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@Joel 6018 wrote:

I doubt you will find any Friesian mare with decent conformation to breed a jack to unless you purchase her yourself & then you had better lie about your plans for the mare because I’m thinking they will not sell you the mare.

The feather & luxurious tail are lost when breeding a heavy boned mare to a jack. Look at Belgian or Clydesdale mules.

One better be a top notch mule person to work fjord mules as the fjord breed has alot of mule-like characteristics already.

The reason the Fjord & Friesian registeries are so strict is these breeds have been purebred for around 2000 yr.

I Kn00000000-ow! This is why I thought it would be cheaper to AI a jenny who was a proven Hinney producer. One who got pregnant already by a stallion.
That too would peobably be hard to find but I doubt, as expensive as buying your own Friesian mare. The cheapest I’ve seen for one is 5,ooo and it didn’t have excellent confo but was not misshapen in any way nor did it have any outstandingly bad flaw, just not really balance.

I’d have to call it Frieule:D

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@Robert MoonShadow 5982 wrote:

Well, it could be kind of cool… if the mule ended up with the long mane of the Friesian, but stiff, like the donkey = a mohawk mane!! 😮 (You’d just about hafta name it ‘Spike’) 😎

LMAO! Add a little mousse and you could have a punk rock mule for costume class.!! 😀

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Well, It’s not just the color. Although black is a hard to get color in a mule. I would love to have my mule have feathering and a long, at least horse length and hanging over, mane and long full tail.

Also, the gait of the Friesian has alot of action in front which would make a nice driving or dressage mule. They also have pretty docile temperments.

I was wondering if others thought it might make a nice mule.

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When I was a kid my Uncle had a 38 stall converted cow barn. We had 18 straigh stalls and 20 box stalls. Horses were rotated so they did not spend more than 24 hrs at a time in a straight stall.

I think this subject is actually a No-brainer. All you need it do is put yourself in the horse’s skin and see how uncomfortable it would be.

A horse tied for short periods, part of a day for work is a very good situation because it is easy to work with him, and the mess is all behind in one place and hay all contained infront. No problem for the horse on the short term

Take a horse housed 18 hrs a day or more like this and just sit there and look.
Horse cannot itch himself. He does not get to move around and promote his circulation. Horses are made to move almost all the time and housing a horse in a straight stall is the quickest road to stalking up. Horse cannot lay down and take a good snooze. Most people tie horse so they can’t get their nose to the ground, again, bad for the horse. Horses need their noses down, as nature intended for proper sinus drainage.

Perfect world to me, turn out 24/7 when not working. Box stalls for at least overnight in weather where they cannot go out (extreme snow and/or ice, or injury), and a tie arrangement for working time during the day.

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I heard! What an awful tragedy!! Thank goodness for the local vet taking his two surviving Percherons.

It is just so distressing to hear this and there is no mention of his poodle that I could find?

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Geoff, I assume you are being sarcastic with the fashion diva remark, or do you truly not understand that statement?

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Well Carl, I think it’s hard to correctly interperet tone of voice on a bulletin board where you can only assume the inflection used by the writer. If I were speaking face-to-face with you I believe you would not hold the same opinion of my posts.

One point you make; that I am wrong in assuming that people are not aware that the horse isn’t learning when being dragged along (your blue highlighted sentence) by another is lost on Joel here who just asked what’s wrong with hooking a green one with an older one. What’s wrong is that you are “making” the green horse comply instead of taking the time to teach and to physically condition that green horse to the work at hand.

If you don’t take the time to properly bit the animal in the stall, teach him to flex and give to the bit, linedrive him, have him pull more and more weight singly then actually drive him single by himself, he is then at a disadvantage when hooked double and not only has to figure out his role as a horse who is part of a team but also everything else, including pulling weight in harness all at once. Not fair to ask him that much all in one step.

You hook one who has been working and is fit for the task, he is not going to even start to sweat after 30 min work. You take that horse and hook him with a green one when the young, green one is not fit for 30 minutes work and starts sweating after only 15 minutes partly due to nerves and part due to the fact that he is not physically conditioned to work that hard that quickly, and you are asking too much too fast. Next day the greenie thinks of this as a pretty rotten experience he went through and usually has the sore muscles and sore mouth to prove it. Just because horses are strong animals does not mean that they can comfortably do more work in one day than they did the day before.

