Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views

Riding Is Rhythm

2012-05-26T06:04:00.002-04:00

I have come to notice that kids that can play music tend to pick up riding at an accelerated pace. In fact, the perfect riding student might very well be a gymnast that can play and sing

Quick Tip #14 One Man Wire Fence Construction

2012-05-25T07:22:00.002-04:00

The tightening of wire mesh fence is difficult to do by oneself. However, an interesting appearing, well stretched fence can be put up by one person with wooden posts and wire fencing. Dig fence posts about 30 feet apart. Stand the wire up and attach it to each post, one section at a time. Now get in the precise center between the posts and force the fence outward as far as it can possibly go. Dig another post hole about 2 inches beyond that mark. Insert the post so that the tension of the wire pulls tightly against it. Staple into place and repeat. The result is an attractive fence that becomes a secure horse fence with the addition of a stand of electric wire. Dig all holes with hand held post hole diggers. Power driven augers are for sissies. With the help of my number one ranch hand shown above I rarely have to build fences by myself.

Quick Tip #13--Cut The Corners

2012-05-25T07:03:00.001-04:00

Horses are much more likely to run through a fence at a corner than at any other point in a fence line. At best one is left with a fence in need of repair, at worst a horse injured or dead in the highway. Round the corners of the lot. This can be done either at initial construction or as a post construction addition inside the corner of the fence. Here is a shot of Peter Maxwell who is now weaned and for sale. He is 1/2 Corolla, 1/4 Chicoteague, 1/4 BLM mustang and 100% tough. His mother is Quien Es? and he is the son of Edward Teach.

Precisely Why I Despise Change

2012-05-24T09:12:00.000-04:00

This computer worked fine until some geek with too much time on his hands decided that the blogger program needed changing. Now it cannot pull up but a very few pictures and moves very slugglishly. The program worked fine. Now it barely works at all. The equation of change with progress is one of the best illustrations of the fundamental stupidity of humanity. With the exception of medical advances and the civil rights movement every other form of human endeavor over the past two hundred years has been a wasted effort. As a species I fear that we will never understand that swamps are not improved by draining them. A swamp is just fine the way it was. So was this blogger program.

Boys Home Preserves Corollas

2012-05-22T06:09:00.001-04:00

Boys Home of Covington,Virginia has taken a major step to assist in the prevention of the extinction of what might be the oldest and rarest distinct genetic grouping of American horses, the Colonial Spanish Mustangs of Corolla, North Carolina. As recently as the 1920's over five thousand wild horses roamed the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Today only two small herds of these horses remain in the wild, the Shacklefords and the Corollas.

Although they are the state horse of North Carolina, these horses teeter on the brink of extinction. The Corolla Wild Horse Fund has encouraged breeders of Colonial Spanish Horses such as Mill Swamp Indian Horses of Smithfield, Va and the famed, Karma Farms, of Marshal, Texas to develop a network of breeders to raise Corollas domestically, not as a replacement for the wild herds but as a safety net should those wild herds disappear.

To participate in the offsite breeding program stallion owners must agree to maintain their Corolla as a stallion and to offer his breeding services free of charge to others in the breeding program. Mare owners agree to seek to produce at least four pure foals over the life of the mare and to place them with others that will maintain them in the breeding program.

Tracking of the horses in the program is made much simpler by the fact that, as pure bred Spanish Colonial horses, they are eligible for registry in the Horse of the Americas Registry. In 2007 the Horse of the Americas Registry joined with several other organizations interested in the preservation of Colonial Spanish horses and did a ground breaking herd inspection of the wild horses of Corolla and Shackleford that put aside any legitimate questions of the ancient heritage of these historic horses.

Last spring three foals were born at Mill Swamp Indian Horses as part of this breed conservation effort, two fillies and a colt. The little boy is the son of Tradewind, a formerly wild Corolla stallion who was named Horse of the Americas National Pleasure Trail Horse of the Year for 2011. The two fillies are from different fathers which will allow the three to be bred to produce horses for the breed conservation effort for years to come.

Each of the yearlings carry historic names significant to the natives that lived in the area in the fourteenth and fifteenth century when these horses likely first made their way to the Outer Banks. The Black Drink is named for the medicinal purgative that was consumed as part of late winter/early spring rituals. Huskinaw is named for the most important cultural ritual of the people of Tidewater at the time. the Huskinaw was a ritual that spanned nine months in which future leaders were selected among adolescent boys. Pasquinoke was an Indian town not far from the site of the Lost Colony. It was called the "women's town." Perhaps it was a town lead by a Werowancesqua ("Rich Women") instead of a Werowance ("Rich Man") as was more typical.

Boys Home has developed a natural horsemanship program in using Indian horses of primarily western descent. The program uses horses donated by Mill Swamp Indian Horses and residents and staff of Boys Home have made several lengthy visits to Smithfield to learn to train and ride wild horses and colts.

