News From Ron and Kathy Bird__
For more pictures of
Ron and Kathy Bird
and the Vilisar, see these
beautiful
photos
by Albert Pang
Archives
January 2004 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 February 2007 March 2007
Expert German-English translation available; business and finance our specialty.
Sachverständige Deutsch-Englische Ãbersetzung; Geschäft und Finanz unser Spezialgebiet.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
BREAKING A MULE TO THE SADDLE; MARITIME DISASTER; GROUND DRIVING
Saturday, 08 October 2005
Under an azure blue sky with huge puffy clouds, Bill and his kids head out before lunch on Friday to bring in a red mule that’s to be broken to the saddle. She normally hangs out with a dun-coloured mule, a big sorrel mare and her recent colt down in the river meadow or in the back pasture and wooded hillsides. Each time the guys drive them down close to the corral the animals bolt for the meadows again. After an hour of chasing them, we finally get them into the corral on the third roundup try.
Later, after lunch, I sit on the eight-foot high rail corral fence while Bill starts to work. The idea is to spend enough time in the corral for the animal, first, to get used to you and, second, for the horse or mule to accept you – of course, as a non-threat, but, more importantly, as the boss too.
At first all the animals are together. Bill starts to circle the horses and mules around the corral, trying to get them a little tired out. Eventually, however, he allows them to stop and he approaches the mare, first speaking gently to her as he gets close enough to touch her, rub his hands lightly around the face, neck, withers, back and flank, all the while talking to her quietly. The colt stays close but out of range and behind the mare. It’s clear that the mare has been broken before and is just being reminded about what she is supposed to do. Bill easily slips a loose rope halter around her neck and then around her muzzle and leads her around for fifteen minutes. The colt follows as do the two mules, but always keeping the mare between them and Bill. With time the mare and colt are led out and chased back out into the pasture.
The two mules are circling around the corral now until they are getting a little sweated and tired. The dun mule is shod so obviously she has been broken before. Their circuit is initially as far away as they can get from Bill in the centre. But, as they get tired the circle gets smaller. The goal is now to separate the two mules, to get the dun out of the corral without letting the red bolt out of the open gate at the same time. This takes another fifteen minutes of so. The dun is getting tired and mildly sweated; she wants a way out and keeps looking longingly at the three closed gates and licking her lips. Terry tells me that that is an important sign that the horse or mule is ready to submit and is looking for an opportunity to please the “boss”.
The red mule is untrained and not at all happy about having somebody with his eye on her. She is skittish and trots rapidly around the corral keeping the dun between her and the trainer. Bill is able eventually to separate them but only after they are puffing and sweating. They are ready to concede authority to Bill, Terry tells me, when they start licking their lips. They are soon going to come up to the trainer or let him approach them closely. The dun seems eager to submit now and even seems to be trying to get shot of her red shadow. After more running around, the dun changes direction, abandoning the red mule, someone opens the gate a crack, and the dun mule slip out. The red mule is alone in the corral at last. Bill decides to give her an hour to think things over and calm down and we go to lunch.
During our meal Bill and Terry explain their approach to making useful animals out of wild ones. The old “cowboy way”, as they call it, was to tie the horse, somehow throw a saddle onto her, climb aboard and keep riding it until the horse gave up in exhaustion. Often there was a lot brutal handling of the horse, long sharp spurs, whips, beatings, swearing and anger. The beast is in a turmoil of fear. Everyone, both horse and broncobuster, knows that a horse is afraid of anything on its back and, if it cannot use its natural speed to get away from danger, it will try to buck off anything on its back. In this process the horse is brutalised. It becomes either “broken” completely or, more likely, half-broken; it remains semi-wild, suspicious and contentious.
Bill and Terry subscribe to a more modern method and they have the practical experience to know that it works. There is an excellent discussion of it in a book called The Complete Training of Horse and Rider in the Art of Classical Horsemanship by Alois Podhaussky; he was the head of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. (The film, The Horse-whisperer also deals with this newer type of horse-“breaking” though not in their opinion very well.) The more modern system takes a little longer, usually two or three weeks at the most. The horse is broken first to driving (i.e. pulling a wagon) and therefore to “mouth reining” (my term). Then it is trained to the saddle and “neck reining”.
