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Month: March 2013

6 Horse Myths Westerns Teach Us

6 Horse Myths Westerns Teach Us

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I’m a big fan of westerns. My favorites are the old black and white western movies and tv shows from the 40s and 50s. Sometimes it’s hard to find space on our DVR for modern shows because I fill it up with John Wayne, Gene Autry, Randolph Scott, and The Virginian westerns. Since we acquired horses, my interest in westerns has increased but I find myself paying more attention to the horsemanship shown. If you have any experience with horses, it’s not difficult to point out the problems often seen in these movies and TV shows. I love them just the same but I couldn’t help but make a list of some of the top horse myths these old westerns (and new westerns, too) teach us.

Wild West Myth:

Horses can gallop nonstop for a long time

Rider on galloping horse
Speed by Niko Dimitrov – ecobo, on Flickr

Reality: I have no doubt that the bad guys in these scenarios don’t care much for the horses they were riding but if you know much about horses you’ll realize that riding a horse hard for long periods of time will quickly wear it out; most are designed more for sprinting than endurance.  But in the movies, the bad guys run out of the bank they’ve just robbed, quickly hop onto their horses and race out of town at full speed. They are soon followed by the good guys and sometimes a posse that seems to chase them for hours at full speed as they head towards Mexico.

Wild West Myth: Horses are either always saddled or can be saddled on a moment’s notice

This makes sense in movies because watching someone saddle a horse wouldn’t be very interesting and would take up valuable story time. but it always seems whenever someone needs to ride a horse, that horse is always pre-saddled.

Reality: In the days before cars, horses wore saddles more often than pleasure horses today, it’s true. But today’s riders unsaddle their horses when they aren’t riding them for a while and preparation needs to be done before putting a saddle on. Its back needs to be brushed and the saddle pad and saddle need to be checked for debris, thorns and spurs that could irritate the horse. The cinch needs to be tightened. These things aren’t done in seconds but minutes.

Cowboy Mounted Shooting
Cowboy Mounted Shooting – note the balloon distance and the powder spray.

Myth: It’s easy to shoot guns while riding a horse. Accurately, too. And your horse doesn’t mind at all.

Every single western shows this. The bad guys usually aren’t good shots but the good guys sure are.

Reality: Moving targets are difficult to hit with a stationary gun. Sitting on a horse bouncing up and down, trying to shoot a tiny bullet into a relatively small moving target far away from you is considerably harder. Cowboy Mounted Shooting has gained in popularity recently but the riders are shooting un-burned black powder at balloons roughly twenty feet away (see photo). I’m sure there was plenty of shooting from the backs of horses in the old west but not nearly as much hitting. Shooting in general also wasn’t as common as westerns would have us believe, so it’s likely there were some startled horses when it actually did happen. Today’s Cowboy Mounted Shooters train their horses to be desensitized to the sound of shooting.

Side-note: Cowboy Mounted Shooting looks like a lot of fun and I would totally love to give it a try!

Myth: It’s easy to play a guitar and sing while riding a horse. And your horse doesn’t mind at all.

Silly as they may seem to some, I’m a big fan of the Gene Autry westerns. I’d like to believe there were good guys who sang a happy tune, always did what was right and protected people from the bad guys. Gene’s westerns usually began and/or ended with him riding down the trail strumming a guitar, singing a cowboy song with a smile.

Reality: Champion was one well-trained horse but most horses shouldn’t be ridden without a reins in hand and you can’t hold reins and strum a guitar at the same time. It would be difficult to carry the guitar when you weren’t strumming it and I think many a horse would rather dump a cowboy crooner who couldn’t carry a tune. Gene could sing but I bet most cowboys who try, can’t (me included).

Myth: Riding horses is easy.

Everyone in westerns seems to ride well and it’s probably true that back in the frontier days, most people knew how to ride. It was a necessity. But not now.

Reality: Those who can ride well now either grew up around horses and have been riding all of their lives or took lessons. Many (probably most) of those amazing horse scenes in the movies or on television were done by stunt riders who are expert trick riders, not the actors themselves. Even if you’re new to horses, it’s pretty easy to spot someone who is faking. James Drury, most famous for his role as The Virginian on the television western series by the same name, clearly knew how to ride a horse. In contrast, some actors appearing in westerns just seem to have a rough ride. They don’t look comfortable in the saddle. Anyone can learn to ride a horse well but it takes practice and it’s easy to pick up bad habits if you’re not careful. You don’t just jump on a horse and ride.

Randolph Scott
Randolph Scott and Maureen O’Sullivan in The Tall T

Myth: The hero is always tall, dark and handsome and usually gets the girl in the end.

Hollywood westerns almost always have a famous and attractive protagonist who saves the beautiful maiden and marries her, followed by happily ever after.

Reality: In real life the good guys come in all shapes, sizes, ages and genders. Sometimes the hero is a young girl who has no plans for marriage anytime soon. Mikki is reading an historical fiction book by Nancy Turner called “These Is My Words” that’s based on the very real life of her frontier great-grandmother, Sarah Prine. She was feminine but tough as nails and occasionally had to be the hero herself. Sometimes the hero is old, overweight, a little person or just plain normal, whatever that is.

I’m still adding westerns to my DVR, even though they’re full of myths, but I’m careful to remember that real life requires more patience, preparation and realistic expectations.

Please comment and let me know if you’ve noticed other prominent Hollywood western myths that relate to horses.

Big Hay Delivery

Big Hay Delivery

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Happiness is a yard full of hay. About this time of year (late winter), we’re still a little nervous about our hay supply but things are starting to look up. It’s March and the grass isn’t growing yet but we expect the first harvest will likely be in late May if the rain is average. The hay barns are getting empty and just about everyone we know is looking around for more. In some years this has driven the late winter prices up but since the harvest was exceptional last year, this winter the prices have been steady. We pay about $30 for an 800 to 900 pound round bale of good horse hay. During the winter we use about 5 round bales a month for three horses and a mule. That translates into $150 a month for feed, which isn’t bad for four equines.