With the inclusion of three Corolla's in their program Boys Home will be one of the focal points of the breeding program for years to come.

"I cannot think of a better match. This spring I am breeding two more mares and next fall we will have two more great horses seeking placement with breeders that are willing to work to preserve these super horses", said Steve Edwards of Mill Swamp Indian Horses.

The Importance of the Grandsire to a Solid Breeding Program

2012-05-17T05:49:00.002-04:00

Because of the oft noted phenomenon of traits skipping a generation it is important that careful selection of a grand sire be made in all breeding programs. Note here that the baby has obviously inherited a keen intellect, a gentle, approachable nature, and a modest, humble demeanor from her grand father.

To Earn the Respect of Intelligent People

2012-05-14T07:03:00.000-04:00

Bonnie Gruenberg, author of "Hoof Prints in the Sand," the best book heretofore written about the horses of the islands of the east coast, is working on three more books on the subject. She spent the weekend with us after spending Friday at Assateague and heading out for Corolla this morning. Bonnie has been researching and writing about these horses for nearly twenty years but had not ridden one before. She is a very skilled rider. Saturday night she joined us for a night ride. She rode the first half of the ride on Holland, a Shackleford, and rode home on Manteo a Corolla stallion. The last stretch through the woods was in total darkness. She learned first hand what these horses can do. She gave a great presentation to our riders on topics to be featured in her upcoming books. We work very hard to be more than a "ride in a circle in the sand" riding "lesson" facility. We are a center of education with speakers and programs that cover archeology, equine history, music, natural horse care, natural hoof care and natural horsemanship. This weekend was one of the most important ones for our program yet. This is a great shot of Bonnie over at the Spear's home during her presentation.

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: The Blood of Good Blooded Horses

2012-05-11T20:47:00.001-04:00

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: The Blood of Good Blooded Horses: A bit of perspective is needed when looking at the current horses market. I must admit that I was caught off guard a bit when it was sugg...

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: I'm Not Kin To Most of My Family

2012-05-06T06:09:00.001-04:00

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: I'm Not Kin To Most of My Family: Yesterday was a great day for our program and I think that it could lead to a great day for the Corolla preservation effort. The day was ...

Quick Tip #11--Don't Forget the Bosal

2012-05-04T07:46:00.002-04:00

A lot of ink is spilled on the question of the perfect training bit for a young horse. It has become stylish in some programs to start a colt using only a rope halter. There is merit in doing so. I have achieved the kind of results that I want with a bosal.

Until I started having very young riders I rode all of my horses in a bosal. However, kids as young as four or five seem to need the additional power that can be found in a simple snaffle. This summer I am going back to the bosal for all of the colts and wild horses that we start and I will keep them in a bosal indefinitely.

The bosal comes with a great deal of history and tradition behind it. I find them more attractive than bits. I love their simplicity. Most importantly I love that they are not bits. It is not that bits are per se bad. The problem is that they provide a built in excuse for performance and behavioral problems. All too often the "solution" to every training problem is to find the perfect bit.

Don't spend your money on the search for the perfect bit. Instead spend your time training a horse that is perfect for you.

To Teach is To Learn

2012-05-03T16:51:00.000-04:00

I wince at the term "riding instructor." The world is filled with people better suited than am I to teach riding. Instead I work very hard to teach kids to want to ride. Kids that really want to ride become dedicated riders. I strongly suspect that you are looking at a picture of a boy that will be a first rate mandolin player. Monday night I was impressed with what he has been taught to do on a guitar and I told him that at the appropriate time he could borrow my mandolin and figure it out. At the end of our session Monday we decided that we had reached the appropriate time. His mother sent me this picture with a note that he has been playing nonstop since then. This all brings us back to one of the central purposes of this blog. The established horse world has created a system of horse care that is detrimental to the health of horses, destructive to efforts to build solid relationships with horses and all at a cost that is beyond the means of working families. That system must be replaced one step at a time and one of the first steps is to get more people teaching kids to ride at affordable rates. Teaching kids to ride amounts to teaching kids to not be afraid to ride. After that everything else falls into place. When it comes to teaching kids to ride inspiration is the most important part of instruction.

Brand Loyalty

2012-04-28T06:05:00.003-04:00

Learning natural horsemanship is much easier than teaching it. Teaching natural horsemanship to kids is much easier than it is to teach it to older teens. Teens are predisposed to be dazzled by glitz. I do not care which clinician students follow. The only catch is that it is best to learn from them all. Some clinicians encourage such a search for knowledge. A few do not, claiming to know and to teach the true path, viewing others as heretics at best.

