Question:

“Hello Fellers, Do you all think it’s possible to make a TRUE bridle horse without the miles, hours, stress, quiet times, and responsibilities of working cattle on a ranch?I see some really nice horses that’ve been ridden mostly in an arena, even if they’ve worked lots of cattle (I.e. the reined cowhorse), but, are they really, truly, in the bridle as in the old California tradition?  Just wondering….”

Answer from Martin:

Buster,

The short answer is no.

The trained horses in the arena may have bigger moves and more refinement but how long would they last holding a cow in deep mud or a rocky hillside with keg shoes on? The old bridle horses may have never seen groomed footing before going to a show. They learned to stop in all kind of ground without special shoes. But in all fairness we’re comparing apples to oranges. I had seen plenty of the horses that had the grit that I’m talking about that went to stand in the box still and then didn’t survive that world.

Enough generations of horsemen and horses have changed the requirements of the bridle horse of today. In my lifetime it went from working ranch horses and ranch people to professionals in a recreation business, quite different from the days of the Vaqueros. Take the two rein process, the old way was to take the horse to a certain point in the Hackamore, then put a bit on them over a small bosal. Traditionally they would not have had a snaffle on so the first bit in their mouth would be a spade or ring bit. It was a slow process with a lot of consideration for the horse to have a soft mouth. What I see today, and I’ll admit that I’ve experimented with this, the trainers go from a snaffle to a shank bit for their training, then to the Hackamore. Go look at how many hackamore horses are in a shank bit in the warm up pen at the show. One of our oldest shows here had in the rule book that a horse could not be shown in the hackamore class if it had ever been ridden with a shank bit, and people worried enough about getting ratted out from a neighbor that they honored the rule.

There were Horseman like Melvin Jones, Gene Lewis, Lee Reborse, Ray Hunt, and plenty more from California and other places I am not as familiar with that took their Hackamore and bridle horses to win some of the biggest shows in California like the Cow Palace or Salinas. It’s only a matter of time before most any competition starts taking on a life of its own. When you put a judge or stop watch to determine the highest quality of an animal’s performance it starts loosing its original integrity.

Thank you for sending in your question.
Martin Black