences with people.

I was amazed that, despite her history, she wasn’t what I'd exactly call mean. Yes, she’d done a highly effective job of cowing her previous owner by turning her hindquarters to him whenever he approached and refusing to let him handle her hind hooves.

Continue reading "Horse sitting :: part 1" »

Posted by Kimberly at 02:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Instead of cattle, some cutting horse trainers are using bison. Apparently bison have much more stamina than cattle and rarely stand still, which makes them a good challenge for both horse and rider!

This from a recent Billings Gazette article―

Raising bison these days isn't just about giving consumers a different meat.

Now, instead of cattle, some who train cutting horses for competition are using the majestic animals that once thundered across the plains of the American West. Cutting horses are horses bred and trained for removing, or "cutting," cows or calves from a herd.

Continue reading "Bison sold to cutting horse trainers" »

Posted by Kimberly at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I’ve been told by several horse trainers that training the rescue horse can be challenging, possibly even more so than training the adopted wild horse. But the benefits can be enormous, both for horse and rider.

In a previous post The Rescue Horse, I described our meeting a nine-year-old appaloosa mare, whom we decided to bring home last Spring. If Teyla (the name my husband gave her based upon the “T” and “A” branded on her hindquarters) could speak, I wonder what stories she might have to tell me?

Continue reading "The challenge of training the rescue horse" »

Posted by Kimberly at 09:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was looking for a good pack horse early last Spring, and the man on the phone told me the appaloosa mare he'd advertised in the Thrifty Nickle had packed game out of the Pecos Wilderness. He said she was as sure-footed as a mule. She was hard to catch. She was small. She wouldn't let you handle her back hooves. The price was firm—$500.

I wasn't quite prepared for what I found when we went to take a look at her that evening. In her 10 x 12 pen, she looked even smaller than I'd anticipated, a little over 14 hands and small boned, almost frail. She had a "- N" branded on one shoulder, which a little web research later revealed to be the Navajo Nation brand. A "Q" a "T," and an "A" were branded on one hip, and a bunch of unintelligible numbers on the other. Like a math problem gone bad.

Continue reading "The Rescue Horse" »

Posted by Kimberly at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)