Natural horsemanship is a movement and as such the studies that social scientists have done over the years about the development of mass movements are worthy of understanding. Whether the movement be religious, political, philosophical, literary, or even fashion based certain common features are shared. One of which is the development of a following of devotees that believe that their beliefs are:

1. truth based
2. morally superior to those of others in the movement
3. enlightened and often based on a "secret" knowledge or understanding of that knowledge.

Now we can throw another factor into the mix that strengthens and hastens the development of such sects and schisms--financial incentive to create a well defined base of adherents that spend a tremendous amount of money in order to learn to adhere even closer to the "truth" being taught by the clinician. Here is where problems start. Were such brand loyalty to go no further it would be slightly amusing/irritating. As long as the clinician is presenting accurate information the cause of natural horsemanship is still advanced.

But truth is finite. Imagination is infinite.

Just as a song writer must continue to write new songs to maintain and grow his audience, such clinicians must come up with new "truths" to be learned. Again, as long as this leads to a search for greater knowledge this is a positive development. The problem arises when the product sold is a truth that is not true. The problem is exacerbated when the devotees have accepted the belief that the teacher is the only legitimate source of knowledge.

I prefer a quest for knowledge that knocks down barriers instead of building them up. I encourage my riders to look to every clinician that they can find for accurate, applicable knowledge. The catch is that it takes a few decades of working horses before one can understand what is real and what is entertaining.

The Dorrances were real. Ray Hunt was real. They were all as fancy as a brown paper bag Halloween costume. In today's world of advertising and instant fame it is too easy to confuse what is real and what is glitz.

I do not mind for a clinician to have style. It is glitz that concerns me.

What is the difference? Style comes at no extra charge. Glitz costs a fortune.

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Seeing the World Through Lido's Eyes

2012-04-25T06:01:00.003-04:00

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Seeing the World Through Lido's Eyes: Today has been drab, dark, and overcast with misty rain. The ground is pure muck. I cannot find the beauty in it. For two people some where...

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Seeing the World Through Lido's Eyes

2012-04-25T06:01:00.001-04:00

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: My Little Pony

2012-04-25T06:00:00.003-04:00

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: My Little Pony: Here is a great shot of Holland, our new Shackleford, with Anne who adopted and raised him to be the great horse that he is today. In look...

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: My Little Pony

2012-04-25T06:00:00.001-04:00

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: My Little Pony: Here is a great shot of Holland, our new Shackleford, with Anne who adopted and raised him to be the great horse that he is today. In look...

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Off Site Breeding Program is Growing

2012-04-25T05:59:00.001-04:00

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Off Site Breeding Program is Growing: With only about 100 Corollas left in the wild, these amazing horses are at serious risk of extinction. For that reason, we began the off s...

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Fallen Leaves that Lie Scattered on the Ground

2012-04-25T05:58:00.001-04:00

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Fallen Leaves that Lie Scattered on the Ground: A few years ago the Horse of the Americas Registry conducted an inspection tour of the wild horses of Corolla and Shackleford in order to ...

Quick Tip #10 Count Down to Being a New Rider

2012-04-23T05:45:00.002-04:00

It is spring. The clover is up. The sun is shining and this is a great time to begin a program to make you into a better rider. do something good for your heart, your horse, and your health.

The best exercise for a rider is riding. However, before one can ride efficiently and comfortably for the horse one must acquire adequate core strength, balance, and a level of cardiovascular fitness.

Do a bit of reading on the Tabata Protocol. I know of no way to develop one's cardiovascular fitness more efficiently than using this technique. A kettle bell workout does wonders for the core and improves balance. Lastly, barefoot running uses the muscles that one rides with much better than running in shoes. Tabata can be incorporated into barefoot running.

Combined trotting and cantering for 1/2, hour five days per week is a very effective way to loose weight.

You will find that your horse enjoys being ridden by a fit rider much more than he enjoys a rider that is out of position because they are out of condition.

Previews of Coming Attractions

2012-04-21T07:23:00.004-04:00

Spring done sprung. On Mother's Day Weekend Bonnie Gruenberg, author of "Hoof Prints in the Sand," the best book that I have ever read on the wild horses of the east coast, will be spending the weekend taking pictures, lecturing and riding with my little riders. She will likely have her first night ride on a wild Corolla.

In a few more weeks our friends from Boys Home will be coming down to pick up their Corolla colt and maybe a filly or two for their riding program. This is an important step for the Corolla off site breeding program.

The following weekend a film crew from the TV show "Wild Animal Lovers" will be out to film an episode on our Corolla preservation efforts. The next Saturday after that we begin our series of open house sessions in which the public is invited in to watch my little riders train wild horses and colts.

June 16 I will be speaking at the commemoration of St Luke's Church, the oldest standing Protestant church in America, on transportation in the early colonial years. I have previously taken a Colonial Spanish goat to a Methodist church. In the spirit of ecumenism, this will will be the first time that I have taken a Colonial Spanish Mustang to an Anglican church. July 21 we will be visited by a group from the national Gwaltney Family reunion.

