I looked at him as seriously as I could and asked “Whats a bagel?” After he described it I said “Oh, its like a stale doughnut!” and proceeded to walk off in the opposite direction of where they kept the food (which was in back of the cabin we were standing in front of.)
“WHERE THE )*&(! ARE YOU GOING!?!?!?”
“THEY AREN’T THAT WAY!”
I proceeded to walk off in another (wrong) direction and he gave me directions…I proceeded to walk off in yet another wrong direction and he became ballistic!

“WHERE IN THE &)((&(*&!!!!!! ARE YOU GOING???? JUST HOW F&%*$$##)!!!NG STUPID ARE YOU????”

I turned around and just grinned at him. He turned redder than a light in front of a house of ill-repute and got his own bagel. The rest of riding doubles waited til he was around the corner before they started laughing, but they were rolling on the ground doing it. After that he quit telling people what to do and even began asking his gopher politely.

Remember, if you like these stories, most of them are in my books on Amazon.

Then one day he and his wife decided to go to a clinic on speed control and stopping. What a mess. He couldn’t get me to go into a trot without falling off, let alone go into a lope and stop. At the end of the clinic they talked to No Legs about taking lessons on a family plan.

A few days later they loaded the kids and all of us horses into the trailer and headed over to No Legs for their first lesson. He already had Storms saddled and warmed up. Just a few minutes into this first lesson he stopped everything and had my two legger take my saddle and bridal off, put my halter on and get on me bareback.

Needless to say my two legger didn’t feel comfortable with the idea. No Legs told him that he needed to develop balance to stay on top, and that he needed to be able to feel what I was doing in order to do that.

As No Legs led me off at a walk, he told my two legger to close his eyes and tell him when my right front foot was leaving the ground. At first he did let my two legger hold onto my mane for security. After several weeks of lessons (and practicing at home) my two legger could finally feel what my feet were doing at a walk. Next we practiced at a trot. By the time my two legger could feel where my feet were at a trot, he also had the balance to stay in the middle of me without falling forward or sliding off the side of me.

Next we started working on getting my two legger to balance himself in a way that actually communicated to me what he was wanting me to do. No Legs really concentrated on teaching my two legger to to get me to relax and give to pressure which was something I hadn’t really learned.

The whole goal to these lessons were to get the family, especially my two legger, confident enough in their riding so that they could take us on camping trips into the desert. After several months of twice a week lessons, No Legs began meeting us in the desert to conduct the lessons in the environment they wanted to ride in.

On the last ride we took with No Legs my two legger was confident enough in himself and me that he put the reins on my neck so he could light a cigarette. We were just coming to the bottom of a fairly steep hill at the time. I stumbled and dropped my head then started trotting off. The reins had dropped over my head, but my two legger had gained enough balance and focus that he didn’t panic. He simply said “whoa, reached down, grabbed both sides of my breast collar, and pulled up on it. Since we had been working together on the giving to pressure, and he remained balanced, I simply stopped.

Since then we have spent many enjoyable weekends exploring the desert, and he hasn’t fallen off since.

This story is out of my newest book From The Horse’s Mouth (walking a mile in your horse’s shoes). It would make a great Christmas gift for the aspiring horsemen on your gift list. It is available on Amazon.

The plan for the day was to haul the portable panels and a new chute down to Coyote Gulch pasture. We would set them up so the bull and steer calves could get preconditioned. Then we would gather the three hundred- twenty pairs of cattle into the one permanent corral to hold them for the night so that we could get a good early start the next morning.

Things started out smoothly, but then Lester had a flat on his truck and didn’t have a spare. At least the truck happened to be sitting where we would need it the next day to work the hydraulics on the chute. He jacked it up, took off the tire, and left it up on the jack.

We began putting up the panels. None of us had set things up here before as the ranch had just been bought by the father-and-son team of Orville and Wilbur Spendercrash. We were nearly finished when it dawned on us that this corral design would definitely crash when actually used, so we decided to circumvent Orville’s plan and go to plan B. Orville and Wilbur showed up right on time just before we were finished. Surprisingly enough, they approved of plan B and were anxious to get horseback.

