Aspen Finds a Home

This week, Aspen's adoption was completed.  We hauled her to her new owner and we think she will be very happy there.  (If horses are happy!!)

Susan and Don are her new owners and Susan said she has been wanting a horse her whole life.  They have a big place and pasture (if it ever rains) for her to run in.  Eventually, they will probably get another horse for Aspen to be with.  Susan wants to learn Natural Horsemanship so we will be teaching her how to work with Aspen.  Aspen was a favorite with both us and Stephanie, her Bluebonnet contact, as she was so nice to work with. 

The Bluebonnet Horse Rescue Expo

We participated in the Bluebonnet Horse Rescue a week or so back. This is the third year we have participated and the Expo is growing steadily. This year there were lots more vendors and eighteen clinicians and demonstrations to watch. There was everything from drill teams to horse clinicians to vaulters. It was very interesting. There were many more vendors and while the adoptions were down a little, because of the drought and economy, there were lots more people at the Expo. This Expo promises to be bigger and better in the future. There is no other big Expo in this area and that makes more people come to it. Make plans to go next year. It only cost $5 to get in and this is Bluebonnet’s main fund raiser.

Jere did a demonstration on personalities of the horse. A couple of his students chose several horses that were there to be adopted and he told what kind of personalities they had and what to do for each of the four personality types. He was in the outside arena, but even so had quite a few in the audience.

We would like to thank all of our students, friends and family that showed up to support us. We got to visit and they were a lot of help. We sure appreciate you all.

Spending Money With No Return or The Money Pit

October 14, 2011

SPENDING MONEY WITH NO RETURN, OR THE MONEY PIT

Sure is nice to have this beautiful weather we are having!! We do need some more rain, but it has been much cooler and it is really enjoyable. We had one of those ultra light airplanes go over us this morning. It had a multi colored canopy on it and the horses sure watched it. Foxy ran all over her pen and had her head up and really thought it was a giant buzzard, come to eat her!!

This week has been a busy week again for us. We have had lots of lessons, and a couple of clinics. We do have more room for horses to ride though. We have almost finished up the ones we have here. Speaking of getting some use from your horses instead of letting them stay in their stall or pasture all the time………………………….

The dream team, Sox & Pat

Jere and I, as proponents for Natural Horsemanship, feel that it is our job to inform people about Natural Horsemanship. One of the ideas Natural Horsemanship embraces is that you should be able to ride your horse, be safe, and have fun. Lots of people we see just go see their horse and feed him a carrot and pet his head and that is the extent of their interaction with their horses for that day. Why do they see him once a week and don’t do anything with him? They can’t handle him!! He runs over them, steps on them, and maybe even bites or kicks. You have considerable money invested in this horse by now. You have moved him into a barn or to your home, had the farrier come and work on him, had his shots, worming and Coggins taken care of and even bought tack and equipment. If you are spending all this money, why can’t you get out there and do something with him? Because you can’t control him! Go take some lessons and do it every week and then practice. Plan some time for him. I know we all have busy lives, but if you don’t have time for him, maybe you don’t need to own him? Horses are living breathing animals, and if he is standing in a stall or pen all the time, this isn’t good for him. We see so many people who have horses they are just paying for, not riding or enjoying and it is an easy problem to fix. Spend time at lessons, clinics and practices and you will be able to go on trail rides or show him or anything else. And you will get some fun out of all that money you spent. Wasn’t that the idea when you got him?!

Next Saturday, October 22, from 9a.m. to 7p.m., we will be at the Bluebonnet Equine Rescue’s Expo at the Travis County Expo Center in Austin. Jere will be demonstrating how to read the personality of the horse at noon in the outside arena. We also have a booth. Drop by and see us. The Expo has eighteen different clinicians and demonstrations, a silent auction, used tack sale, parade of breeds and lots of different vendors. You will find lots of horse stuff to interest you. This Expo is Bluebonnet’s main fund raiser and also a place where you can adopt a horse. There will be about 50 head there that need to be adopted and you can come and look and choose one.