In the meantime we will work on the Gwaltney Frontier Farm and I will take my thumb out of the eye of the established horse world long enough to play some music.

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Yeah, But in the Real World....

2012-04-20T05:44:00.001-04:00

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Yeah, But in the Real World....: In darkest night our eyes deceive us. The Things we see might not be there. At dawn and dusk the shadows fool us. But in the brightest of...

In the Arena

2012-04-20T04:55:00.003-04:00

The perfect is not just an enemy of the good, it can be the worst enemy of the good. Perfectionism is, among its many other deleterious affects, paralyzing. One cannot wait until one is confident that one has every bit of the system down pat before beginning to work a horse. I worry about riders that have only been riding for a few months who are actually concerned that horses respond better to me than they do to the new rider. I have been doing this much longer than most of my riders have been alive. I should get better responses than do the new horseman.

It is by doing that one learns to do. Not only can the horse and the rider/trainer learn together, they must do so or the process simply becomes a stagnant set of rituals carried out without pleasure for either horse or human.

Ta Sunka Witco has not had his confidence boosted by solid retraining for much too long. Even a "perfect" horse needs to take about a week every year to go back through every step of his training, round pen, monsters, amusement park, pressure and release--the entire sequence. My failure to do so with Sunka has lead to him being spooky and fearful in the woods.

Shelly is a serious student of natural horsemanship. She took Sunka into the round pen and began giving him confidence boosting retraining sessions. In less than ten hours of work she has done wonders for him. She would be the first to tell you that she is not an expert, but is learning. She would be the first to tell you that she has more questions than answers. She might not be the first to tell you that she is doing a first rate job with Sunka, but the fact remains the same. If she waited until she felt that she knew all the answers she would never get in the round pen.

Kelly is a serious student of natural horsemanship. She has taken on the task of making Noelle into a relaxed, confident horse. Noelle has one of the most difficult problems that I ever face with horses. She has had to have long term sessions of painful medical treatment to over come a serious injury that she received in the wild. Humans do not represent a theoretical threat to her. Humans represent real pain, administered on a regular basis. She has no way of distinguishing life saving medical care from torture. To her, people are simply conveyors of suffering. Kelly is learning as she is working the little mare. They are growing in trust and confidence together.

Vickie is a serious student of natural horsemanship. Vickie lives a few hours from us. She and her husband Dennis worked with a local rescue league and have taken on the task of gentling several mustangs. They faced this challenge as novices. They studied. They observed. Now they get in the pen and apply. Vickie has brought some of these horses much further than the experts of the established horse world ever could have. All without waiting until they had all of the answers.

All three of these ladies faced the same problem--how to control a horse without showing fear. Allowing one's fear to cause one to yield to the horse is an error fatal to solid training. It is one mistake that, if persistently made, can quickly turn a good natured horse into a dangerous bully. All three have already achieved remarkable success. All three have found tremendous satisfaction in their horse work. All three have learned a lot. All three have a lot to learn. All three are successful.

All three got out of the audience and got into the arena. Horses cannot be trained from the bleachers. The most important lessons that I have learned about horses came from mistakes that I have made with them. Those in the bleachers never get the opportunity to make those mistakes.

Get in the arena. Take the risk of failing. Take the risk of injury. Enjoy the risk of living.

Its worth it.

Like Desperados Waiting For A Train

2012-04-15T06:13:00.004-04:00

The baby turns five this fall. She is growing up right well. Likes getting up eggs, feeding hogs, riding horses, (especially night rides), dogs, working on fence, getting me tools and nails, and singing.

She told me that she was not "just a ranch hand" because she was also "ranch foot, ranch leg,... ranch whole body."

Good bye Is A Hard Word To Say, or To Hear

2012-04-12T10:01:00.004-04:00

At the end of this month Rebecca and the boys and her husband Mark will be moving to Michigan. Can't be profound or even poignant about this. Our program would not be where it is without Rebecca. I was the second person to hold their first son, Liam and she was the first person to ride my horse Ta Sunka Witco. Rebecca sang at the funeral and she and Mark made Luke's middle name to be in honor of Lido.

Several years ago a committee to administer the Lido Fund was created. I did not want to be on the Board. They put Rebecca on the Board because they said that she would know what I thought without asking me.

They were right.

I do not have to say anything else about what Rebecca has meant to my family and my horses.

She knows what I think without asking me.

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: How Old are Grown Women When They Get Their First ...

2012-04-12T10:00:00.001-04:00

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: How Old are Grown Women When They Get Their First ...: Seven. That's right regardless of what their birth certificate says they become seven years old when they realize that the horse at the ot...