This is the problem with the old method. It focuses on ease of application for the handler and has little sympathy for the animals emotional and physical well-being.

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I disagree with you Git up Doc about them learning more hooked with another.
I don’t see them learning anything other than buddying up as they would in a herd and mindlessly matching the buddy horse’s motion or be dragged.

If you have never trained a horse without hooking him with another you are not fully cogniscent of what the horse needs to learn. I see alot of you saying your horses won’t stand when you want them to. I take a young horse and practice standing. If you hook with another and go off and do work, how much teaching of “stand” are you doing? I take one an 1/8 of a mile say whoa, exit the vehicle. throw my lines over his back and have a cigarette. I can take mine as far or as short a distance as I want and when I say whoa and stand, they learn it’s for the duration. Why? Because I do it.

You can’t expect them to realize that they are supposed to stand when you say so if you do not make it part of your training to take them places and stand them. Mine learn to relax when I say stand cuz I practice them at it.

Like others have said, you can’t be taught on here to teach a horse to drive. You need to have the hands on experience and a mentor to show you and correct you when you are reading the horse wrong.

For those of you who don’t enjoy hearing that the old methods are not really teaching the horse; that’s an opinion I have from doing it the step-by-step method then seeing and driving horses who were trained the old method. In the old method way of training I have come across far too many horse who not only don’t want to have anything to do with people but who also are fearful of them. I have a 27yo Percheron mare in my pasture right now that will run from you in fear if you show upm enter her range of vision, in a pair of overalls and she is just one of numerous horses I’ve met like that. I have never had that reaction from anything that was trained in a step-by-step method. If you wanted just a bunch of people agreeing with you and praising you, why post on a bulletin board where others might not agree?

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@near horse 5617 wrote:

And Jason, I think the word you were looking for is “dis”;)

With all the books on driving training out there, just about anyone interested in training their own driving horse knows there is the “Old Method” and the methods now taught by driving instructors. Most of you know there is a choice but choose the fast way over actually learning how to teach a horse in a step by step method.

In writing a thread about how you are learning the old method you have already chosen.

I can’t possibly teach anyone how a Standardbred is trained unless I have the person with me in a hands on application. You can’t put into words how to “read” the horse to tell when to move on or when to repeat a lesson without writing a book on the subject.

It pains me to see how many choose to use the old methods instead of really learning how to teach the animal.

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J-L No, STB’s are coldblooded a Percheron and a QH are both coldbloods. Appendix QH’s are QH X Thoroughbred.

Like I said in a previous post, any interaction you have with an animal is training, good or bad. How many animals trained by being hooked totally green with an older more steady animal can then be hooked alone and taken to town? Just about zero. If you think that in a month’s time the green horse is doing just fine and learned it all from the other horse, just hook him single then tell me what you’ve got…… an emotional wreck. You taught the horse NOTHING. He is not relying on you directing him.

If you don’t instill the training in the horse alone, when you remove him from the team, 9 times out of 10 the horse does not drive well alone. So, did you teach him……? no. The other horse’s confidence is needed for performance. The one falls apart EMOTIONALLY, when the partner is missing. It’s a Huge hole in training. No, actually, it’s evidence of shortcutting and LACK of training.

Take that older steady horse away and even after the new horse is supposedly “broke” he cannot function as well and, in some cases, cannot function at all without his team mate. The animal has no confidence of his own……….Like you said, he got his confidence from the other horse. No confidence was instilled in him alone.

The Amish buy our already broke Standardbreds to pull their buggies to town. They don’t have time to train their own, they get too-slow-for the track STB’s for this job way cheaper than if they raised and trained them themselves. These horses rely on their driver to tell them where to go and have confidence in THEMSELVES that the hooked and drug along trianing method does not give them.

