Flags Story

Am not going to continue this at this time, his death is still to fresh for me to write about him right now.

Flag's story begins, Late October 1980

This is about the most excited I have been since I got involved with horses about 6 years earlier. I had been searching for months for a stud prospect to breed to my appaloosa mares, and some outside ones. I had decided I wanted a Bright Eyes Brother bred horse with a nice blanket and enough white to provide some flash. I had finally located a weanling in Yelm Washington that had the distinctive blood line look I wanted, he was sorrel with a blanket over his hips, 4 white socks and nice blaze, one blue eye. My friend Bob was riding with me to make the 300 mile trip to Yelm to pick him up, and I just hoped he was anywhere near as nice as his pictures, his name was Flags Bright Finale and I had no idea how much the rest of my life would be changed.
At first sight I was sure I made the right choice, he was pretty well halter broke, led and tied OK, had never been loaded in a trailer. The gal I bought him from led him up to the back of my 4 horse stock type trailer without much trouble, when Bob and I got on each side and pretty much just set him in, guess he thought it was sort of like a stall cause he didn't fight it. In order to give him a chance to settle down and get used to these surroundings we tied him in and went to the house to complete the paperwork. 20 minutes later we were on our way, 300 miles back to Springfield.
The trip home wasn't exactly event free, about 80 miles to go, well into the night now, a rear tire on the drivers side of the trailer blew. Had no idea until the flat came off of the rim dropping the steel wheel on the concreate road bed of I5, sending up a very impressive show of sparks. Didn't have a spare that fit the trailer so wound up using a come along to pull the wheel up and hold it up, than drove on home without further incident. Flag only fussed a little and the light show didn't even upset him. When arrived home I turned him out in my small arena, he ran around and hollered for a bit, than settled down and started eating, took a drink. It was quite late so I went to the house and turned in but don't think I slept a wink, our life togeather had began.

Hard to lead from the pasture

Recently I have seen posts lamenting how their horse is great in the round pen or arena but resist, sometimes very hard, when attempting to lead them from the pasture where their buddies are, especially if the weather is bad. All to often the solution attempted is to put on more pressure, stud chains, lead by bit, war bridle, etc. This is such a common problem, have seen folks having issues with this ever since have been involved with horses. Here are some thoughts on how to overcome this.
Seems to me there are several things going on with this. First , putting a more severe appliance on the horse causes him pain when you try to lead him away from his buddies, and therefore violates a principal of working with horses, the horse can't get hurt or be afraid of our tools. The pain just convinces him he is right to be resistant, it's dangerous when you take him away from his buddies. Next is the idea that the horse is worse when the weather is worse, they are sometimes a little friskier on a chilly morning but in general they really don't care much about the weather, that is mostly a human thing. When you catch your horse in bad weather you are uncomfortable and want to get out of there, the horse knows you are uncomfortable but has no understanding of the source, so he interprets this as fear and reacts accordingly, reinforced by the painful halter set up. We tend to think that the horse is situational in that we have control in the round pen or arena but not in the pasture. In reality it is us that is situational and the horse reads this, we do not behave with the same body language once we leave the round pen and ergo do not get the the same response. Since all is well in the controled circumstance we need to practice the same things out in the open we do here, lounge with lots of transitions, yield hindquarters, shoulders, flex, back up, all the same things, right there with his buddies, with the same language, no mater what the weather. Than lead him off and let him rest. Falls in the category of "make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard", but mostly the horse knows we are the same everywhere as we are in the round pen.
When we are as proficient in all situations as we are in an enclosure, our horses almost always are too.

Background

In 1974 we bought our almost 5 year old daughter a pony, had no idea what we were getting into, knew absolutely NOTHING about a horse. We were the poster folks for Parelli's get on, kick to go, pull to stop, use the reins to turn left and right, an education was coming. Quickly decided we needed a couple more horses so my wife and I could ride with our daughter. After picking very badly a few times I decided the only way to get a horse I liked was to train it myself, so I bought a 3 year old Arab/Quarter unbroke filly and with Williamson's Training the Western Horse book in one hand and the filly in the other I began a new life. This was so much fun we decided to breed the mare and raise a baby. Over the next several years we owned several brood mares and raised Appaloosas. A few we sold as babies, most I broke as 3 year olds and sold as 4H or pleasure horses. Our daughter wanted to join 4H and I wound up a 4H leader for 5 years. All during this time I read a wide variety of horse training books, and attended several clinics, especially liked the Monty Foreman clinics. In 1980 I had been looking for a stud for our breeding operation and had decided on the Bright Eyes Brother breeding and found a weanling colt that I could afford named Flags Bright Fianle so I brought him home in the fall of that year, little did I know what a major long term change this would be in my life. I started him under saddle as a late 2 year old and wanted to pursue reining with him. It soon became apparent that I would need more training than he did. In 1984 we had a business opportunity that made keeping all the horses impossible, so I gelded Flag and kept him and a mare my wife rode and went to trail riding whenever we could. I rode Flag hundreds of miles a year right up to the end of 2009. He did so much so well I had little incentive to ride another horse. On Jan 7, 2010 he died suddenly and now I have to get going with a new ride. My intent with this blog is to relate stories from the past and progress with new horses. By accident more or less I have a 9 year old Keiger Mustang gelding that is virtually unhandled and an 8 year old AQHA gelding in the same condition. I have been preping for this for over a year as I knew that at 29 Flag may still be going strong but couldn't keep it up forever so have been following the new "natural horsemanship" movement, should be a fun spring and summer.