Milestones

Last night, Amigo and I reached a milestone in our training journey:  I had some yearling bulls in the arena, and, with the help of my hired man, Logan, I was able to rope them using Amigo.  Logan first roped one bull around the neck, and I rode in on Amigo to rope its hind feet. When he showed no adverse reaction to that, I tried roping the head of another bull, and was again successful with Amigo.

 While roping is not a required activity in the Extreme Mustang Makeover competition, doing cattle work is, and a horse that can be used to rope definitely knows the basics of working a cow.  Working a cow involves being able to track and even anticipate the cow’s movements, and moving quickly enough to accomplish the necessary action – whether that be pushing the cow back into the herd, cutting it out of a herd, or roping it.  Roping is a pinnacle activity for a ranch horse: if a horse can be used for roping, then by necessity he knows how to track a cow’s movements and how move quickly enough to put his rider in the best place for the catch.  Therefore – for Amigo – roping those bulls last night was a lot like graduating from high school – there is still much room for improvement, but what he has accomplished deserves celebration.

None of this has happened overnight, but, like any journey, it has been a series of small steps leading up to the major goal.   Just as a student learns to read one letter at a time, rather than all at once, an untrained horse develops into a useable animal by progressing through very small steps. Skipping a step would be like that student skipping a letter of the alphabet: the result would be a gap in learning that impedes achievement of the end goal.  So while I have always held a picture in my mind of what I want to accomplish with Amigo in the end, I still have had to be satisfied with the small steps leading up to the goal.  

One of my main focuses in training any horse is to work on desensitization to stimuli that might normally cause the horse to become anxious or upset. A rope and a running animal would certainly constitute that kind of stimuli. Therefore, the journey to being able to rope those bulls last night started with the training that happened in the first week or two that Amigo lived here.

One of the first activities I did with Amigo – described in the June 27 entry of this blog – was to work with his feet.  While the point of that training exercise was primarily to promote his safety and to teach him to move and pivot on each individual foot, it also was an activity that desensitized Amigo to having a rope touching his legs and feet. Once he decided that the rope didn’t pose a threat, he was well on his way to the success we gained last night.

All summer, as I’ve been riding Amigo, I’ve also been thinking ahead to the goal of being able to rope on him. Therefore, I’ve continued desensitization exercises during our nightly rides: specifically for the roping, I’ve gotten him accustomed to having a rope swung in the air beside him, and to feeling that rope across his rump and along his body. In the roping arena or out in the pasture, there is much activity – the cattle, the other horses, the rider’s body, the wind – so a roping horse must be able to remain calm and focused amid all this activity. And, as with any high-intensity activity, the unplanned often happens: a rope comes across the horse’s rump or hits him in the flank, a steer runs right into him, another horse cuts him off.  Roping horses must not only be physically sound and agile, but they must also possess enough mental maturity that they won’t explode at all these unforeseen events.

Although it may not seem connected, the work I’ve been doing to prepare for our trail class also contributed to Amigo’s success in last night’s roping adventure. With my daughter, Maria’s, help, I built a small trail course next to our driveway.  I consists of normal trail class obstacles: a bridge to cross, poles to step over, an “L” to back through, a box to turn around in. When I ride Amigo through this trail course, I am definitely preparing for competition in Fort Worth, as there will be a trail competition there. But, I am also preparing him for the roping and cattle work in less obvious ways.

Teaching him to step carefully through those logs – placed about two feet apart – helps Amigo develop the precise foot control that he will need for more advanced riding and maneuvers, including tracking and cutting a cow. Teaching him to pivot tightly in an eight-foot-square box also helps develop that foot control, and improves his balance – all very important when he is chasing a quick, snake-y animal like a yearling bull.  Even having Amigo back through that “L” shape, formed by logs on the ground, plays into roping:  one necessary movement for a rope horse used on a ranch is to “work the rope”, a movement in which the horse backs slightly to keep the rope, dallied to the saddle, pulled tight so that the cowboy can dismount to work on the animal.

Training a horse really does come down to the entire process: from earning the horse’s trust, to desensitizing it to common stimuli, to teaching it to place its feet and move out with speed and agility – all these steps come together in a finished horse. Therefore, a trainer must, again, always keep the end goad in mind, and be willing to put up with the inevitable frustrations that will happen along the way. Even the setbacks become valuable lessons when they are looked at from the perspective of understanding the animal better, and becoming a better partner for the horse.

Amigo is not a finished horse, by any means. However, he has accomplished so much in so little time that I can’t help but be amazed by him.  We will continue to work, and to prepare for competition in September – only three short weeks away!  But, I will still take time to bask in the success that we had last night, and to be gratified to have been a part of it.