Читать книгу Finding the Missed Path. The Art of Restarting Horses онлайн

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There was a time in the not-so-distant past when we bred and raised our own horses. We had a small band of really nice, AQHA foundation-bred broodmares, and a stallion that was a grandson of Three Bars on the top side and Blackburn 31 on the bottom. This was a time before I was doing clinics, when I was the foreman on another ranch not far from where we live now. During that time we raised, trained, and sometimes sold our horses from that program.

We continued our little breeding program for a few years after I left the job on the ranch and during the time I began offering horsemanship clinics. However, it didn’t take long before we realized that trying to operate the quality of breeding program we were used to while at the same time trying to maintain a full-time travel schedule just wasn’t going to work out. So, we eventually found good homes for the mares and stallion along with the last crop of babies and left the breeding business behind.

I bring this up because since stepping away from the breeding business all those years ago, now when we’re in the market for a horse, we simply go out and buy one. We like to look for horses that range between four and fourteen years of age, are between 15 and 16 hands (although we never rule out something that is a bit smaller or taller) and we like them to have some basic ranch experience: have been around cattle, done a little roping, are fairly comfortable in all three gaits, and stop and turn when asked.