As Plan B was not quite completed, Vern, the manager, decided to stay back with Lester to finish up. JR and RJ went to the west end while I had the honor of taking Orville and Wilbur to the east end. Orville and Wilbur are right at home in a business office. On a horse, neither would ever be accused of being Hopalong Cassidy or the Lone Ranger, but they enjoyed the romance of playing cowboy and rounding up cattle. I headed us off at a trot, not because the pasture was that large, but because it was getting late. About a hundred yards out, Wilbur’s horse stepped in a hole and crashed to the ground, cushioned only by Wilbur’s
leg. Wilbur was sore but still wanted to ride, so I went back and caught his horse. . I chided Wilbur a little and asked how he was enjoying the romance.

We got started again, and I told him how my family jokes that my brother rolls cars and I roll horses. Also, just in case he ever got hung up, I told him to roll over on his belly so that his foot would be able to come out of the stirrup. This is a trick I learned while being rapidly dragged across the desert by a mule. By the time I figured out the trick, the mule had covered a quarter mile with a quarter of his tracks on me.

When we were nearly to the end of the pasture, I looked over the situation and decided which way we would go with the herd. Orville could stay with the cattle, and rather than go along the fence, he was to bend the them north so that we could pick up some strays that were around the hill and then head back toward the fence and on in. As I started kicking a couple of pairs off of the top, I noticed that RJ had come down our way and was kicking the strays I had seen over the hill down to Orville, which meant we could take the easy route along the fence. But, as I said, Orville was little green, and as Wilbur and I came up the draw with the other cattle, he got the lead started by pushing RJ’s cattle back to where they had just come from. Back they went at a quick trot with the rest of the bunch following.

Since I had seen RJ head back up-country I knew there was no one at the point, so I loped to turn the herd toward the pens. There were only about 150 pairs, so it didn’t take much effort to get them lined out again. All we had to do was go through
a short valley and take the south exit to the fence. I had to drop back and keep an eye on the drag as Orville has this real neat trick of spreading the drag out rather than lining it out. He accomplishes this by riding alongside the cows while hollering and waving at them. They kind of slow down to watch him go by and then start wandering off. I wanted to make sure they didn’t wander off too far.

About the time I was going back up to make sure the drag had a lead to follow, two old swingbags headed out back to the southeast where we had picked them up like the king of all grizzlies was hot on their trail. Now, I may have been new to this ranch, but when they bought this herd, I sort of came with the deal, so I knew from experience that the rest of the bunch would
soon be following these two crowbaits. I rode across through the cattle and loped on up to turn them back, hoping that either Orville or Wilbur would get the idea and turn them back towards the fence instead of letting
them go back up the hill. Alas, they were too busy enjoying the romance of watching me bring the two old witches back to pay attention attention to the lead, which had headed up the north trail rather than down the south one. It was no big deal, however, as I loped over and headed them west over the hill toward a trail which would drop down to the pens.

At the top of the hill I was able to relax a little, as RJ had returned. Since the drag was a little wadded up and spread out, thanks to Orville’s talent, I thought I’d go show him how to string them out. Loping back, I was nearly there when ol’ Sorrely stepped into a badger hole. Thinking, “Oh well, here we go again,” I dropped my left stirrup and started to bail off of the right side. Then he hit a second hole and fell onto my right foot, jamming it into and pinning it in the stirrup. While catching my balance, I thought, “Oh, donkey dung,” as I felt my left foot go back into the stirrup. As his back end came off of the ground, I flung myself forward, and things got real dark for a second as he went over me.

This wasn’t really a slow-motion wreck, but I wasn’t panicked yet. My parents gave me a name in which the initials spell REK, this was far from my first, and ol’ Sorreley was a pretty gentle old puke who usually stops on voice command… usually. This time he started running and kicking, which is also about the time I thought my duck was plucked and this was my last
ride.

