Welcome to Deer Run Stables, a natural horsemanship training and boarding facility located in the rolling prairie of beautiful central Missouri. Formerly a breeder of Andalusian/Arabian and Friesian/Arabian horses, owner Rachel Steffan has made the decision, given the current economic climate and oversupply of horses in the United States, to give up breeding and focus on natural horsemanship training and education, while providing a friendly and supportive boarding facility for a select group of clients.

What is natural horsemanship? Natural horsemanship training seeks to develop a partnership between horse and human which transcends traditional training methods, allowing ongoing two-way communication between rider and mount in any situation.

The philosophy works with young horses…

… and adult horses with a background of traditional training…

… allowing students to achieve unbelievable goals within a few years of dedicated study.

Want to find out more? Sign up for Deer Run Stables newsletter and mailing list by entering your name and email address HERE, with the subject NEWSLETTER.

I received an update from the lady with the abused horse question this morning, along with a couple of follow-up questions. Thought I’d pass them along in case anyone is interested.

Hi Rachel,

The horse is finally at his new home
He is doing better every day though we have 2 main problems.

1. going in to his stable, he is absolutely terrified to go in. Once he’s in he relaxes and starts to eat.
Dunno how I’m gonna fix that yet

2. leading him when he’s next to me.
He is easy to walk with but only when you’re in front of him, he doesn’t understand if you’re standing next to him.

With an abused horse ground training becomes even more important. Here is my response:

Thanks for the update! Sounds like your youngster is doing very well. I have a couple of thoughts regarding your current challenges:

1. It sounds like you are pushing him through a threshold at the stable door. Something about the stable entrance frightens him– it doesn’t really matter what. As you walk him toward the stable, his thought process is something like this… I’m okay… I’m okay… I’m okay… alright, I’m a bit nervous about this now… getting more nervous… getting REALLY nervous… OH MY GOD THIS IS TOO SCARY I CAN’T DO IT!!!

That’s a “threshold”. As a leader, you gain more respect from the horse by being aware of his thresholds and respecting them. Pretend you were afraid of heights, and you had to learn to skydive for some reason. Would you have more respect for a teacher who slapped your parachute on your back, said “okay, pull the cord when you get to 5,000 ft,” and shoved you out of the open door of the plane, or a teacher who went slowly, explained everything, and stopped whenever you got scared, until you regained control of your emotions? Personally, I’d rather have the second person as my leader… and so would your horse.

To get through a threshold, walk your horse toward the stable until his feet start to get sticky; about the time when he’s saying, “Hey, I’m nervous about this!”. Let him stop, and back him up a step or two. (Good time to practice backing up!) Stand there until his head comes down and he starts to lick and chew. If he is ready to move forward, you can lead him forward until he gets nervous and stops again– this is the new threshold, and may only be a couple of steps past the old threshold. If he doesn’t want to move, you can turn him and walk back the way you came, then re-approach the stable.

Either way, you stop every time your horse hits a new threshold, back up to where he’s comfortable, and wait. It might take 45 minutes to get into the stable the first day. But the next day, it will only take 20 minutes. And the day after that, five minutes. And before you know it, he walks right into the stable without giving it a second thought.

Over time, a horse becomes more trusting of your leadership if you have the patience to respect his thresholds. Because you have demonstrated to the horse that you will not force him into situations that he considers frightening and dangerous, he starts to assume that if you are asking him to do something, it must be safe because you are a good leader who takes care of him and would not put him in danger.

2. To get your horse to move up and walk next to you, you’ll need to teach him to move forward away from the tap of a stick or long whip on his hindquarters. This is easiest to do while walking next to a fence, so that he can’t move sideways to get away from you. If you are walking ahead of him on his left side, hold the lead line (with lots of slack) in your right hand, and a long training stick in your left hand, with the end of the stick trailing behind you as you walk. Make sure there are several feet between you and the fence, so that he has plenty of room to come up next to you without feeling claustrophobic. Cluck and put a bit of pressure on the lead to encourage him to walk up beside you. If he doesn’t walk up within four or five seconds, gently reach back with your left arm and tap the point of his hip with the stick. (You can also use a “flag”– a piece of plastic or cloth tied to the end of the stick, which you can wave around in the vicinity of his hindquarters to create a bit of commotion from which he will want to move away.)

