Today, the clinicians picked their horses.

Ken McNabb builds trust with his colt.

There was a lot of “make the right thing easy, the wrong thing difficult” going on in all three round pens at the 2010 Road to the Horse today.

After the opening festivities, the 10-head remuda was brought into the Tennessee Miller Coliseum arena in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, for clinicians Craig Cameron, Ken McNabb and Richard Winters to view.

Each clinician had three minutes to select his colt.

• Craig chose Hip No. 10, a smaller palomino who’s in bad need of a bath and a barber. By Shining King Cody, Craig’s colt is registered as WR Shining Alamo. “He’s one I don’t think anyone else would have picked,” Craig told the crowd.
• By Blue Diamond Hancock, Ken’s colt is Hip No. 9, a stout gray registered as WR Turning Diamonds. “He’s a good mover,” Ken said.
• Without a whole lot of hesitation, Richard declared that he was going with Hip No. 1, a sorrel named WR Shiner Flashback who is by Shining King Cody.

After three round pens were assembled in the arena, the three colts were escorted one at a time to their respective round pens. The clinicians were given one and a half hours, which included 20 minutes worth of breaks, in which to work with their colts.

All three started by asking their colts to trot or lope the perimeter of the round pen.

The “right thing easy, wrong thing difficult” philosophy is all about building trust between the trainer and the horse. The horses were asked to work – moving at a fast trot or even a lope – around the round pen until they showed interest in joining or getting closer to their respective clinician. The right, or easy, thing involved standing quietly while the clinician got closer or even touched the horse – it signaled that the horse was beginning to trust his handler. If the horse refused those advances, he was sent back to work moving around the pen.

As time ticked off the clock, the clinicians advanced in varying stages toward having halters on their colts, getting their colts to yield their hindquarters and allow their handlers to touch and rub them on the face, neck, sides and back. The building blocks of trust were starting to fall into place.

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“The method (of breaking a colt) is the same every time,” Ken told the crowd. “It just depends on the horse – and the level of trust he has in you – as to how much time it takes you to move from A to B to C to D.”

But that doesn’t mean that the horse doesn’t sometimes make the handler work for that trust. For example, every time Ken’s horse faced Ken, he would shake his head up and down. So what was up with that?

“That’s a seventh-grader standing on the street corner giving you the finger. That’s what that was,” Ken said, shaking his head and laughing.

Richard was the first to have a halter on his horse, Ken was last. But Ken, who roped his horse around the neck, had the horse yielding his hindquarters just by working him from the end of that rope. Once he haltered his colt, Craig had his horse yielding his hindquarters from both sides and was able to scratch the horse along his back, neck and head.

One bit of trivia that was shared with the crowd: At past Road to the Horse events, the clinician in the lead at the end of the first day has never won the competition. Based on applause, it seemed like the crowd was split on whether it thought that the lead today belonged to Craig or Richard.

So how did the clinicians leave their horses at the end of their time on Saturday? They hope in a good place. All three said they expect they’ll find a more willing horse when they get back in the pen with them for another 2-hour training session Sunday morning.

“I’ll be able to tell right away when I walk in the pen with him in the morning,” Ken told a group gathered at his booth. “If he doesn’t want me to touch him, we’re going to go back to work, trotting around that pen.”

As mentioned previously, the remuda of 10 3-year-old geldings came off the Wood Ranch in Heber Springs, Arkansas. This is the second time the ranch has donated horses for Road to the Horse. The Wood family also has bragging rights to daughter and sister Dr. Gigi Wood Davis. At the 2009 AQHA World Championship Show, Gigi and husband Greg took home the reserve leading exhibitor trophy. Greg and Gigi show halter horses.

–  By Becky Newell
Editor in Chief