From Martin Black’s new website.
In the early 80s I had a good bridle horse that had worked a lot of cattle. He got to the point where he could control and intimidate the cow so much that cows lost the desire to challenge him—they would just stand there, not wanting to move. This was fine on the ranch because I could just drive the cow out of the rodear. But when I went to a show, I couldn’t get enough cow work to get a decent score.
I sought out Tom’s advice on the situation. He said that if he were the judge, he would give me the blue ribbon. I said that would be fine if he was the judge but he wasn’t the judge, so what are we going to do about it?
Tom’s perspective was that my horse had learned to work hard enough to get the cow stopped so things would get easier for him. My horse had learned how to stop the cow, but our challenge was that we still needed to get him to work the cow like judges want to see in cutting.
Tom was all about doing things slow and easy with livestock but, he said, a show horse needs to look like he’s doing more than what he really needs to do. To slow things down, we wanted the horse pivoting on the outside hind foot getting back away from the cow, and to speed things up we need to go forward toward the cow which means we pivot on the inside hind foot.
So, Tom said we want the horse to learn what he called the “cat and mouse game.” The cat catches the mouse then turns it loose so he can catch it again. He wanted the horse stop the cow, but then let it turn and let it get just enough ahead of horse so that it felt like it was getting away. It builds the try in the cow to move if he feels like he has a chance to out run the horse.
Using Tom’s advice, I began stopping the cow with the horse, but then I’d let the cow turn and ask the horse to wait. The key was to let the horse turn before we got so late we couldn’t catch up. With the horse coming from behind, the cow gets the urge to speed up which makes the horse hurry and try harder. When necessary, we let the horse stop and hold the cow to give the horse relief after a satisfactory effort.
This not only helped me with my show horses, but it also helped me to create an opportunity for a horse to get more experience while schooling them with cattle on the ranch. It was something that didn’t confuse or discourage the horse, and built their try and confidence while just doing our job.
Tom had so many simple little ways of looking at things that were so fitting for the horse.