Have a good week and get out there and do something with your horse!!

The Quality Of Our Students

October 1, 2011
Jere rode in the Jack Brainard Clinic in Leaky, TX on September 24 and 25. We love going to clinics to learn new things. It gives us new life and feeds us, and in turn, we do a better job at the next clinic we give. Jack taught some lead changes and Cowboy or Western Dressage. Jere has long advocated what he calls “Dancing with Horses” and got some new moves to try on his patient students. We took Bandit, our most finished horse. Sherry and Jackie came and rode in the clinic too, and I must say they really made Jere look like a good instructor. Jackie especially conquered some confidence issues, and we were really proud of both of them.

Our 3 Day Trail Riding Clinic was a success too. We had it at a very nice facility down the road from us at Tarpley, TX. This was Jody Campbell’s J C Horseshoe Ranch. Jody has a covered arena, quite a few stalls in a brand new barn, an outside arena, and she also has run out sheds with little pens around them. She does overnight boarding and does other horse stuff. Look at her page on the web. http://www.jchorseshoeranch.com/index.html We had 11 riders and we had a very good time.

When we start having lots of clinics and lessons and get really busy, we really start to appreciate the quality of the students we have who are trying very hard to learn Natural Horsemanship. This study takes time and energy. No one can do it for you. You have to put the time and energy into it. Lots of people believe that horses are like motorcycles. You have the mechanic work on them and park them in the garage and then take them out when you want to ride them and you have a nice ride. A horse may ride like a motorcycle, but he darned sure isn’t like one. You have to take the time it takes to have a good horse that you can ride down the trail or at a show. I can’t emphasize how much difference it makes when you actually spent the time and energy to put the foundation on your horse. Then when you take him to a ride or show you can have a good time instead of having problems and endangering everyone else.

We have an Advanced Horsemanship Clinic coming up on October 8 & 9 again at Jody Campbell’s Horseshoe Ranch in Tarpley, TX. There has been quite a lot of interest in this clinic. Jere is hoping to teach some of the things he learned at the Brainard Clinic.

You have to be able to do the ground exercises well, ride at a trot and walk and keep control of your horse for this clinic. This is also a progressive clinic. You cannot take one day only. You have to take both days. Please e-mail me if you are interested.

We have had 4 inches of rain in the last couple of days. It has also cooled down and this is wonderful!! We are so thankful for the rain. Have a good week!

The Life of a Busy Clinician

September 14, 2011


No rain yet! Guess we have stopped getting it. I am now watering the big oak trees in the pasture. Without trees, this little 5 acres would be a wasteland! Funny the difference shade makes to a pasture.

We have had a very busy week. We have given a couple of Seminars to an Eventing barn, given a ground clinic to a group of people, we have almost finished getting ready for our 3 day Trail Clinic this weekend and we have done some re-organizing of our business. Very busy time for us.

Folks from the Eventing barn watching Jere doing the “Scary Jere” look.

The Seminars were a big success. We went to a barn in Boerne, TX and showed them just what Natural Horsemanship is and how it can work on their horses. We also showed them a lot of how the ground work works with the riding. The people at the barn were really fun and had good questions. We will be going back there for some lessons etc.

We are going to be working up a Seminar Program we can give to different barns that don’t know what Natural Horsemanship is all about. It will include What is Natural Horsemanship, How do you read a horse’s personality, and how does the ground work fit with your riding? We will give a 3 hour program and the barn will provide several problem horses. If you know of anyone who would be interested, tell me and I will contact them.

The 3 Day Trail Clinic is almost upon us. But we are ready. Jere is making our bridge this morning. We will be using the ACTHA list for obstacles and we have chosen 6 that they have in their rides. Go to the ACTHA page and open the rides tab. Then on that, there is an obstacles listing. It tells how they judge the obstacle and how the rider and horse should look.

We have been having a discussion among ourselves that is very interesting. In Natural Horsemanship we have 4 phases of getting a horse to do what we want. We also always say, we do not use “make” or force ways. But if we have to go to Phase 4 and smack, does the horse have any other choice than to do it. Is he not forced? This is a very important and interesting question, I think. Discuss it with your friends and get back to us on what you think. We will be talking about this in the future.