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First of all Standardbreds are NOT hot blooded. Their temperments are similar to a Percheron QH cross. Some, as individuals are hotter than others. Hot is not anywhere near a good descriptor for a Standardbred. If we trained Standardbreds the old method, there would be very little compliance or control at high speeds and they would hate their jobs. They are conditioned and their wind and muscle tone is increased day by day the same way a Dr. would tell any human being to train for an atheletic competition. We shortcut NOTHING.

They are handled from weaning, all the ones bred at large Breeding centers like Hanover Shoe farms have been handled and lead, bathe, vet, and trim when sold as yearlings.

Their brains are no different than any other horse’s minds. They are horses and whether you believe it or not you can make a driving horse out of a horse if you teach it properly. Those of you who think you don’t teach your animals anything are fooling yourselves. Every moment you are around one you are teaching it. I have seen old (13-20yo)Standardbred broodmares who hadn’t been hooked since they were three delight at being hooked and going down the road for a drive. I KNOW the difference between an animal trained the OLD STYLE and one trained with time, patience and a step-by-step method.

Yet, those of you who know nothing of the methods I use immediately dismiss them without having one tad of knowledge of the method nor do you care to know. It’s just not as good a method as yours cuz it takes too long.

I’ve had the unfortunate realization in seeing the old style training and what it has done to the animals. If I jerk you out of your backyard and all of a sudden ask you to come do a task you know nothing about you are going to be totally flabberghasted and confused yet, you have no qualms about doing that to your animals. It’s just fine cuz grandpa did it that way. Not in my mind it’s not. There are better ways and if you think it’s a waste of time, perhaps you are not capable of understanding it or being able to read the animal enough to make progress without boring the animal.

I’m a member here and have not made any personal attacks on anyone. If you identify with the methods I am against and take offense, perhaps you should look a bit closer and see what I see. Just because you don’t see it now does not mean it isn’t there.

I have a right to my opinion and when I see a thread titled the “Old Style” I see the horses that have had their minds ruined by it in my head all over again. The Haflingers that wanted nothing to do with people. Who no matter how well they were treated ran from anyone who came with a halter in their hand. Old Style is unnecessary. If you really care for your animals you should want to do better. Like the sign in my feed store says: You can have it fast but it will not be cheap. The horse pays the price for it when you want it fast and to him the price is not cheap.

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I can tell you that when you train a horse for anything be it accepting a halter on it’s head and leading or accepting a harness and cart and driving you HAVE TO break the whole thing down into little steps, one building upon the other, in order to TEACH the animal what you want. Just as you would not go in a stall, put a halter on and expect a horse to then lead you have to get the animal accustomed to everything one tiny step at a time.

If you do not do this, as in hooking a horse with no driving experience up with another who is experienced, you are only FORCING the green one to comply. He has no choice but to be pulled along or mimic what his partner is doing. Horses do not have a brain large enough to understand what is going on. What they do those first few times is totally blank out emotionally and are not thinking about what is happening past surviving it.

I trained Standardbred babies for 20 years, we did no round penning. We get them used to wearing one piece of harness, the back pad and crupper, then add the bridle and bit them in the stall, turning their head one way just a tad and tieing it to the rein ring. 20 minutes each side daily and daily, as they accept and learn to comply to the bit pressure we tie the head a tiny bit more one side 20 min. then the other until the horse is accustomed to how the bit works. It takes 7-10 days.
Then we line drive them for a couple weeks, with a person on each side with a long line attached to their halter on each side for assisting in keeping the horse going along as we are directing with the bit. We teach them steering, their whoa, their walk on and their stand. Then, with two people along, one on each side on a long line, we hook them and teach them how to pull a cart’s weight alone at the walk before asking them to carry the cart and our weight at the walk. We get them used to turning both directions and when they are calm with all this we go on to adding driver’s weight and then driver’s weight at the trot.

The horse learns step-by-step each thing that is needed to become a driving horse.

I read the post as a Gyp way of “training” which shortcuts the horse to accomodate the owner. I have seen a number of Haflingers who did not want anything to do with people, all trained the hook ’em and make ’em way. They were worked half the day the first day because that work needed to be done without any caring for the fact that that was way too much work for the muscle tone that the animal had. Nobody cared that the animal was stiff and sore the next day when they AGAIN hooked him with the other and made him sore again.

