03/04/05 Starting colts

Starting Colts Starting training for colts is sure different today than in years past. I'm Jeff Keane and I'll tell you why I'm happy about that in one minute. I just started one of the young ranch colts a few days ago, and when I finished with the colt's first saddling I couldn't help but think about the new training techniques that are used more today because of people like Ray Hunt, Monty Roberts, and others. While these horsemen and their contemporaries have done so much to educate horse people about a safer, gentler way to train horses, they are the first to give credit to the ones they learned frompeople like Tom and Bill Dorrance. These innovative thinkers understood horse behavior and responses to situations, and then used this knowledge to make starting young horses easier on man and horse. Horse handlers of my Granddad and Dad's day enjoyed the excitement and were tough enough to round-up young horses fresh off the range, get them saddled any way handy, tie them to a fence or snub them to another horse, crawl on, and let the devil take a holiday. Well, this method worked in those days since there was a lot of riding, a lot of time, hospital expenses were less, and there were plenty of cowboys and horses in case one or the other did get hurt. I really prefer the newer, gentler methods since I have two anatomy defects that don't help riding horses that want to be disagreeableno intestinal fortitude and a trailer hitch that is just too round. I'm Jeff Keane.