Bill and Terry, as I understand it, are trying to win the horse over rather than conquer it, to co-opt its spirit rather than break it, to make a partner out of it rather than a slave. A horse, by nature a herd animal, is normally predisposed to recognise a leader. Since it will have to submit to a human being rather than another horse, it will of course be suspicious, afraid of being hurt or devoured by this strange animal. It may in fact have been brutalised or hurt in the past and be angry or over frightened now. One doesn’t know this going into the corral.
Step one is to make the animal start circling the corral to tire it out and to assert mastery over it. Round and round goes the red mule. She is a high stepper with a long smooth trot. In fact her gait is quite impressive and she is fast. At first she steps high and keeps to the outside of the corral. Bill has a lasso coiled in his left hand. If the mule starts to slow down he waves at her from behind to keep her going (not in her face, which might maker her stop). After a while, the mule begins to breath a little more heavily, sweat begins to break out on her withers, her high stepping disappears and her hooves stay closer to the ground as she runs, and the circle gets smaller as she circles around Bill; she is getting a little tired.
She is also getting tired of this game and would like to get it over with. Once or twice she breaks her stride and heads one after the other straight towards the three gates in a vain hope of escaping this guy with the lasso. Bill is not threatening her. But every time she tries to stop at a distance to him, he clucks to her, raises his coiled lasso behind her and makes her go around and around some more. Finally, when it is clear that the mule is almost asking for permission to stop, Bill allows her to stop and says “whoa” to her.
Each time she turns to face Bill in the centre of the corral. Bill wants her to come to him or at least allow him to approach her. All the while talking gently to her, he turns his back on her or in any case avoids looking her in the eye. Then he will take a step towards her but obliquely and not straight at her. Most horses will very soon either come forward to the new “boss” or let themselves be approached. If the mule turns away when Bill tries to approach it, which is it always does, Bill immediately clucks to it, raise his lasso in his hand to make the horse do a few more rounds, not letting her stop just any old time she wants but only when Bill himself decides the horse can halt.
The red mule proves to be very slow to get the point. Of course, as both Terry and Bill point out, the mule doesn’t know exactly what is expected of it and the animal must first hit on it on its own so it can then be rewarded. “Red” hasn’t got it figured out yet. After several hours of circling, however, it seems to want to do something submissive; we can see her licking her lips. But every time she is allowed to stop and every time Bill tries to approach she turns slowly and walks away and Bill immediately puts her into a trot again. It could be that she thinks Bill actually wants her to keep trotting around the corral, Terry thinks. The mule has not yet figured it out that it can avoid all this running by letting Bill come closer or by approaching Bill itself.
After several hours both Terry and Bill say they have seldom experienced an animal that takes so long to give up and give in. The day is getting on. A lively discussion then ensues between the two trainers: Terry is stoutly of the opinion that it would be wrong to give up now; the circles and stopping and starting should go on until the mule submits even if it takes all night. Bill thinks it is possible to stop now and start again in the morning. Since it is his animal to break, he prevails.
In the middle of all this, Bill asks someone to take over for a few minutes so he can make a pit stop and I ask if I can try it. To my surprise, Bill agrees and I climb down off the corral and into the ring. He stays with me for a minute or two and both he and then Terry from the sidelines give me tips on how to carry on: just keep the mule moving but don’t try to frighten him into running; be calm; at a point of my choosing allow the mule, which is anyway wanting to stop, to come to a halt; talk to it quietly; don’t look it in the eye; take an oblique step towards it; if it turns away at any time, get it moving again as if it were my idea.
I wish I could say that, while Bill was in the outhouse, the red mule accepted me as the new boss and was eating out of my hand. That doesn’t happen but I am starting to get the hang of it. Bill gets back to work and I climb back up on my perch. The decision about whether to carry on without interruption or to wait for another day is in a sense taken out of our hands by the excitement down at the river ford.
