The Magic Orange Twine

Yes, I'm back

Hey All! My submission story is almost ready for the editors and I had a procedure done for a cyst on my spine which so far has been a roaring success. You can tell it went well because just one day after the procedure Kerry has left a very long list of everything I need to do that requires physical strength and standing without pain. Now I do seem to be pain free at the moment but its only been 25 hours and the doctor said to take it easy for a couple days. I thought he said six months but Kerry assures me that is not true.

At any rate I am sending you a story about horse training and as you will see, horseshoer training as well. Life is like that. No matter what it is you are doing, if you think you know it all, you are wrong. There is always more to learn.

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Everyone, it seems, is an expert when it comes to training horses, dogs, and even husbands. Before the internet, folks searching for advice on taming wild beasts would have a few options. They could depend on family to teach them. They could get lessons with trainers. They could buy books or VCR tapes that explained the process and any combination of those could work.  There were of course some problems with that approach.

I had a customer, a new one, who sat on a straw bale and read to me about how to shoe her horse. I found it mildly amusing because I owned the author’s books and knew him personally. I was not a curmudgeon then, so I politely thanked her for the knowledge and offered her my rasp so she could demonstrate proper trimming technique because, let’s face it, I am not too smart and I am a visual learner. She declined my offer.

Back then, the books or tapes allowed you to practice your training technique in anonymity. But if it wasn’t working, and it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with you, there were seminars you could attend and pick up some tips from famous horse or dog trainers. Most of them did a decent job, I learned a lot from attending a few, but all too often they left out some nuance. The truth is, not everyone has the innate talent to train horses, dogs or even husbands. Usually what they lack is the inability to read body language and lack timing. Most of training is timing I think. You have got to catch them being good or bad the instant it happens and either praise or correct.

You probably think I’m kidding about the husband training but no, I am not. There are books and seminars on the subject, and thanks to the Google machine, you can look them up. I’m fortunate that Kerry just gave up and let me be feral.

Let’s look at an example. Your husband is at Home Depot buying tools and supplies for some home project. You text him several times asking him where he is. You know it’s dangerous for the family’s finances to have him spending all that time in a testosterone-filled construction environment. You call him and it goes to voice mail. You become frustrated at his behavior. When he finally does come home with a pickup full of supplies and tools you chastise him. He cringes, thinking he had done a good thing, and slinks into the backyard. You are punishing the behavior of coming home. This is called negative reinforcement and while it will work at first, eventually he will keep doing the bad behavior because the negative consequences aren’t at Home Depot to stop him. Of course, I suppose you could go to Home Depot ahead of time, wait and chastise him but he will just go to Lowes next time or, heaven forbid, a Rockler’s Woodworking  Store.

But if you greet him with praise for coming home so fast and with everything needed for that home project, he will feel great and want to acquire that praise again. He will return faster from Home Depot next time for praise. You may want to reinforce the praise with a treat like a fresh baked cookie or greet him wearing a tank top. This is called positive reinforcement. Chocolate ice cream works too. I’ll do anything for chocolate ice cream.

See how this works? It’s the same thing for horses and dogs only without Big Box stores and tank tops. Training an animal to not only do what you want but actually seek out your praise by performing the desired behavior is key. Once that positive reinforcement awarded for a specific behavior is locked in their brain, they will never forget it. Of course you have to teach the appropriate time to perform the desired behavior. Bella, the German Shorthair Pointer, constantly finds my socks and brings them to Kerry or I. She has been working on fetching, so she gets praise for fetching the sock because we don’t want to discourage the behavior. Now I have to hide my socks or, as The Head Dog Trainer calls them, Bella Bait.

I should probably get to the point of today’s story.

Years ago, I had a customer in Montana that had a large string of horses. They made their living packing hunters and supplies in and out of an outfitting business the customer’s husband had up in Alaska. It normally took six to seven days to get everyone shod for the outfitting season. I also made a second set of shoes for each horse in case someone lost a shoe out in the wilderness. My customer knew how to nail and clinch shoes but to save on the weight of tools and an anvil, I pre-fit shoes to make his life easier. We also welded borium on all the shoes for traction and to extend wear. Borium is a tungsten carbide that is encased in a tube of mild steel. You heat up the shoe with an oxy-acetylene torch and form a pool of molten steel then stick the tube in the pool to either wash the borium across the face pf the shoe to prevent the shoe wearing down too fast or build up caulks for traction. Its hot tedious work, and you have to be careful about your toes once you nail shoes on. Borium will slice right through shoe leather and ruin your entire day.

Now, these horses were big. A size one shoe is pretty average for a saddle horse’s front foot. These guys almost all started at a size four. Any horse is a heck of a lot stronger than a human being, but these horses were stronger than most horses. Fortunately, they were well behaved, even gentle with me, but that had to do with their training. The outfitter’s wife, Anne, knew what she was doing when it came to training horses. She was a small, feisty woman with a wonderful southern drawl and a quick smile. We had worked together before and got along famously. There are only three people I can think of who I totally trust when working with fractious horses. Kerry, a friend of Kerry’s back east named Holly, and Anne. (My friend Larry is actually the fourth but the kind of horses Larry is an expert with are a whole different breed! Read about them here:

https://johnjoconnell.substack.com/p/the-box

https://johnjoconnell.substack.com/p/the-box-3fc

https://johnjoconnell.substack.com/p/the-box-0a3

One day I was working at Anne’s place and she mentioned we had a new horse that needed to be done and she wasn’t sure what the animal knew about shoeing. She had ridden him around and everything was good, but he did not like his feet being picked up.

