Posts Tagged ‘training’
In Defense Of the Backyard Breeder
Hey All,
Somehow my previous post was put up before I had finished it, much less edited it for content, so if it seems awkward and well, unfinished, I apologise. Guess that’s what happens when you don’t hold the reins of the horse you’re riding.
Anyway….
I’ve been thinking about the BYB a lot lately.
When I hear the term I immediately think of run down barbwire pens, rusted out sheds, packs of roaming dogs and unweaned two-year-olds breeding their mothers.
BYB has expanded to mean anybody with a stupid or useless breeding program. I’m guilty of it myself.
10 acre farm producing 5 friesian/pintabian/walkaloosa crosses every year? BYB
Rich man breeder wannabe with 700 unregistered running on 10,000 acres in Montana? BYB
The term has become rather broad, which is probably what got me thinking about it.
What I originally thought defined the BYB was somebody who had a mare in the backyard they liked enough to want a foal from her. This horse owner would find a local stallion to breed their mare to and have a foal.
The problems which arose came from a lack of understanding of genetics, inbreeding, raising and training a foal, the risk of losing the beloved mare, the foal or both and whether there would be any value to the horse once it was on the planet.
My first quality horse was the result of a BYB. A girl who showed well inthe “morning classes” at our local riding club decided to breed her mare to a local, extremely popular (in our club anyway) paint stud. The resulting foal was a cute, decently built minimal white paint colt. I ended up buying him. An Oklahoma Star grandson on one side and a Leo grandson on the other, he was a better bred horse than I could possibly have hoped for, considering I was a poor college student.
Oakie was sweet, easy and willing. He survived our treating him more like a dog than a horse, broke out nice and became a handy little guy. By 6-years-old he had been diagnosed with navicular and by 8 he was dead from a bleeding disorder that was exacerbated by the medication I gave him for the navicular.
There is some argument whether or not navicular is hereditary, but his dam had navicular. The sire ended up finally being gelded because the blood disorder kept cropping up in his foals. This should be a good argument against BYB’s, but the paint stud couldn’t of had more than 15 foals on the ground before the blood clotting issue was discovered and he was gelded. The mare wasn’t bred again.
Professional breeders are still cranking out HYPP horses without apology.
Navicular doesn’t seem to stop many professional horsemen from breeding their horses either, especially when they only need a horse to make it through futurity season before they retire to the breeding shed.
I see crooked legs, too long pasterns, and bad temperaments, not only being ignored because a horse was a high dollar winner, but eagerly being sought after by hundreds of horse owners who buy from a show record and bloodlines alone.
I see an ever shrinking gene pool.
Your average, responsible BYB’s is going to breed their horse because it’s sound, gentle, fast, or pretty, something redeeming in their eyes. If the cross doesn’t work out, it won’t be repeated. I have a hard time faulting this approach. Good legs, kindness, talent on the trail or in a gymkhana, these are using horses and should be bred.
If only the very elite horses are bred then there won’t b e any Regular Joe family horses to pick up for a decent price and have live in the backyard.
My other thought is, how much damage is the BYB really doing to the horse industry?
If a responsible, caring woman keeps a few mares on 5 acres and breeds one or two a year, she know her horses. She understands the mares faults and weaknesses, but also knows the strengths and quality she wants to pass on. If she breed two horses one year and can’t sell them, chances are she will stop breeding. If you only have five acres you can only stuff so many on the property.
If a family owns a mare who has raised the kids, done well in Pony Club and has never offered to kick, are they wrong to decide to breed her? And what if a new fugly does hit the ground. It’s one foal compared to the hundreds produced by some of the larger QH ranches in the west.
Breeding,mare care and 3-4 years of waiting before you can ride is not going to lure a family with two horses into breeding hundreds of unneeded horses..
So how bad is it?
Is the BYB such a terrible thing, or has it become a scapegoat for an industry run amuck?
Kids and Studs
I think most of us are in agreement on this one.
It seems the cheesiest ads, for the crappiest horses, especially studs being sold as appropriate kids horses, show children on their backs, often without shoes, always without helmets and obviously with minimal training. For some reason this is supposed to lull the potential buyer into thinking this gaurantees the horse is safe for anyone to ride. I have also noticed the horses in these ads are almost always called “studs,” not stallions, or what they should really be called, “desperately need to be gelded but I’m too cheap to pay for it.”