Maritime disaster
Around here the only sounds you hear in the background are the river rushing over its rocky bed and/or the wind in the trees. It is not hard, therefore, to pick up the sound of a vehicle long before you see it in the river flats heading for the ford. With the heavy rains in the last few days, the river, although it is down from its maximum early this morning, is still quite high. We wonder as we see the van come into the open if the driver will attempt a crossing. We are all watching when we see it push into the water. In a moment or so the water is up over the tires and the vehicle comes to a stop in mid-river. We watch as we see figures crawl out of the windows onto the hood of the car. One person tries to leap from the hood to the far shore, not even getting close and landing in the water. He slogs to shore and starts walking up to the ranch.
Meanwhile, we all decide we need to go down and pull the van out. A heavy chain and some rope are loaded into the back and we roll-start the red pickup down the hill. This vehicle will not start by itself since the starter also got wet a few days ago when crossing when the water was too high; the pickup made it but the starter is soaked.
There are three young guys with the car. Two of them are called Jesus and one is not. Non-Jesus lives I think at Rancho el Pescado; just over the pass into the next arroyo; his father at any case is over at the ranch and there is no other vehicle over there. Jesus 1 is from Phoenix and speaks good English; Jesus 2 is a playful young man but the ranch boy is withdrawn and will not look me in the eye. He may be worried about how his father is going to greet the news that his van was stuck in the river. The van is loaded with large sacks of pinto beans, corn flour and various other comestibles as well as a large heavy-duty tire.
They fasten the chain around a bumper strut and we pull them slowly out of the water and up onto the bank. When they open the door, water pours out both sides like waterfalls. It must have been up over the transmission mound inside.
They try, but the vehicle will obviously not start; the marcha (the starter) has been soaked and the water is diffusing the battery’s electrical charge. We push them back out of the way so that other vehicles can get through on the road while they debate what they should do. There is obviously a road over to Rancho el Pescado; it runs across the open meadow behind the corral and then up the yoke between two hills to the north. I have ridden it twice with Simon and Bob. Unfortunately, the ranch is out of gasoline until Bob returns from the “outside”. We can’t drive them over to Pescado and we certainly wouldn’t attempt to tow them anyway; the red pickup gets really hot and starts steaming.
We offer them a lift as far as our corral; they will have to hoof it after that. They reluctantly close up the car and, empty-handed, climb into the pickup. From the ranchhouse complex they strike off in their wet boots and shoes to slog the steep hill to Pescado. We turn back to the house for supper.
Those who till now have thought that nothing much happens on a remote cattle ranch in the Tarahumara Mountains of Northern Mexico will now have to confess that we are kept busy from morning to night with one exciting event after another. Over supper, after our heartbeats have slowed from the excitement, we all wonder how people in suburban America can survive without dying of boredom. It must be that TV is their only diversion. In the old days they made babies. But since they are not making many babies these days, that must be it: work; commute; watch TV.
Ground driving
After dinner, in the gloaming, Jeannie and Terry harness Ginger, the miniature black horse, and hitch her to her sulky. Ginger is not only pretty, she is very patient and very well trained now. Since she is likely pregnant, the sulky shafts are getting a little tight. But soon Jeannie is trotting her along the ranch road. After a while they come back, we unhitch the buggy and I get the opportunity to “ground drive” her. “Ground drives”, it must be said, has nothing whatsoever to do with baseball or even with pile-driving; it involves walking behind, actual next to, the horse with both reins in one’s hand(s) and guiding the horse.
Ginger is beautifully responsive: if you say “walk on” she will start immediately even before you touch the whip gently to her hind quarters; if you say “whoa” and tug very gently on the reins, she will stop on the spot; if you tug her reins a few times and say “back”, she will back up a few steps. Jeannie even has Ginger to where she will almost take a bow on her own.
This whole family are experienced horse trainers. Tanner, Bob and Cindy’s ten-year-old daughter, will be driving Ginger in a competition at a fiesta in a week or two. Jeannie has been working with her to get horse and driver ready.
As night falls and the stars come out, the Wiggins head off down to their quarters near the river and we reckon we have had another exciting day.
Website Counter
This website created by
Gwendolyn Holbrow
All copyrights reserved
