Horse Myths

Horse Myths

How often have you read a book or an article on horses and found yourself closing it after the first paragraph, because the writer has no idea what he or she is talking about. If you were born on a cattle ranch, you would have dealt with horses everyday and you will have the experience to prove it and know immediately when someone is talking bullocks.

Here are some horse myths that have been around for ages and doesn't seem to vanish due to the lack of knowledge that people have:

Myth 1: You can guide a horse with your knees.

To start with, there’s a quarter inch of leather, then there’s the cinch and buckles, and finally, the horse doesn’t know what the heck you’re doing anyway. We have turned out, this is the correct term for a horse that you’ve started, worked with for two to three years, and wound up with a finished product that is ready to go out and win. We have turned out roping, cutting, and reining horses. We have also turned out and ridden race horses into the winners circle.

Horse Myths Continues:

If you want one of these horses to go left, one assumes you’re supposed to press the right knee, and they did turn left, they’re going to leave you off out at the right with your head stuck in the ground.

Myth 2: You just saddle a horse and ride the bucking bronco until he quits.

We have never let a horse buck. There’s no reason to. First of all, they don’t know how and they learn by doing. Secondly, there’s no reason to terrorize the animal. Thirdly, my bones are too brittle for all of that exercise. Training a horse is no different then training any other animal. You wouldn’t terrorize a dog in training so why terrorize a horse. Our experience in dealing with thousands of horses is that they want to be as big a pet as your dog.

Myth 3: Stallion is used to describe a horse.

Even though the word stallion is not found in the vocabulary of horse people. To horse people it’s stud. It’s the only word they use.

Myth 4: You can disguise a horse by changing it’s color. Another one of those horse myths that just seem absolutely crazy...

If your best friend dyes his or her hair would you still recognize them? Horses look as different to horse people as your friends do to you. If you were to change the color of say, Smarty Jones, and a top flight trainer or jockey that had seen the horse walks by, sees the horse in a pasture a half mile away, the first words out of their mouth is ‘What did they do to Smarty Jones, and why?’ We know, Dick Francis did it once, and we did read Dick Francis, but he tried to disguise what he was doing, and in the end even he didn’t believe it, we could tell by the way he was writing. He did go ahead and publish the thing anyway.

 
Over and above these mentioned myths, people also talk about a rodeo circuit.

As far as we know, the existence of the term is unknown, but we have been going to rodeos since childhood and have never heard anyone use that term. The correct term would be "rodeoing" or we're going to a roping or simply going to the rodeo. If you’re going to write about horses, we suggest getting a subscription to Horse and Rider. The articles are written by people in the field and not by writers researching an article.

That is a common  thing when it comes to a specialized topic like horsed, many people write about it, but not many people know much about it...

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