Stud advertised as not started under saddle, but great with the kids.
All it means is the child is lucky to be alive, at that moment, and might not be the next.
When I was a kid, puttering around at the gymkhanas, you had to be 18-years-old to show a stallion. Period. It didn’t matter if Ol’ Rex had raised three generations of kids on his back (probably three and four at a time), or if the young rider was the next Olympic Champion, if you were under 18 you didn’t ride a stud into the arena.
The logic was simple. Kids spend way too much time screwing around and not paying attention to their horse or the horses around them. Stallions think about sex. It’s what they do.If they’re not thinking about sex, they’re thinking about taking offense at any other horse that bumps them, looks at them,or God help us all, squeals in their direction.
I don’t see how that was a bad idea.
There are great stallions out there. Some are dead quiet, always mannerly, never look at a mare out in public, the list can go on and on. I think it should be one of the prime reasons to let a stallion keep all his parts. But I would never expect a child to be responsible for a stallions behavior. I would never turn a kid loose on one, ever, ever, ever.
“Pally was BORN to ride. He loves to have people on His Back. He is gentle to mares and Has produced Gaited Colts that have either sold fast or found permanent homes with their breeder! Flashy in Show With confirmation Plus! He is NOT Homozygous but throws beautiful colors most often. My grandkids Ride Him around other horses and mares without any trouble. He is a splendid color and has a little saddle blanket on His back! Pally needs to be placed with a family that can share his love for a lifetime!”
I let my daughter ride different studs through the years while growing up. She was always supervised, I always knew the horse and how he was raised and she was well versed in how to handle one. It still made me as nervous as a mama cow watching her calf get dragged to a branding fire. She never showed one or had the responsibility of a stallion’s primary care.
I’m not afraid of stallions, but I never forget I’m around one. The biggest problem I’ve had with them, is not trying to breed at innappropriate times, it’s been striking, kicking or biting at people or horses. These are horses I’ve had in for training, not one’s I handled from the get go. A properly trained stallion, which starts out with a good temperament, can be as easy to get along with as any gelding and much easier than a lot of mares I’ve known.
The thing is, there is more to them, and their reactions can be dangerous. If they’ve been mishandled by their owners, through cruelty, spoiling them or just stupidity, then their reactiveness is going to be through the roof.
They can be kind and well mannered, but there is still more out in the world they can react to, and when a stallion reacts he doesn’t tend to go halfway. I don’t want a barefoot, goofy little kid to get stomped because Ol’ Rex took off through the fence after the neighbors smart alecky gelding.
Horses and their riders tend to operate in three different ways. The rider leads and the horse follows, the horse leads and the rider follows, or they work in tandem, still with the rider as the primary influence.
Kids and beginning riders don’t lead, they follow. A good horse for beginners and kids accepts this, takes care of the rider, or at least doesn’t take full advantage of them. A stallion is going to understand he’s in charge and either start doing what he wants, or get frightened and become reactive.
Handsome is a 32 inch red roan pinto stallion. 9 yrs old. Quiet to handle. Broke to
ride. Since he is a stallion, parental supervision is recommended for small
children. Sound. Very good ground manners. Easy keeper. Good in the stall or on
pasture. No bad habits. Has been pastured with mares. Sales are cash only.
“You’ve got To Pick A Pocket Or Two…”
We’ve all seen the kind of photos I’m talking about.
A beautiful woman kissing her fuzzy wuzzy widdle horsey friend right on his pretty widdle nose. Or her arms are wrapped around his neck in an embrace that exudes love, confidence, security and super mushy hugs and smooches.
Often this woman will be giving the camera a coquettish glance, over her shoulder of course.
This is a typical advertising gimmick used for sale catalogs, horsemanship clinics and western jeans.
When a photo like this graces the first page of a horse rescue site, for me anyway, red flags begin waving, alarms go off and a few cap pistols pop off around my head.
I am always suspicious of rescue sites which immediately highlight the people running the rescue instead of the horses themselves. When the spotlight shouts, “Look at me! I’m pretty and I still love horses!,” instead of the plight of the horses, I can’t seem to stop my eyes from rolling, or curb the sarcasm that wants to come bubbling out of me, like a good Diet Pepsi burp.