Next weekend is the Jack Brainard Clinic on Western Dressage in Leaky, TX. Jere will be riding in this clinic and so will several of our students. You may audit this for free, but you can’t ask questions as an auditor because they want the people who have paid to get enough time. Come out and watch this. It will be a classic. And you get to see Jere hollered at, like he hollers at you!!!

SOMETHING YOU CAN’T MISS - We have 2 horses at the house for training that are Bluebonnet Equine Rescue horses. Their foster homes are paying for training so that hopefully they can be adopted. They are both very nice sweet mares. The Bluebonnet Equine Rescue EXPO is October 22, 2011 at the Travis County Expo Arena. This is a big deal and a lot of fun. Both these horses will be up for adoption.  Their names are Aspen and Foxy Girl.  There are all kinds of demonstrations (and Jere is giving one of them) and a trainers challenge for people who train these horses. The whole idea is to get these horses adopted into a “forever” home!! All animal rescue’s are between a rock and a hard spot right now with big round bales costing $125. Please come out and support the Expo and Bluebonnet Equine Rescue. And if you or anyone else would like to adopt a really nice horse that we have put some time into and their foster homes have worked too, please come and look at them. Here is their web page address.

http://www.bluebonnethorseexpo.com/blog/

Have a good week, and PRAY FOR RAIN.

It Is Hot and Dry!!

August 29, 2011


Another hot day in Utopia, TX!! 106° YIKES!! I hope we get some rain pretty soon. Or at least some cooler weather!!

We have had a pretty busy week. We mowed (which doesn’t take long with no rain). Then we did some watering. We can’t water much because, like everyone else who is on a city water system, we are on restrictions. I am keeping the trees alive and some of my more expensive plants and that is all.

It is interesting which plants are doing well. The Lantana is growing quite a little, but not blooming much. The Plumbago is going crazy with beautiful blooms, and has not been watered much at all. The poor Knock Out Roses that were blooming so beautifully are decimated by the deer. The deer are not supposed to like them, but when there isn’t much else to eat, they really go after them. Most everything else but the Vitex trees are getting ate or dying. I also have a couple of little paper magnolia trees, and they sure are having a hard time, even with us giving them much more water than anything else.

The garden, which was so prolific at the start of summer is not doing so well, not because of lack of water, but because of the heat. The tomatoes gave us a lot at the first of the summer but then the heat started working on them. I am going to take up 2 or 3 of them and put them in pots on the shaded porch. We will see how they do there.

This heat sure makes it hard to get all the riding done that we want to. We get up pretty early and try to get all the clients horses ridden, and then around 2 or 3 p.m. we go in and do catch up work. We would like to ride a couple of our own horses, but it is impossible. But if we can just be patient, we will get cool weather here pretty soon. It is already cool in the mornings. Hard to believe it can get from 75° to 110° in one day.

Well, stay inside as much as you can. And bring in as many pets as you can. It is too hot for them outside.

Horse Personality

August 22, 2011
No rain for us this week either.  Guess we aren't doing something right.  But life goes on, even though we are in one of the worst drouths in history.  Here is a little about our life. 


I got the Newsletter out last week. It is a pretty good sized job (or at least it is for me) to get these little five pages written. But it is well worth it when I get back e-mails saying something in it has helped someone. I got back two e-mails like that today. Advertising is one of the hardest things for me and Jere to do. We even have trouble getting our brochure and business cards put out in feed stores and vet offices!! I would like to hire someone to just do publicity and promotions, but can’t justify it yet. So back to the drawing board for me. Our publicity depends on booths at various horse events, our brochures and cards distributed in stores, the newsletter and blog I write, face book and our web page and the thing that is the best advertising, word of mouth. We have done some print advertising, but felt it didn’t really pan out.

