Working the Horses

Horses need to be ridden regularly and if not, some will develop little problems as they may have not had complete training, may forget some of the more subtle commands, even question why they are being asked to do a specific thing, etc.

Our Papered, Chestnut Arabian Mare, Babe, is fully trained with 26yrs. of experience. She is able to rein, compete in barrel and other events, as well as open gates so that the rider doesn’t have to dismount and has performed in parades by rubbing spurs along her sides, she will “dance”. This is not painful, it sort of tickles and that is her cue to dance.

The best way to train horses is “gentling”, which helps them understand you want to be their “partner” not an aggressor. Sad to say, too often most horse trainers are aggressive in their training. Good training takes a long time and a lot of patience.

We recently had a cowboy friend of ours come up from Amarillo and help us work out our horse, Cowboy…who is a smaller stature Papered White Arabian Gelding and was spoiled by the previous owner that we had gotten him from, but they were not his original owners or trainers. So, he knows most of his commands, but we’ve had to work on him to get him out of a few bad habits that he had developed in their care. He was not wanting to back up, he was crow hopping, not turning to the left and just in general not responding to commands.

Star is a Black Arabian, she is papered but we have not yet received those papers from the ranch that bred her. She is larger in stature and "cowie" which means she will make a good team roping horse. She was head shy when we got her, but she is coming along nicely now.