When People Helping Horses (PHH), a horse rescue in Arlington WA was brought to my attention, the first thing I did was look up their website.
My oh my, what a beautiful, tastefully done site. Here’s a rescue which has done such a good job it’s got the backing of RFD T.V. and one of their favorite clinicians recently rode in a charity event just for them .
Of course, I immediately noticed the tastefully muted photo of the pretty woman (Miss Gretchen?) kissing the horse.
The complaints sent to me from former staff and volunteers, didn’t gibe with all the upbeat imagery, and as I began looking into things, my eyes about rolled into the back of my head and the vile taste in my stomach turned out to be just pissed, no diet soda needed .
HPP is run by general manager Gretchen Salstrom. She has proven herself to be a money making machine, beginning with receiving almost 12K in Farm Subsidies for a horse farm, prior to opening the rescue., ( http://farm.ewg.org/sites/farmbill2007/person1614.php?custnumber=011971096), to amassing over $1,334,667 in revenue for PHH last year.
You’d think this would go a long way towards helping a lot of starving horses, wouldn’t you?
Apparently it doesn’t. Gretchen only adopted out 10 head last year, with a reported 14 more horses kept out on pasture, waiting for “ enough funding” to be trained and considered ready for adoption.
WTF? How much money does PHH need to get a horse ready for a new home?
Granted, our pal Gretchen does have some mighty high expenses, it costs a lot to run TV ads, and we all know good PR is much more important than feeding, training and finding homes for rescue horses.
Her administrative expenses were $72,624 and her fund raising budget was reported to be $545,991. http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=12632industry.
A former PHH employee wrote, ” Day after day I would hear the Executive Director say that we couldn’t afford to put the 14 horses, that we had on a 1 acre pasture, into training because PHH is xx amount of money in the hole.
“But 3 weeks before I left the Executive Director brought 13 of her personal horses to the PHH facilities. She had the staff and volunteers take care of these horses and her other 5 personal horses as well.
“At that time there were only 7 rescue horses at the facility being worked with and the 14 on pasture. Staff as well as volunteers were subject to focusing on the executive director horses and not the rescues”
Wow Gretchen. Even with your obscene fundraising budget you still had $32,443.50 per horse to see them to health, give them some training and find each a new home.Even if you were letting your nonprofit rescue pay to keep your own personal horses, which I understand is in reality a breeding operation, you would still have $20,684 FOR EACH HORSE.
Of course we all know using rescue money for your own personal expenses would be unethical, don’t we?
She sure isn’t putting it into safe or ethical adoption practices.Maybe she’s just too busy running around raising money to actually do her job…it’s gotta be hard finding enough time.
A paint gelding, which was reported to be been permanently lamed when caught in barbwire on the PHH pasture, was adopted out to a family who keeps their horses in a stinking mud pit.
There is an open well in the pen, covered by a few boards. When the horses are allowed out of their stalls, they run down a trash loaded cement runway to the mud hole called their pasture.
This dung heap was inspected and approved for the adoption.
Do you like the front gate? Me too.
It was tempting for me to bring the new owners of this horse into the fray. The thing is, they were truly “new” horse owners with no prior experience. I’m not excusing their ignorance, but it pisses me off to no end to think a horse rescue would adopt to these people. The opportunity for education was there, but how are they going to know they aren’t providing adequate care when the beaming Miss Gretchen not only lets them adopt the horse, but never says a word about the conditions he’ll be kept in?
Obviously relieved to unload the lame hay burner, she didn’t tell them the horse was too crippled to ride. The pretty paint gelding was to be used for jousting and some vaulting. This piece of information was shared on the “success stories” of the PHH website, along with the fact he went into saddle training 4 months after arriving at the rescue. He was a partially blind, never handled yearling when they got him. You do the math..
When we get into stories not considered a PHH success it gets worse.
Savannah came to PHH with 5 other horses in March of 2010. The following November Savannah was adopted out to a man who picked up the mare without having a background or site check, even though it is the protocol of PHH to evaluate, rehabilitate, and adopt the horses to people who have both a background and site check. PHH retains ownership of the horse for the first year in order to do spontaneous wellness checks on the adopted horses.
Once at her new “forever” home Savannah was starved. A kind neighbor stepped in and fed through the winter. By August,2011, the Pierce County Animal Control (PCAC) seized Savannah and a pasture mate which had been abandoned. PHH had never followed up on this mare.
