A chilled Filly

Tuesday 25 August 2015

These were the Vaqueros

At the suggestion of my email friend from California, Dorothy, I bought a copy of "These were the Vaqueros" by Arnold R Rojas. Difficult to get in the UK but I finally got a copy from a bookseller on ebay.

The author met some of the old timer vaqueros and rode with them a while. He realised that a lot of there old stories were going to die with them if he didn't record them so wrote many books. This book is his collected works.

Reading the first part of the book I was struck by how wild and wooly these guys were. They spent a lot of time riding bucking horses it seemed and I wondered as to why they didn't do a better job of quietening and taming them. Then I came across a story which turned a light bulb on in my head.

Some young men had done an excellent job in starting some young colts and were justifiably proud of what they had achieved. The owner, Mr Miller, of a local very large ranch came along to see the colts with a view to buying them. Proudly the young men showed him the colts. Mr Miller asked the boys to go and catch one of the horses so he could inspect it. The young lad walked up to the horse and caught it nice and easily. Like I said they had done a good job starting them. Mr Miller asked if all the colts were that tame? The assured him they were. He rode away saying they were of no use to him !
The reason ? In those days there were a lot of horse thieves in that part of the west. Horses that could be caught that easily would be gone in very short order. Mr Miller needed horses that would make a fuss being caught so the men would be alerted if someone tried to steal them.

The moral of this story is to make sure you train the horse for the purpose that is required.

I remember James Roberts telling us about a string of polo ponies he started. As was usual for him he trained them to stand very still when being mounted. When he proudly showed this to the polo team they were horrified. They needed ponies that would set off at a canter to rejoin the game as soon as they landed in the saddle.
James had to retrain that batch of colts and then spent some time with the polo team to better understand what they wanted.

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