It’s very likely that your colt will over-react and rush forward past you the first several times you tap him. That’s fine; don’t jerk on him and try to correct him… just let him go on by you. Then get organized again and repeat the process– ask him up beside you with a cluck and light pressure on the rope; reinforce with a tap or a wave of the flag if he doesn’t respond after a few seconds. Eventually, he will realize that the stick follows the cluck and the pull on the rope, and he’ll start responding to those cues in order to avoid the stick. When he does, reward him by stopping and relaxing for at least 30 seconds or a minute. Scratch him and let him think about what he’s learning.

Try to stop on a good note, and before long you’ll be able to position him wherever you want as you lead him. Once he understands the general concept, you can reinforce your requests by flicking the end of the lead rope toward his hindquarters if necessary. That way, you don’t have to carry a long stick with you everywhere!

It sounds like you’re doing a great job with him. Before long, he’ll be a model horsey citizen.

-Rachel

I received the following question this morning from someone who saw my video “Natural Horsemanship and Foals” on YouTube and wanted some horse training tips. I thought the answer might be of interest to other people trying to rehabilitate horses that don’t trust people.

‪Hi,‬

‪I saw your foals and horsemanship vid and I was wondering if you could give me some advice.‬

‪I’ve rescued a 8 month old foal which was abused by his previous owner.‬
‪He was moved to a field with other horses to ‘recover’ but hasn’t been in contact with humans.‬

‪Since he’s doing quite well it’s time to get him to trust humans again. ‬Any idea where to start?‬

Here is my response:

Hello,

First off, good for you for rescuing an abused horse!

If I had an 8-month-old foal who didn’t trust people and was loose in a large area, I would start with “undemanding time”. Take a chair and a book out to the pasture (or, if you can get the youngster into a smaller paddock or pen without a lot of drama, that would be even better). The goal of undemanding time is to ask NOTHING of the horse for extended periods of time (maybe 30 minutes to an hour), while quietly sharing their space as a herd-mate would do. That means you DON’T try to touch or pet him, you DON’T try to feed him treats or lure him closer to you… for many unconfident horses, it means you don’t even look at them or watch them. YOU SIT AND READ YOUR BOOK QUIETLY FOR AN HOUR, THEN YOU QUIETLY GET UP AND LEAVE.

If the horse chooses to stand in the far end of the pasture or pen with his butt turned toward you for the entire hour, that’s perfectly fine. It’s not a failure, it’s not a lack of progress, it’s just feedback about what the horse thinks about humans at this particular point in time. An 8-month-old still has a high degree of curiosity, so eventually, after 10 minutes or 2 days or a week, he WILL gain confidence and become curious enough to sidle over and investigate you. Again, when this occurs you DON’T betray his budding trust by trying to touch or pet him. You just sit there and read your book and don’t look at him, and prove to him that humans can be nonthreatening. The only possible exception to the “don’t look, don’t touch” rule is if he starts to shove you/chew on you/step on your feet, in which case you give him a nasty look, and add some energy to your body until he backs off a step or two (maybe wave your book around or snap it open and closed to make noise). When he backs off, you immediately go back to reading and ignoring him.

Do this for a week or two, until the colt seems comfortable approaching you, but is maybe starting to get a bit bored with it. Then start bringing a pan of treats or grain in with you and let him find it. Start paying him a bit more attention while he’s eating. Begin by just looking at him and talking to him, then graduate to touching him on the shoulder and neck, working gradually toward the head and retreating before he gets upset or anxious. Put an old halter and rope in the pan with the feed and see if he’ll start mouthing and chewing on it– maybe even playing with it. After he’s investigated it thoroughly, begin petting him on the shoulder and neck with the rope, again working toward his head. The first few times you halter him, don’t even fasten it; put it on and take it right back off.

Before long, he’ll be easy to catch and halter… then you can move on to training him to give to pressure so you can lead him. Good luck, and let me know if I can help further.

Ever since Wintec came out with the Wintec Wide, dressage enthusiasts have been wondering when they’ll get around to making a Wintec Wide Dressage model. The answer appears to be… someday. Maybe. If you’re lucky.