Neither PCAC or Save A Forgotten Equine (SAFE) were willing to give her back to PHH and SAFE took her in. This time the mare was actually rehabilitated and adopted out to an appropriate home
When challenged by an employee, Gretchen said she put a call into PCAC, trying to get the horse back. Further investigation by the employee showed PCAC never received a call. Lucky Savannah.
So where is all the money Gretchen? What exactly are you doing with it?
The PHH claims full financial accountability, and on their website points out with pride they made the $500,000 a year required to be on the charitynavigator.org . But they only received a one star rating, because of a lack of financial transparency and an uneven balance in the use of funds.
Their books are supposed to be available through Guidestar, ( http://www2.guidestar.org/organizations/c/68-0513133/people-helping-horses.aspx). But Gretchen can’t quite cut it here either. PHH did not receive the Guidestar Seal, again, because the annual revenue and expenses was not reported.
I’m guessing she figures nobody will actually bother to read these reports, I mean, if Gretchen says they’re all available, I guess that’s all anybody needs to hear. It seems PHH is a pretty obvious front for Gretchen’s personal backyard breeding business.
Gotta hand it to Gretchen though, she is one money making machine.
People Helping Horses Contact Info:
http://peoplehelpinghorses.org/
360 435 9393
What I Learned
I learned several things from this post.
Many of the people who read this blog think I hate them.
There are cavessons designed purely for looks, much like the tassels (shoo-fly) hung on every available nook or cranny western gear has to offer.
Wickipedia must be wrong.
(Wickipedia) Uses of the noseband
Today, the noseband has several uses:
First, to give a balanced and traditionally correct appearance to the horse’s turnout at shows. When raised high, it can make a long-nosed horse’s face look shorter and more proportional. Various positions up and down the nose may help the face look more handsome, and a wide noseband can make a heavy head appear more delicate.
Second, to keep the horse’s mouth closed or at least prevent a horse from evading the bit by opening the mouth too far. It can sometimes prevent the horse from putting its tongue over the bit and avoiding pressure in that manner
Third, the noseband is also used to help stop a horse from pulling. A stronger noseband can many times be used instead of a stronger bit, which makes it a valuable option for riders that want more control, but do not want to back their horse off, that is, to make the horse afraid to go forward, especially when jumping, which is often an undesirable consequence when the horse is placed in a strong or harsh bit.
Fourth, it can be an attachment for other equipment, such as a standing martingale or shadow roll.
It is also valuable for young horses just learning to go “on the bit”, as it supports the jaw and helps the horse to relax his masseter, and flex softly at the poll.
In some riding styles, a noseband is added simply for decoration and is not attached to the bridle or adjusted to serve any useful purpose.
Nosebands may add some pressure to the nose when the reins are applied, depending on adjustment, style and the degree to which the horse resists the bit. With a soft leather noseband on a well-trained horse, the effect is minimal.
A bridle does not necessarily need a noseband, and many bridles, such as those used in Western riding, flat racing, or endurance riding, do not have one. Some horses shown in-hand do not use a noseband in order to better show off the animal’s head.
Many old paintings also depict a hunting horse without a noseband, since it was not always deemed useful by certain riders.
However, even in disciplines such as western riding, where it is considered a sign of a polished horse to not require a noseband or cavesson, one is often used on horses in training as a precaution to help prevent the horse from learning bad habits such as opening the mouth and evading the bit (which is where I developed my opinion that nosebands are a cheat).
I also appreciate that there is a lot to be learned from the readers of this blog, the arguments gave up some incredible information and the indignant raging made for some great reading.
On the flip side of things I hate, if this horse had decent food, care and an owner with a 100th of the passion I’ve seen on this blog, I wouldn’t care if he was ridden with a noseband on each foot, just as long as someone filled his feeder every day and kissed his nose at night.
This is one of three horses rescued in Alabama earlier this month. The sore on his hip is the result of the hip bone coming through his hide.
3 horses neglected
Enterprise, AL (US)
Incident Date: Wednesday, Oct 12, 2011
County: Coffee
Alleged: Donnie Lavon Adkison
An Enterprise-area man was placed behind bars Wednesday after Coffee County Sheriff Office deputies arrested him on charges he allegedly neglected three horses.
