When I was 15, I helped skid logs for a sawmill, that used horses. We had a beautiful team of sorrels, that worked great together, and the boss decided to add a second team, but couldn’t find a team that was used to working together.
They settled for one nice sorrel mare, and a smaller gray horse they named “Glue” for apparent reasons. When the sled was loaded, I tried to start them together, but when the mare would tighten, and lean into the harness, the “glue” would be pulled backwards and end up setting down on his own single tree.
Regardless of what we did, he’d refuse to lean into the harness. The owner got so frustrated he unhooked the mare from the team, took a piece of fencing wire, wrapped one end around Glue's tail, and wrapped the other end around the chain saw spark plug, gave the starting rope a hard pull, and Glue galloped from the woods all the way to the skidway, with out one stop, pulling a full load of logs by himself, a distance that we normally would have given them two rest breaks.
Today that would be considered cruel and unusual, but back then, those who worked teams, believed the teamster should never let a horse get it’s own way, or do what it wanted to do, even if it was right.
If a horse stopped exactly where you wanted it to stop with out the teamster doing the stopping, he’d make it start again, and go another 5 feet, and then he’d pull the reins back and tell it to stop.
The Old Story Teller, JH :-)
Loading horses in a trailer is the biggest one that people screw up on. They get the horse up 5 minutes before they want to go somewhere and the horse won't load. They either land up leaving at home or try loading it for a while then quite to try again tomorrow. Once you stop, the horse has won, and next time will be harder. I had this particular baby getting in a trailer by 1 month old, first with it's momma then by herself.
Tying horses up is another place soft hearted people screw up. There are alot of horses out there that can't be tied, because at some point when they were tied either the first time or later, they threw a fit at the end of the rope and the rope broke or someone untied them thinking they would hurt themselves. Never use an old rope to tie up a horse and NEVER untie one that is throwing a fit. Your just teaching them how to get untied.
Becky