For those that don’t know, Wintec saddles come with adjustable gullet plates: you can open up the front of the saddle, expose the tree, unscrew a couple of screws and pop out the metal plate that holds the gullet area below the pommel rigid, then pop in a different gullet plate that’s narrower or wider, screw it in, close up the front of the saddle and, in theory, fit it to a different horse. It’s a pretty good system, albeit one that does not address the fit of the back half of the tree. Still… it’s good. I love my Wintec Pro Dressage to death. I’ve used it with the extra-wide gullet plate on Tucker for years (there are six gullet plates– narrow, medium narrow, medium, medium-wide, wide, and extra-wide). But here’s the catch. Tucker… isn’t a particularly wide horse. In fact, he’s what I’d call an average horse, saddle-fit-wise. And looking at the narrow Wintec gullet– yeah. I don’t think horses exist that are shaped like that.

Apparently, I’m not the only Wintec owner to notice this problem. So Wintec designed the Wintec Wide All Purpose saddle to fit horses that are ACTUALLY wide.

It has a different tree, different panels, and a different girthing system. Oh, and it comes with three “ultra-wide” gullet plates, all clearly marked “ONLY FOR USE IN WINTEC WIDE & WINTEC HAFLINGER”.

The Wintec website gives dire warnings about how if you use one of the purple ultra-wide gullet plates in a normal Wintec saddle, you’ll invalidate the warranty and you may break the tree, killing yourself, the horse, and several innocent puppies and kittens nearby. (Okay, I added that last part myself.)

There’s only one problem. Well, two, actually. The first is that I need to fit a saddle to this coming four-year-old, who has a back so wide and flat you could set out a seven-course meal on it without spilling a drop of the soup. And I like dressage saddles, not all purpose saddles.

The second is that I have a deeply ingrained problem with authority figures, and when someone tells me I mustn’t do something, it makes me want to run out and do it. Fortunately, I also happen to have an old Wintec 500 AP saddle that I hate with a burning passion. Here it is with the medium gullet installed.

Gosh, I wonder if anyone sells purple ultra-wide gullets on the internet. Oh, look! They do! And I bought one! Here it is next to the extra-wide gullet I’ve been using in my dressage saddle.

That’s a fairly significant difference. I wonder what would happen if I installed it in the Wintec 500 that I don’t really give a fig about. Maybe the tree will break?

Nope! Apparently not. It’s not even all that hard to fit into place. Biggest challenge is getting the points of the tree back in the point pockets, and even that’s not too big of a deal.

Ta-da! Compare this photo to the earlier one of the same saddle with the medium gullet plate installed:

That’s a pretty noticeable change!

So, after running it out to the barn for a test ride (yes, I still hate this saddle!), nothing catastrophic happened. No broken tree, no obvious points of strain or wrinkling on the stress points of the saddle… I decided to go for it and install this gullet plate in my Wintec Pro Dressage to make it into a Wintec Wide Dressage.

Well… that’s pretty wide, alright. Time to run up to the barn for saddle fitting! Here’s Tucker (pardon the mud spatters):

That looks pretty good. Shoulder clearance: yes. Bridging: no. Good panel contact in back: yes. Saddle balance:

Oops. Not so much. The saddle now sits downhill. This is not too surprising, since Tucker also sits downhill, as you can see. I corrected the downhill tilt with shims, and had a lovely ride. I made a point of going fast (yee-haw!), doing some quick changes of direction and generally riding around like a banshee. The saddle tree still did not break. No innocent kittens or puppies were killed.

So– how about that filly with the back like a table top?

Shoulder clearance: borderline. Bridging: no. Good panel contact in back:

Well… it’s not horrible. Mind you, it’s not great, either. Saddle balance:

Eep. Guess not. The saddle still perches up on top of those double-wide shoulders, and will not really work for this filly. I’m thinking I may have to bite the bullet and spring for an Ansur treeless for this baby girl. Because I’m not going to take a chance on destroying this…

… with back pain. And yes, it really is the same horse. And no, I don’t know why she’s fugly when she stands still and gorgeous when she moves.

However, my new Wintec Wide Dressage saddle now fits the unfittable, unbroke ex-broodmare– who really needs to become a broke ex-broodmare– like a glove:

… and looks pretty darn good on my mother’s Friesian cross, as well.

Conclusions? There appears to be no reason not to use Wintec Wide gullet plates in older Wintec saddles. Of course, the tree could break tomorrow, or next month, or next year. But the wider gullet plate was not difficult to install, it does not appear to be stressing other components of the saddle by stretching or compressing them, and it performed perfectly through a ride at high speeds and with sharp turns and quick stops.

I am considering the pros and cons of selling used Wintec dressage saddles with Wintec Wide gullet plates installed. If I decide to do so, they will be sold on the Wintec Wide Dressage Saddle page of the site.