Your Horse is Screamin'

Halterless Halter Training

"When halter training, the last thing I want to do is put a halter on." - Van Hargis, Van Hargis Horsemanship

How Bit Size Matters

Craig Cameron with the late Howard Hale on the size of bits he prefers.

Steve Sward on John Israel Bits

Listen is as the late Howard Hale interviewed Steve Sward on his use of John Israel bits.

Your Horse is Screamin'

Now, here's more with Buster McLaury.    "I don't know anything about it. I don't know what a horse whisperer is. But he said, I do know the horse is screaming all the time. Nobody's listening."   That's an interesting way of putting it, and I think you're absolutely right.    "Yeah, the horse tells us, you know, how he feels about things. And they have the same emotions we do. They get sure and unsure and sick and well and hot and cold and brave and afraid. So if we just learn to read the horse through his body language, you kind of tell us what he's all right with or not or where he needs some help and when he understands and when he doesn't. It's pretty obvious once you kind of learn to look. You know, each horse is an individual. But how you get there, there's got to be just a little difference on each one of them. And that's the interesting part."   Buster McLaury with the late Howard Hale on Horseman's Corner Radio.

Groundwork For Safety Sake

New Mexico Horsewoman and trainer Tray Pelster on how she likes to start horses.   "I like to do a lot of ground work so I don't have to deal with as much crap on top of them. I have the time to spend with them when I was training horses under people. You have 30 days so you spend across the board from a lot of my trainers on average about a week, week and a half in the round pin and then you just get on them. You learn how to take shortcuts and you learn how to do it quickly and I would rather start them on the ground for about a month and just see where they're at. I was raised on hand cocks and that's slow, start them on the ground thing. They don't look near as hard. It's mostly a scared thing or a fight. I don't trust you situation and the majority of the time I've found that hand cocks that get a bad rap for things because they're smart and they're smarter than most people. But if you can teach them that this is not a fight or fight situation and that you can trust me and they won't want to try anything when you're on their back. So I've had great success with starting them slow on the ground and just covering all your bases and moving with the horse. See my dad, he's a firm believer in starting them three or four. I am like 125 pounds. So for learning from horse trainers, honestly I like to start them at two. Some horses with exception just because they're not mentally ready or they're not physically ready."   New Mexico horsewoman, Tray Pelster.