“OK, lets do him last in case it’s a big fight.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “If he’s a problem, I’ll just use the magic orange twine on him.” Then she walked out the door.

The Magic Orange Twine? That was a new one. As I was shaping a shoe at the anvil, I noticed two bales of hay stacked against the wall. They were baled with orange plastic twine. What was she going to do with it? That twine is incredibly common. I don’t think they make biodegradable baling twine anymore which is a shame for the environment and raptors. The birds have a habit of lining their nests with it. The birds and chicks get tangled in the twine and it’s a disaster.

 There is a joke about how ranchers use baling twine for everything. It’s funny because it’s true. People tie up panels and gates with it. I know someone who wove twine through the strands of a very saggy four wire fence to act like a net to keep cows in. Spoiler alert: It didn’t work. I’ve seen bumpers of trucks tied up with twine. There are all kinds of uses for it in gardens like tying up tomatoes and cucumbers. When I went hunting with Larry he used twine to tie an old feed sack across the front of my horses chest because we had forgotten its breast plate. Traipsing up mountains sides made a breast plate indispensable to keep the saddle from sliding backwards.

“We really are farmers now,” he quipped as he admired his work. I was impressed how well it did.

The last horse of the string came in with Anne and he was impressive. Black, with feathers around his ankles. He was huge and I wondered if he was part Percheron.

“No one will ride him unless they have really long legs,” Anne laughed. “He will pack in the heavy stuff and pack out things like moose or bears!”

He was nice and relaxed with a kind eye as I approached and gave him a little pat on the neck. Slipping my hand down his leg I grabbed his feathers and told him to pick it up. I might as well have been talking to a tree he was so rooted to the dirt floor. I used all my tricks but he would not budge. I poked and prodded the bulbs of his heels and leaned against him. Nothing doing. Anne moved him back one step and as his foot came off the ground, I grabbed it and put it between my knees. I started to trim but the big black began the Dreaded Lean. He incrementally got heavier and heavier. I saw him pick up a hind foot to make himself as heavy as possible. My legs were starting to buckle and had to use one hand to help hold the foot up. My feet began to turn numb. Anne handed me my foot cradle without me asking (told you she knew what she was doing) and I set the foot down on it. He could lean on that all he wanted. Quick as a snake he tipped the stand over sending it flying down the aisle and slammed his foot down with a mighty thump. He heaved a big horsey sigh of relief and  stood there looking at me. The message was clear.

“Nothing personal there John old boy, but we are not going to shoe me today.”

He did not know of my stubborn streak.

While I tried to get the blood running back into my numb feet, Anne hooked the horse up to the cross ties and went over to one of her tack trunks. She rummaged around for a moment and came up with a long strand of orange baling twine. She carefully tied one end to the side of the horses halter and put the other end out the other side. She had a long tail of twine in her hand and stuffed it in her back pocket.

“What are you doing? I asked.”

“We haven’t done this before? I thought we had. I learned this from my granddad. So, I’m going to put the twine under his upper lip and hold it just tight enough so he cant spit it out. We will give him a moment to get used to it. It’s important to be sure the twine gets slack in it easily. When you want him to pick his foot up I’m going to slightly tighten the twine, putting pressure on him but not hurting his gums. When he does anything like what you want him to I release the pressure. Now this is the important part. I’m going to keep my hand behind my back so he won’t figure out I’m doing it. I want him to think he is in charge of releasing the pressure by cooperating. It shouldn’t take long for him to figure it out.”

“Now that is clever.”

“Some yahoos will yank on the string which is just flat stupid. You teach the horse nothing except to be afraid of baling twine.”

We got set up and I went for a foot and told him to pick it up. Anne tightened the string. The horse, surprised, leaned back away from her and I got the foot up.

“Just hold it there for a bit.” Anne advised. She released the pressure as soon as I had the foot in my hand.

“Now set it down and we will tell him how wonderful he is.” The big horse loved the attention. We went from foot to foot doing the same thing.

“We don’t want him to think this only happens on one foot.” Anne explained.

That’s how it went from then on. We had one small issue when I brought a hind foot forward to rest on my stand to clinch. He kicked the stand backwards but not hard. The pressure came on, I put the stand back and got his foot up. The pressure relaxed and so did the horse.

“You just didn’t understand, did you?” Anne cooed at the immense beast who towered over her.

“Yeah, it’s my fault. I think I rushed it a little.”

“That’s why I like you, John. You are always willing to take the blame instead of blaming the horse.”

“Well, not always,” I said and Anne laughed.

It took longer than usual to get the horse done but when I finished, he looked great, no one was hurt, and he still liked me. I gave him some horse cake as a treat and fussed over him for a minute.

“Next time he will be much easier. I’ll do this every day,” Anne the horse trainer said. “It’s crazy how quick they catch on.”

Anne turned him out in a small pen, “to think about it,” while I packed up and wrote out the bill. She brought her checkbook and a beer for each of us. We sat on hay bales watching the river roll by, talking about horses and dogs we had known. Most people can’t wait to get rid of me once I’m done shoeing their horses. They seem to feel their time is wasted talking to me once work is over. Not Anne. I mentioned once how I appreciated her kindness and she smiled. She explained that her Granddad had taught her that the most important person in a horse’s life, besides the rider, was the horseshoer.

“Girl,” he said, “if you find a good one, spoil him rotten. Treat him better than a husband. You can always find another husband but finding another good shoer is not easy.”

I wish I could have met the old gentleman so he could have taught Kerry a few things about horseshoer husbands.

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