Faraway Horses

by Buck Brannaman

  To encourage a horse to overcome this instinct, you must show him that he can move his feet forward without feeling as if he’s surrendering any of his defense mechanisms. He must also see that he can turn his head and look behind him with either eye; he needs to see you without feeling that you are going to take his life.

  You then want to draw the horse’s front quarters toward you. Getting him to turn his head and look at you is the preliminary step to his hindquarters falling away so the front end can come toward you (we call that untracking the hindquarters).

  Looking at you is the equivalent of shifting into neutral, presenting himself in such a way that he’s exposing his head to possible risk. You’ve not won him over yet: he’s tolerant but not accepting. It’s as though the horse still has a pistol, but he’s lowering it instead of pointing it at you. In other words, you’ve climbed a small hill. You haven’t climbed the mountain yet, but you’ve made a good start.

  At this point, Bif saw me the same way he saw every other human. He figured I wanted to end his life, and he was going to make sure that didn’t happen even if it meant taking mine. So instead of stepping away from the halter, he started kicking at it. Then he started kicking at me. He’d actually run backward at me and fire with both hind feet. This was quite a sight, especially from up close.

  He’d kick at me and miss, and kick some fence boards out of the corral. After a while there were splintered boards all over the place, like piles of kindling.

  I spent the next ninety minutes reeling the halter in, and tossing it back at Bif’s hindquarters, trying to encourage him to move his feet forward and not be so defensive. It took that long before I got one single forward step.

  After another hour and a half, Bif was taking a few steps forward, then a few more, and it wasn’t too long after that before I was driving him around the corral. That’s not to say I could walk up to him. When I did, he’d try to paw me on top of the head or kick me. He wasn’t a lover quite yet.

  When working with a horse, particularly a troubled horse, you’ll notice that he will spend a good portion of his time avoiding contact, physical and mental. By causing him to move, and then moving in harmony with him, you will slowly form a connection, as if you’re dancing from a distance. Yet the horse may remain quite wary of you. When the distance between you and the horse becomes comfortable to him, you start to draw him in. You do this by moving away as he begins to acknowledge you with his eyes, ears, and concave rib cage (middle of rib cage arched away from you). At this moment you and the horse are “one.” The farther you move from him, the closer he moves to you. This is known as “hooking on,” and it’s an amazing feeling. It’s as if there is an invisible thread you’re leading the horse with, and there’s no chance of breaking it.

  Before that first evening was over, after I’d spent about four hours in the corral, I finally did move up to Bif. That’s when I was able to get him to “hook on” to me. He’d turn and face me, and then he’d walk toward me with his ears up. We were now making positive physical contact. What I was doing with Bif was similar to what Forrest had done with me on the day we met, the day he gave me the buckskin gloves. He didn’t force his friendship on me. He maintained a comfortable distance until I was ready to come to him.

  The experience also reminded me how much preparation and groundwork people need in order to give their horses—and themselves—a good foundation. They need to work on using the end of the lead rope to cause the front quarters and the hindquarters of their horses to move independently, whether the horse is moving forward or backward, right or left. The horse needs proper lateral flexion so that he can bend right or left while moving his feet at the same time. Horses need to be able to bend and give and yield, just as experienced dancers are able to bend and yield to their partners’ lead.

  Working a horse on the end of a lead rope, you may see tightness or trepidation when you ask him to move a certain way or at a certain speed or when using his front or hindquarters. Whenever you see it, you home in on that area until the horse becomes comfortable. Then you move on to something else. Just as important, through the directional movement that you put into the end of the lead rope, you can show the horse that he can let down his defenses, that he can move without feeling troubled, without feeling that he needs to flee. Rather than leave you, he can go with you, and both of you can dance the dance. Sometimes the music plays fast, sometimes it plays slow, but you must always dance together.

  As long as I did it in a way that was fitting to Bif—that is, very, very carefully—I could touch him and rub him. One little wrong move on my part, and he’d have pawed my head off or kicked me in the belly. But I had to touch him, because that established the vital physical and emotional connection between horse and human. I rubbed him with my hand and with my coiled rope along his neck, rubbing him affectionately, the way horses nuzzle each other out in a pasture and especially the reassuring, maternal way a mare bonds with her foal.

  I also rubbed Bif with my rope and my hands along his back and his flanks. That not only felt good to him, but it introduced him to the pressure he would feel when the saddle was on and the cinch was tightened.

  When I got Bif saddled up later that night, he put on a bucking demonstration like you’ve never seen. The stirrups were hitting together over his back with every jump. Watching him, I knew that if he bucked with me on his back, there was no way in the world I would ever be able to ride him, so I didn’t even try. I just tried to get him a little bit more comfortable with a saddle on his back, then I unsaddled him and put him up. We ended on a good note, and I wanted him to sleep on it.

  I was awake all night trying to figure out how I could help this horse. The next day I repeated the process. Bif was still very defensive, but we gained ground more quickly, to the point where I could step up on him and ride.