As luck would have it, we recently ran out of round bales in the middle of bad weather. We knew we were running low but we were hoping for a few sunny days to dry out the muddy pasture so the tractor didn’t tear up the ground. The nice weather never came so one cold and yucky day we started making calls and found out our main supplier was also out. Fortunately he had planned to truck some more in from one of his storage barns far away but we had to wait a few days. When this happens we feed our horses square bales from our hay loft but our supply of those is almost gone as well. We thought we’d have to buy an emergency bale from the feed store but their prices run much higher than we normally pay and they don’t always have inventory. Thankfully we had just enough square bales to hold us over and our main supplier even offered to deliver the hay to our barn, saving us a trip to his place with a truck and a trailer. We ended up buying his entire trailer load – 17 big round bales, saving him from having to unload them at his barn and saving us from having to buy hay again for months. We hope to not need more hay until after the first harvest.

Yard full of hay

It was a tight squeeze. We fed one bale to some very happy horses, put four on our trailer (normally it fits seven but these are much bigger round bales), a couple behind the trailer, a few in Romeo’s old open stall and four in front of the barn covered with a big tarp.

We’ve said this before but if you’re thinking about having horses of your own, give some thought to year round hay supply. Don’t count on your supplier always having hay the day you need it and plan for shortages and bad weather. For some reason we always have to feed new round bales when the weather is the worst or we’re sick or busy, etc. It’s bad enough to be out in it but it’s worse if you have to factor in loading up a trailer and driving around to buy some in bad weather.  Think about where you can store a good sized load and arrange for delivery or pickup well before you’ll absolutely need it. At the very least, have some large tarps handy and a way to secure them to protect those bales from moisture (more on that in another post). Also, if a hay harvest is good, it’s great to be able to buy a big load at a discount. In some years a good first harvest was followed by awful drought. Buying cheap in the spring saved us a load of money later in the summer when the drought forced prices up.

Even though I wrote a pretty big check for that many bales, I love having the peace of mind knowing I don’t have to worry about hay for the next 2-3 months and that is well worth it.

Horses and Tornadoes

Horses and Tornadoes

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Tornado
Tornado by airwaves1

In the last two years we’ve experienced several violent spring storms come through east Tennessee and are starting to refer to spring as “tornado season.” We’re looking forward to the end of winter but not to the scary part of spring. It’s bad enough to not know when and if a tornado is coming but having horses makes it worse because they could be far out in pasture, they aren’t easy to move quickly and they don’t fit in the basement or the bathtub.

There were 936 tornadoes in the U.S. in 2012, according to NOAA/National Weather Service. And while some areas are at much higher average risk, all states are at risk. This map is a little old (1950-2005) but gives a quick visual idea of where tornadoes can occur.

US Tornadoes 1950-2005 map

So what should we do with our horses during a tornado threat? …

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Winter Blues

Winter Blues

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Rusty horse welcome signOkay, I admit it. We are fair-weather horse people. When the temperature gets below seventy or so, we have no interest in riding.

There. Now you know the truth.

I don’t know about where you live, but here in east Tennessee, winter is just plain ugly. It doesn’t snow much, so you don’t have the icy but beautiful snow-covered landscape. It’s not warm like Arizona or Florida, so you don’t feel the urge to saddle up a horse and ride across the sand with the sun on your back. Tennessee winter can be summed up in one word: “muddy.”

Although it really doesn’t get very cold (although Bill would disagree with that assessment),  and in fact there are occasional warm days (in the 60’s), riding in winter here is just too much of hassle unless you’re really serious. Or if your horses, unlike ours, stay clean all winter. Because here is the number one reason why we don’t ride in the winter: two of our three horses (and the mule) stay covered in mud all winter long. To ride, you would first have to clean a horse. That is enough of a chore if the mud is dry – you could spend a good half-hour or more just brushing off the dirt where the saddle and cinch would go. But more often than not, the mud is still wet, because apparently Romeo and Cash think they are elephants. Or hippos. Or maybe just plain pigs. After a night in the barn, drying off (and flaking off), the first thing those two do when they hit the pasture is find a mud hole to roll in. (And, by the way, it’s not just mud.) Warmer than Minnesota it may be, but it’s still not warm enough to bathe a muddy horse. So, no riding.

Nothing else having to do with horses is much fun in the winter, either. To tell you the truth, we kind of just want to hibernate until spring, so going outside to do anything is really unappealing. Like I told Bill the other day, there is no joy in horse ownership in the winter. So our poor horses are given the most basic care we can get away with all winter long.

Here’s the thing though: we will pay the price come spring. When it finally does warm up and green up and dry out, we will want to brush off all that winter mud and slap our saddles on those now-gorgeous horses and head down a trail. But after spending all winter eating hay, rolling in the mud, and generally acting like a wild herd with no interference from the humans, our horses will be far from ride-worthy. So instead of spending those first glorious days of spring on the trail, we will be riding in circles in the round pen.

That is, after we put the round pen back up, that is. Because the other thing we don’t like to do in the winter is fence building. So when it first warms up, we will be finishing the fence where the round pen panels have been serving as “temporary” fence (long story), so we can reassemble our round pen.

So right now, we’re warm and toasty in the house and only feeling only slightly guilty for neglecting our poor horses in favor of staying as warm as possible, but I know we’re in for many weekends where we stare wistfully at trucks pulling horse trailers, heading off for adventure while we are spending all our time just catching up.

I sure hope we can catch up in time to have a few weeks of good riding before it gets cold and muddy again. Sigh…I hate winter.