Donnie Lavon Adkison, 45, of County Road 731, was charged with second-degree cruelty to animals. Photos of the animals show they were not fed well, and one horse was so malnourished that its hip bone had rubbed a hole in its side, CCSO chief deputy Ronnie Whitworth said.
The horses were adopted, and a state veterinarian gave the horses a checkup while he was in the area Thursday, Whitworth added.
Animal cruelty reports, especially those involving large farm animals, are increasing in the county, Whitworth said.
“There’s getting to be a lot more of this stuff,” he said. ‘When you take in a large animal, it takes a lot of feed and upkeep. You can’t neglect these animals.”
Read more: Animal Abuse: 3 horses neglected – Enterprise, AL | Pet-Abuse.Com Animal Cruelty Database http://www.pet-abuse.com/cases/18719/AL/US/#ixzz1cBKhLxsk
What do you think the percentage is of ignorant, cruel, horse- starving, 45- years- old yahoos still go by childhood names like “Donnie,” or “Petey,” or better yet, nicknames like “Bubba,” or “Duke?”
Stuff I Hate
There are so many differences in riding styles, training approaches and where our horses fit in our lives, that I can’t pretend to know or completely understand the philosophy behind each.
Personally, I have studied western riding, with a smattering of first and second level dressage and some basic hunt seat thrown in for good measure.
The dressage came in because Ray Hunt told me to, the jumping came in from curiosity. I am by no means an expert in these areas, but I have ridden with qualified instructors, read like crazy and combined my new information with my own knowledge from riding western.
The horses I train do regular cavaletti and pole work and the foot control I work towards is taught using exercises I learned while riding dressage. I still use rail exercise I learned while riding pleasure horses to create drive and you can’t beat a good barrel or pole pattern to get a horse thinking and using his body while going full speed.
While taking on this cross-training approach I learned to keep an open mind to different disciplines, but I also developed some pretty strong opinions on what we, as horsemen, do totally wrong. There are training practices across the board that drive me CRAZY!
So here’s my first post on Stuff I Hate.
Cavessons/Noseband- designed to keep the horse’s mouth closed or at least prevent a horse from evading the bit by opening the mouth too far. This includes drop, flash, crank, figure-eight etc.
When I began exploring the mechanics of horse training beyond the pull and crank approach I was in my teens. The very first concept I was taught was to control a horse’s feet through my legs and hands.
“If you’ve got the feet you’ve got the horse.”
I have heard variations of this theme from every worthwhile horseman I have ever worked with, no matter what the style of riding.
The next hard cold fact I learned was if a horse opened his mouth against my hands it was ALWAYS because I didn’t have the feet under control.
I realized horses open their mouths in resistance, in pain or both. It was an effective communication from my horse, I didn’t have to be an advanced rider or a successful trainer to understand the problem. Mouth open, something’s out of whack, mouth closed, something is working.
So why in the world would I tie his mouth shut?
A noseband restrains the freedom of the lower jaw by literally tying it to the upper jaw.This pretty much kills the concept of a supple or relaxed jaw.
To my mind, I’d use a noseband so I can cheat. I could jump ahead to the fun stuff without being thorough in my basics. I could ride without worrying about my hands. I could force my horse to perform maneuvers we weren’t ready for. I could ignore his pain.
I am just not that kind of rider.
None of my horses wear nosebands of any kind, ever.
From chronic gapers to brand new babies, I let them tell me what the deal is through their mouth. My job is not to gag the horse to shut him up, it’s to work on gaining control of the feet and watch his gaping maw gradually relax and close.
I have found that bending and flexing through the ribs with my legs, lots of hold and release and pretty much ignoring what’s happening with a horse’s mouth works best. As the feet get where they need to be, the neck begins to relax, the poll flexes as it should and the mouth closes.
If a horse is gaping and dragging my hands forward, it’s not a matter of tying his mouth shut and pulling back, it’s figuring out how to push him forward and release the drag, again, this is done with my legs, not my hands, I know we’re getting somewhere when the mouth closes and I don’t feel like I’m water skiing in the La Brea Tar Pits.
Nosebands suck. Horses don’t need them. What they need are riders who take the time to analyze the problem from an open mouth and learn to ride well enough to help the horse close it….through the feet.