  Bif never did buck with me. On the ground, he was one of the most treacherous horses I’ve ever been around, but it was because that bunch of hairy-chested macho cowboys got him started off on the wrong foot. With horses, as with people, you get only one opportunity to make a good first impression, and they missed theirs.

  For the next couple of years I hauled Biff to my clinics, but I had to make sure people didn’t get near my horse trailer. He’d have kicked or struck them before they knew they were within his range. Even if I was sitting on him, people had to keep their distance. Bif was sure of me, but he wasn’t sure of anybody else. I could ride him, but that didn’t mean he was gentle.

  But for all that, whenever I’d leave Bif alone or in an unfamiliar setting, he’d whinny for me. Not the way a horse anticipates or asks for his feed or a treat, but the way an anxious horse calls out to its herd, its source of safety. Bif just didn’t want to be without me. He’d always nicker, and it became a special thing between us.

  Miles together can change things, and in time Bif got a lot better around people. Now, roughly ten years later, he’s so gentle you’d never know that he had the kind of past he had. Bif’s pretty much retired. I use him on the ranch once in a while, and sometimes my little five-year-old daughter, Reata, and I take him for a ride. He’s had a good life, and he’ll always have a home with me. He’s got a heart the size of all outdoors.

  Buck and Bif.

  I’ll never be able to repay Bif for what he’s taught me about working with horses. He represents a lot of horses and people, too, who simply got a bad deal at the start. He proves to me that you don’t give up, and that even if you’re going through something that makes you think your life is over, you can still have a future.

  I travel all over the country and get an opportunity to see lots of different people, and lots of different lifestyles and ways of doing things. All in all, I’m actually pretty optimistic about the human condition. I think of all the people who are unfortunate, who don’t have good jobs, or who are on welfare. Granted, some of these people are just lazy, and even though they could work, they won’t. Maybe they weren’t raised right, or maybe t
hey weren’t influenced by the right set of circumstances or the right person. But there are other people who aren’t lazy and who do want good jobs, and for them, welfare can help. Some of these people prevail despite a rough start and end up with successful lives. There are Bifs all over.

  I’m often asked about a welfare program for wild horses called Adopt-a-Horse. It’s been quite a hot issue in the West, where a lot of people on both sides are trying to do the right thing.

  Nobody wants to see wild horses disappear from the western landscape. The activists who regard them as indigenous and want to protect them all certainly don’t. Neither do most ranchers, some of whom consider the horses to be simply feral. Although the media paints the rancher as the great Satan because he’s in favor of culling the wild herds, the rancher is not a bad person. His concern is overgrazing. He wants all animals to have enough to eat, including his cows. Most real ranchers love horses, and they love the freedom that the wild horse represents. They just don’t want to see the population become so large that the animals will starve to death.

  Buck shows how calmly a young sale horse responds to his “big loop” demonstration at the Dead Horse Ranch Sale in New Mexico.

  In their infinite wisdom and in an attempt to resolve the issue, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) created the Adopt-a-Horse program. Government officials started rounding up wild horses and holding them in concentration camp–like environments called feedlots, where they were made available for adoption by anyone who wanted a horse.

  The BLM thought this would satisfy both the ranchers who wanted a solution to the problem of overpopulation and overgrazing and the activists, mainly people from towns, who wanted to prevent the horses from going to slaughter.

  Although the BLM was trying to do the right thing, Adopt-a-Horse didn’t work. Allowing people without any qualifications to own a horse, much less a wild one, put lives in danger. That’s an injustice to both the horse and his owner. If the horse hurts an owner, the animal gets the blame.

  The BLM also created a program in which prisoners are given the opportunity to work with captive wild horses. They gentle them and get them to the point where they are ridable. This is an excellent idea. People who want to own a horse, especially those who have no experience with horses, are a whole lot safer. The horses don’t end up in a can of dog food, and the prisoners learn skills that can benefit them when they’re released. If nothing else, they’re doing something they can feel good about.

  I have hope for these wild horses. They are a part of the American West that most people want to see survive. Most of you who are reading this book feel a deep-down ancient bond, a connection between yourself and horses.

  7

  Down the Road

  THE FIRST CLINIC I EVER DID was in 1983 in Four Corners, Montana, at an indoor arena owned by Barbara Parkening, the wife of Christopher Parkening, the famous classical guitarist. She had a little group of four or five lady friends who all rode together. I’d started a couple of colts for Barbara’s brother-in-law, Perry, and he had been trying to get me to give them a horsemanship class.

  As this point in my life I was really shy about talking to people in public. I didn’t mind performing—my rope-tricks career proved that—but I didn’t feel comfortable speaking to groups. Even when I was riding colts, I didn’t like people coming around and watching me. They made me nervous. I didn’t want the social interaction because it scared me. All I wanted was to be left alone with a pen full of horses.