Rather than see my life flush before my eyes, I brought my arms up around my head so as not to hurt Sorreley’s feet when he kicked it. I tried to kick my off foot free at the top of each bounce. Finally he kicked me high enough to free my foot, but I couldn’t seem to get rolled over onto my stomach. I uncovered my head to look up and see that not only was my foot still in my stirrup, but my spur was hung in the cinch. Now I considered panicking a little, but still tried rolling over. Finally, after what seemed to be about three lifetimes, my spur came off, I got rolled over, and my foot popped right out of the stirrup.

As I rolled on the ground moaning obscenities that would have embarrassed Satan himself, I heard the thunder of horses approaching at a dead run. Orville and Wilbur to the rescue, or at least the wake. They were wanting me to lie still, but I was too smart for that, I had to get up. Chewing them out, I insisted that I would live and that they should get back to the cattle
and get the ^><|?}* herd gathered up before it got dark!

Orville went to help RJ while Wilbur helped me find my hat. He claimed the lucky horseshoe he kept in his pocket would find my spur, and he was right. About the time he found it, Vern came riding up leading Sorrely and asked how to get around some cows which were heading back up the hill. Rather than tell him where to get around them, I volunteered to go get them myself. I
managed to get them back down the hill but also regretted having volunteered as being horseback wasn’t quite as comfortable as usual.

I worked at the chute the next day and rode the morning after that before my head softened up enough to let me go to the doctor. I found out that I hadn’t broken anything. Shortly after taking my first dose of painkillers, I came to the conclusion that Nancy Reagan was wrong, and drugs are your friends. I also need to admit that after this upside down ride, the worst feeling in the word is a stumbling horse…
This story is from my Book Cowboy Romance (Of horsesweat & hornflies) available with my other books on Amazon.

First every horse is an individual, and second, every horse is a product of its past. Third, two horses can have a nearly identical past, yet hold opposite lessons from it. The best analogy I can come up with to describe this is two children raised by an alcoholic parent. One may grow up to repeat the life of it’s alcoholic parent, getting drunk, beating the kids and kicking the dog, while the other grows up to abhor alcohol and cannot raise a hand to their child under any circumstance.

This individuality makes working with each horse unique. Developing a relationship with horses is much like developing relationships with people. One may be willing, open, and easy to work with. The next may be like dealing a past full of abuse who is suspicious, angry and looking for an opportunity to lash out. Yet another may have a past of injuries which cause problems due to pain or vision loss which cause adverse reactions to what we are asking of it.

This brings to light the difficulty of describing just how to relate to your horse(s). Bill and Tom Dorrance started a revolution in training horses by using methods which allow your horses to relate to you in a way which they can understand. However many people have a hard time understanding the philosophy, and also the mechanics behind things like timing, balance, and feel. Then are is also the misconceptions we naturally believe. First, we must realize that we are NOT
teaching the horse to do things. Keep a horse penned up in a stall with no exercise for a couple of weeks and turn it out in the arena. Chances are it is going to run hard, stop hard, and roll back over it’s hindquarters and run off again. It will run in circles, changing direction and leads on its own. Watch horses in a pasture, they may back up a couple of
steps, or even step sideways a couple of steps to give another horse higher on the pecking order a little more space. Horses that are in a pasture with cattle will chase them around or even get one in a pasture corner and just hold them there (like a cutting horse) just for fun. This brings us to the realization that (rather than teaching the horse) we are learning how to communicate to the horse when we want to do something so that the horse will do it. Secondly we must realize that every time we are handling a horse, we are training it. We are either doing things in a manner which allows the horse to communicate easier, and be more willing, or; doing things which keeps the horse at the level it is at, or;
we are doing things to make our horses resent us and become less willing to be our partner.

Between the vast differences between horses and their issues, and the vast differences people have in learning, writing a how to book on relating to, and training horses would seem to be a futile effort. It would be much simpler if the horses could just tell us with their own voice.

The goal of From The Horse’s Mouth is to let the reader walk a mile (or two) in the horseshoes of of their equine friends. Let them walk in the shoes of horses to learn why the problem lies not in the horse, but in their own deafness to what the horse may be telling them.

From The Horse’s Mouth will be available in November from Amazon