Horse Karate- how to train a cow horse without cows

The humble cow horse of our forefathers generations were trained on the roads and on farms or stations. However in todays world with the price of cattle and the ever growing shift away from horses as the primary method of moving and sorting cattle, we must turn to new routes of training. Many popular ideas have come about over the past few decades, some of the ones I’ve heard of are: Mechanical cows, Buffalo, Bison, Goats, Alpacas, your nan in a cow suit.

That last one was just a joke… I hope.

However, the method we are casting the spotlight on today is the development of the dry work and in particular how to train a cow horse without cows.

Disclaimer- The cow horse industry in my opinion is one of the most competitive industries I have come across. Every competitor is looking for an edge and for the best outcome in your training you should be incorporating a wide range of dry and wet work. This being said not everyone has the opportunity all the time and we must seek to do the best job with what we have at any time.

For the average person turning their hand towards training a cutting horse I’d suggest you wouldn’t be able to achieve success without the use of cattle on at least a somewhat regular basis. However its not all doom and gloom for the rest of us. In all other disciplines including Two handed cutting, Reined cow horse, Stockman’s challenge and Campdrafting it is more than achievable with the correct program and mindset to at least make a run at success.

Before I get into some of the exercises and thoughts you should be leveraging to do so, I will just touch on the main theory that has helped me with the thought process needed to achieve this.

Horse Karate

I have coined the term “Horse Karate” for my dry training as I think it explains the methods required perfectly. Coming from someone who has never done a day of karate in their life, I would explain it as follows- Repeating specific movements and processes, to create specific automatic responses, to certain specific situations. The only difference is, in our example we want to karate chop a cow not a human.

When we think on this as a concept and apply it to our horses, what we end up with is essentially the opportunity to create small specific movements that we do exactly the same way day to day to create an automatic muscle response from our horse. This can be tricky as the horse can very quickly go sour from this kind of riding. For this I offer the 1% rule and the 3 day rule.

1% rule-

Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Metallic Cat so take it one day at a time and when you get 1% better, QUIT!

3 day rule-

Like every good training plan you can’t do the exact same thing too many days in a row or you’ll end up like one of those body builders with huge biceps and tiny calf muscles… no one wants that. Only do the same thing 3 days in a row before doing something different or mixing it up.

Rollback

I’ll start with the turn or rollback. This is a great place to start the conversation as it’s one thing we share in all disciplines of the cow horse industry.

Now, as far as I’m concerned there are two schools of thought with training a rollback and then multiple sub sections beneath each banner and also many possible interlinks of the two. The first is obviously to work cattle and with the aid of the cow sense of the horse you allow the cow to pull your horse through the turn and shape the turn as the days progress. In the case that this isn’t possible we can opt for the second way, this is to use our horse Karate method. This requires the rider and horse to practice the simple movements of a turn broken down into components and master each small movement until it becomes an automatic response to a given cue.

For my turns I use probably something like 5 or 6 different exercises, they are all small and easy to accomplish for my horse and when added together they make up the rollback. They are as follows: lateral flexion, vertical flexion, backup straight with vertical flexion, backup with lateral and vertical flexion and finally the rollback. Check out our YouTube channel for examples. The use of a mechanical cow is highly recommended in this case for maximum effect.

Rating a cow

Moving on to the rating of a cow is the next thing in line.

Rating a cow in itself is the ability of your horse to sense the rapid deceleration or change of direction of a cow moving with forward momentum. This skill is also used throughout the cow horse industry for various different applications including but not limited to, chasing a cow in the arena Campdrafting, going down the fence in a Challenge or Reining Cow Horse event and even rating a fast running cow in the cutting pen.

The theory I have found that works best for me in my Campdrafting is to have my horse as broke as possible in the mouth and body (to an extent) to create a fast rider -> horse message pathway before I ever teach them anything about rating a cow. I wont get too far into my methods for this but just know that the softer the horse the better off you’ll be when teaching them to rate. Once this is accomplished you’ll need the help of either, someone on a motorbike, on a horse (a non- kicker is strongly recommended) or the next door neighbours kid on a bike (the annoying child is recommended). What it is, isn’t as important as how you use it, however I personally use another horse as I don’t have the option of a 4 wheeler or an unloved child.

We can teach a horse to rate by following your imitation cow of choice and telling the driver to stop at different times and allowing our horse to run past or up the ass of it before backing back to the distance we were at when chasing. Usually it will only take 2 or 3 go’s at this before the horse gets the message, once the safety aspect is set in we need to obtain softness behind the cow. This is obtained by consistently doing micro checks on our horses mouth to see if they are being responsive or charging on the bit.

If we find at any point they are charging you should slow down quickly, then take them off the cow and do some kind of flexion exercise such as the side pass with intent of moving the ribs until you feel the horse release the tension then go straight back to the cow.

Doing this over and over has helped me create a string of horses that are not only responsive to my hands when chasing a beast but also safe in a bad situation like a cow stumble or something similar.

In conclusion, as long as we practice good mental theory’s with our horse training, don’t let our horse get bored and keep everything fresh day to day it is more than achievable to create a really solid cow horse over a number of years without the direct use of cattle. All that is required is to be super disciplined and think about every aspect of each movement and break it all down into manageable pieces before building it all back up again to form a working cow horse.

End notes

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