  Perry kept encouraging me, telling me that I had a lot to offer and that I’d do fine in a public situation. I had gotten to know and trust him, so finally I offered him a deal. “All right,” I said, “I need maybe a dozen people to make it work. If you get everything lined up, if you make all the arrangements, collect all the money and rent the indoor arena, I’ll do the clinic.” I figured that if I gave Perry all of the responsibility and I didn’t take any interest at all in the deal, he’d just forget about it.

  That’s not what happened. Perry came back a week later with the news that he had the people signed up, he’d collected the money, and he’d rented the arena I wanted.

  Since Perry had done what I’d asked him to do, I had to be good to my word. I showed up and put on a clinic, but to be honest, I don’t know if anybody learned anything. I did what many people do when they first get in the teaching business: I tried to sound as much like the teachers I’d had as I could, parroting things that I’d heard over the years.

  That’s because I had more confidence in my teachers than I had in myself. I couldn’t consider myself an authority, someone with anything to offer, when I’d never done something like this before. I was so unsure of myself speaking to a group of people, let alone teaching them, that I really don’t know if they learned anything.

  When the clinic was over, a little gray Arab was still in his trailer. One of the students had loaded him because she’d wanted to ride him, but she couldn’t get him to back out.

  I often tell people that if they can’t get a horse to back up on the end of a lead rope in the open, they may have a little difficulty getting him to back out of a trailer. A lot of times a horse would rather flip over than step down into the unknown.

  One of Buck’s greatest pleasures is to put on clinics with the friends who were there for him when he started his career. Here Buck engages a crowd in Billings, Montana, at a clinic sponsored by his friend and saddler, Chas Weldon (standing at right).

  The horse was terrified to come out. I did the best I could to get him to step six inches back, then step a foot or two forward and another foot back. This was to help him gain some confidence moving forward and back in the trailer before he stepped down.

  It wasn’t easy, but I finally got him out of the trailer. He didn’t hurt himself, but he could have. Then I explained to the woman the mistake she had made in the first place. Rather than loading her horse all the way into the trailer before she was sure she could get him out, she should have had him step carefully into the trailer with his front feet, then had him back up while his hind feet were still on the ground. Doing this procedure a few times would have given him the confidence he needed to back out once he was loaded.

  If you ever make the mistake of loading a horse into a trailer without having taught him to back up, the best thing to do is park your truck and trailer inside a corral, leave the back door of the trailer open, shut the corral gate, and go to bed. During the night, the horse will get it worked out. He’ll come out. That’s the lowest-risk way of getting him out of the trailer.

  Or, if you’ve got just one horse loaded in a two-horse trailer, you could remove the dividers. Even though it’s a pretty cramped space, you can often encourage the horse to turn around.

  Many people consider loading horses into a trailer as something akin to having open-heart surgery. They know they need to do it, but they’ll do everything in their power to avoid it. That’s because they don’t understand what loading is really all about. It’s really quite simple, though: if a horse leads well, if he walks with you wherever you wish to go, he’ll load well. It’s an act of trust between two beings.

  At a clinic in California a few years ago, a lady hired me to do a trailer-loading demonstration with her horse. A couple of handlers walked him down to the arena where I was waiting. Then someone drove her trailer up. A few minutes later, the owner herself showed up driving a Rolls-Royce. She stepped out of it and said, “Mr. Brannaman, I’m the owner of this horse, and I’m the one paying you to trailer-load him. I understand your fee is one hundred dollars. If you’re able to load him without too much trouble, I want to make sure I get a discount.”

  No horse is a problem horse; there are only problem people. Of the more than ten thousand horses Buck has started in his clinic career, he has never failed a horse. Here he starts a big warm-blood in Malibu, California.

  The hackles on the back of my neck raised a bit. Here the woman drives up in a two-hundred-t
housand-dollar car, and she’s worried about not getting her hundred dollars’ worth (if the stories I’d heard about her own trailer-loading expertise were true, she’d never find a vet to stitch her horse up for any less than that).

  I said, “Ma’am, if you don’t feel like you got your money’s worth by the time I’m done, then you don’t owe me anything.”

  I started the horse on the end of the halter rope, shaking the rope just enough to get the horse to move his feet back. I was being as subtle as I possibly could, trying to offer him a good deal. When I didn’t get the movement I wanted, I got a little more active with the rope until the discomfort of the swing caused him to back up. The effect of the rope wasn’t a lot different from a big horsefly buzzing around his head. The rope made him drop his head and back up, the same way a horsefly would.

  Once I laid the foundation of getting the horse to move his feet, I could back him just about anywhere I wanted him to go. After just a little while, he was backing very nicely on the end of a sixty-foot rope. I then fed out the rope’s coils and backed him up the ramp and into the trailer. His hind end was all the way in the manger and his head hung out the back door. I even got him to where he would start beside the driver’s window of the pickup, walk down alongside the truck and trailer, turn the corner, and back up the ramp on his own.

  That’s when I put the halter back on the horse and handed him to his owner. “There you go, ma’am,” I told her. “I’ve finished with your horse.”