Quick Tips- January 2008

Teach your horse flexion the old-fashioned way and avoid resistance, forever.

Asking a horse to give his nose laterally is the first step in teaching him to guide by following his head. A horse should think of bridle pressure as a signal, rather than forcible leverage.

This green 3-year-old has learned to follow his head in any maneuver, including rolling back on the fence, with or without a cow to work.

Suppling a horse today is the same as it was decades ago…“mostly,” says retired trainer and National Reined Cow Horse Association Hall of Fame inductee Ronnie Richards of Kingsburg, California. But there are a few new era additives to which Richards, who is 71, just can’t agree.

“It’s the same, yet different,” says Richards. “From the very start we’d use a snaffle bit or a hackamore. Now they use the correction bits and try to go so much faster, even though they’re going for the same results. Of course, I don’t agree with that; I think time is the essence when making a horse.”

According to Richards, the economics within the present equine industry has created a rushed environment. Horses are forced to learn their jobs in a hurry, and trainers, especially the most successful, have a much larger corral from which to select. The cream rises to the top, while the slow learners or less mature animals are often culled early.

“One of the primary differences between then and now,” Richards says, “is that trainers push a lot harder. They push a lot faster. They have more horses; more people are breeding better horses. The money is up, so if that one won’t work, get rid of him and get another one.”

But even those top horses must have fundamentals seared into their psyches before their prowess can be tapped. Richard believes exchanging correction bits and rock grinders for time well spent on the younger horses could only improve the end result—and produce a broke horse.


Give and Guide

Richards says, “in the olden days,” he occasionally bitted up a more resistant horse and let it move around the round pen for a short time. But, he never treated one severely or tied a head to a tail. For the most part, horses were asked to give to the pressure with Ronnie in the saddle. His approach was always slow and easy.

“Standing still, we wanted to be able to pull a horse’s head to our knee,” Richard explains. “That horse shouldn’t hold onto you, he’s not pulling from you. When you let go of him, he returns his head [to the forward position] without slingshot-ing it back. When a horse gives his head that way he is getting soft, going where you want to go.

“When I have their head drawn to my knee I’ll sometimes reach up and pet them. I like to show one that it is okay and get him relaxed. That’s what I want, light rein pressure and no resistance.”

Without that softness to both sides and straight back, Richards won’t advance a horse. He says it would be futile to progress to a jog from a walk, much less a stop, turnaround and circle, on a horse that won’t give its face and guide without resistance. And, a horse showing resistance is punished solely with repetition, more of the same.

“When a horse is stiff and he doesn’t want to give me his head, I just take time and keep asking him,” Richard confirms. “If I’m pulling his head to the side, I’ll hold him as far as he’ll come until he gives, then release him. When he goes to take it back, I’ll give and take with him until he is real soft and keeps his head where I want it—even after I release the pressure—without slingshot-ing that head back.”

When Richards asks a horse to give his face straight back toward his chest he applies equal, light pressure on both reins, basically holding his hands until the horse gives. The trainer thinks of pressure applied to the bit as a signal rather than a lever. A horse that ignores the signal feels a slight increase in the leverage until he backs off. He is then rewarded by a release and walks forward.

“I ask them to listen to the signal, think and react,” says Richards. “When I take hold of that bridle, the head must go down. He should automatically start stepping back without resistance as I hold those reins.

“I’m not pulling him, just holding him, and he is giving to light pressure. If he hesitates, I take a little more hold and eventually he figures it out.”
But, Richards is quick to point out that when he does this, he is not teaching a horse to go in reverse.

“I’m not teaching him to back up,” Richards says. “I’m teaching him to back off.  “Backing up is a different story. You want more speed. But they must learn to back off before they can back up. If you think you’re going to take one out and haul on him and back him up, you’re not. You might get him going backward, but there will be stiffness, a resistance; he hasn’t learned to back up and won’t until you teach him to back off.”

Any pressure applied by Richards is progressively increased; spurring and jerking is not an option. There might be a time when a horse needs to be “gotten after,” but in these early stages, he points out, it is all about patience.


Odds and Ends

The simplicity of having the horse supple laterally (to each side) and back (with equal pressure from both reins) takes little or no work from a rider’s legs, according to Richards. As he begins to move the horse forward, not much changes. He only lays his legs against the ribs without using any spur. And the indirect rein is not influencing the situation at this point either.

“Once I start turning one, and teaching the spin, the inside rein pulls the head to the point I want it,” says Richards. “Then my outside rein pushes his shoulder over. The inside rein gives his head the direction and the outside tells it how far to go. I’ve got to hold the outside rein and it tells me just how far I’m going to push that horse’s nose.”

Richard’s methods don’t change once a colt has progressed to the hackamore, or is started initially in the bosal. He recalls one of his stock horse stars, Eddie Reed, as being “soft as butter” in the hackamore, but not until he spent a lot of time “making” him a hackamore horse.
He applies his suppling methods beginning at a standstill, progressing to a speedier gait only after the horse is solid at the previous level. He doesn’t use any specific exercise, but just guides a horse all around the arena, occasionally stopping and turning, with the horse following its nose.

“I’ll keep flexing one and guiding him all over until he’s listening to the bridle as a signal rather than a lever,” says Richards. “Then I’ll go on to the lope, the gallop, and when I’m through with all that, I’m prepared to work him at anything I want to do. If I go work a cow and I need to pick up on him, he won’t fight me. I can drop him down and let him look at that cow and if I have to take a hold of him, he goes right where the bridle tells him and he’s right there every time.”

Ronnie Richard has earned the respect of his peers, as well as the younger generations of trainers that he has consistently helped through the years. Richards, 71, began his own training business at the age of 18 in California. The youth champion and third-generation trainer claimed his first big professional win on Touch Of Texas at the 1959 Grand National. Spectators were in awe when he showed the great Mona Lisa at Cow Palace, where she was the first horse to win all three bridle horse classes.

In addition to being in the NRCHA Hall of Fame, Ronnie was that association’s 1997 Stock Horseman of the Year. He has qualified 17 horses for the NRCHA Futurity and was reserve champion aboard Me O Lena in 1981. Richards has served as an AHSA, AQHA and NRCHA judge and was NRCHA Director of Judges for several years. Richards resides in Kingsburg, California, with his wife, Karin.