I cannot stand to see ignorance and unthoughtfulness towards animals. To put the animal’s physical or emotional well-being second is not acceptable when it’s actually cheaper to buy one trained correctly than to train one yourself the old-style ignorant way. It takes proper training to make a good willing horse who wants to work for you. If all you are worried about is getting your daily chores done and you do not know how to properly train your horses you should buy them already properly trained instead of abusing them through ignorance and unthinking abuse.

ETA; Back in the 60’s when I was being taught horsemanship by my Great Uncle, a third generation horseman, there is one thing he told me to always remember. He said if I always remembered this I would not go far wrong in training a horse, that is; To always remember that a horse cannot think of more than one thing at a time. If you teach one thing at a time you will have a compliant horse when you are finished. If you try and teach more than one thing at a time you are asking for more than they are capable of and that is unfair to the horse.

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If you think you’re traiining a horse that way you are not. You are forcing the horse to comply.

That is the old way and I have seen a number of good horses whose minds were completely ruined by these old methods. Since you have no real driving trainer to compare them to you think this way is great!

NOT

If your friend doesn’t have the time to properly train them he should buy them already properly trained instead of breeding them and training them himself. Then you’d see the difference and the difference is HUGE.

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The way I look at it is, you weren’t asking much of that horse til after the baby was off his back. Not that some horses don’t act more carefully around children, they do. We have all seen it. I think the reason the “kid horse” is a kid horse is that he likes the idea that the kid doesn’t ask much of him. He’d rather tote them around than have to really work with a more competent rider.

The horse you’re talking about hadn’t been ridden in 3 months. Of course that horse no matter how gentle, when not ridden regularly CAN give out a few crop hops or a couple bucks when first asked for speed. Many horses that are ridden every day will give you a buck or two when first asked for speed. It’s the excitement of being asked and the natural reaction to his first going off into a gallop, the same reaction he may have in the field when he’s feeling good and starts cantering; he may throw in a few bucks. Add to that the fact he’s been left to live life and make all his own decisions for three months; now you get on and egg him on for speed, tad of resentment for being told comes to mind. He’ll show his disapproval with a bucking fit. Had he been warmed up more slowly; walk, trot, get a little sweat going then asked for a canter…….may have gotten away without those bucks. With all due respect…Rider error.

The horses that really will fool you are the ones you’ve had for 20 years who you can put anyone on, and have never put a foot wrong. One morning you go to pick out his feet and instead of handing it to you he kicks you in the head. My uncle told me about one like that.

We can’t read our horse’s minds so we have to be cogniscent of even the most imperceptible changes. The mare in question had a rock in the opposite hind frog wedged right in there. When he picked up the hind foot and she shifted her weight she felt a sharp pain in that opposite foot which now, she had to carry all the weight of her back end on. She instinctively kicked out. She’d never done that before in all the time he had her. His head happened to be in the way of that foot and he was killed.

Gentle is no guarantee, and no matter how gentle, fresh is fresh.

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@Lady in VA 5407 wrote:

I do clicker training with my Perch. That’s how I trained her to do all kinds of things from standing still to loading in the trailer. Paid off a couple of years ago. She cast herself under a board fence, started flailing legs. I gave her the “Touch” command, meaning touch muzzle to my fist. (One of the first things you train is “touch”.) She calmed immediately and stretched out her nose to touch. My friend got her legs free with a lead shank while I kept her touching. The fence survived; no injuries to anyone. Whenever she shows anxiety, which isn’t often, I use that command to get her attention. In my opinion, this is an effective training technique. You can start with treats or just use little scratches as rewards. Penny-sized carrot slices work best for mine and once she learns the lesson, she only gets scratches for reward. I don’t use a clicker either, one less thing to carry around. I make a unique sound instead.

I think I might have a go at clicker training. I’ve never tried it but my Uncle snaps his fingers to train a horse to pick up his feet. I basically learned it from him and use it only if I have on that isn’t good at giving me a hoof.

Question, could you substitute snapping your fingers?

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