The Blog is another hard one to do, because it takes so much time, but I have recently bought a little book that shows how to produce ideas to write, by putting some word that you want to write about in a circle, and then brainstorming words that seem to go with it. As I get older, I find it harder to think of things to write about and this little technique seems to help a lot. One thing I like about the blog is that it flows better, because I know I can write about what I want.

On to Horsemanship….We believe one of the best things that ever happened in the horse world was for Linda Parelli to wake up at 2:30 in the morning and start writing the Horse Personalities out. Before, we knew that horses were somewhat different, but we didn’t know what to do for each personality or what characteristics each horse had. We think this will change the horse world the world over. Many people have started using this program to figure horses out and while some people are doing a little different system, it is still helping the horse to learn. Think what it would be like for schools to use a system something like this on kids. They would learn according to how their personalities are. I know that sure would have helped me in school!!

We have four geldings here now in for training. We try not to put more than two horses in the smaller pastures we have, so there are two geldings in each pasture.

The first is named Gully. He is a 3 year old and is Cully’s horse. He is a left brained extrovert and if he doesn’t get enough work or things to keep him active, he will tear stuff down, get into the fences and skin himself up and so on, generally making a nuisance of himself. His pasture mate is an older horse named Willie. Willie is about 10 and has seen it all. He has all sorts of scars on his front legs, so we aren’t sure what his life was like before.  But Willie is a left brained introvert, who gets along no matter what. When we first put Gully and Willie together, Gully tried to dominate Willie. But soon, Willie had enough of that and started backing up to Gully and kicking him! A couple of days of this and they both get along by staying away from each other. Sort of like a truce. They really don’t like each other, they just get along.

We have two more geldings in another pasture. The first is Lucky, a young paint. He is left brained extrovert, but he is very non-confrontational. Lucky just wants a playmate, but he is always the low man on the totem pole. He is a very sweet, easy to get along with colt.

The gelding we have in with Lucky is Choco. He is brand new, but he seems to be a left brained extrovert too, with dominance issues. He and Lucky started out fighting like crazy and we thought maybe poor old Lucky would get to be the boss of somebody, finally. But it was not to be. Chaco pushes Lucky off his feed, and Lucky knows his place and moves to another pile of hay. They seem to really like each other now, and will play “bite face” all day.

It is really interesting to watch these horses and the other horses we have here in their herd. Sometimes they change from being one horse personality to being another in the same day and sometimes even when we are working them in a round pen session. The best way to figure out what your horse is, is to sit and watch what they do with other horses.

I hope you all have a very profitable and worthwhile week. We have a couple of private lessons and lots of regular lessons. Cully’s brother-in-law is also coming down to stay a while and work some horses. We are looking forward to that. Hopefully, I will get some pictures into the blog next week.

New Blogging Going On

August 15, 2011

I guess it is never going to rain again. Every morning we wake up to hazy wet looking skies and then about 10 a.m. the sun comes out and fry’s us!! We are getting tired of hot weather and drought!! But I guess we better get used to it, because it might last longer. I have noticed it looking more fall-y in the evenings though, so maybe we will get some relief soon.

This blog is an add on to our Mustang Blog. It is going to be about the life of a horse clinician and his wife. But it will be from the viewpoint of the wife. Because that is what I am. Sometimes I love it and sometimes I don’t like it so well. Jere and I have worked so many low paying and difficult jobs, that we are thankful for anything like this where we can make a decent living.

When I decided to write this Blog, I wanted to do four things. First, I want to try to give you an idea of what we do in our lives on a day to day basis. Second, I want to keep all our students and students to be apprised of the dates and times of the events we are having. Three, I would like to entertain so that you will read my blog!! And fourth, I would like to educate about Natural Horsemanship.

Here is a little background on us. We are Jere and Cathy Johnson. Jere was born in Colorado and his Dad was a horse trader. I also was born and raised in Colorado as a dairyman’s daughter, who was nuts about horses from the time I was a little girl. We both had four siblings and we both were raised in rural areas. We met at Otero Junior College in La Junta, Colorado and married. We have three children, Cully, who lives here, Cory who lives in Waller, TX, and Jereny who lives in Burnet, TX . All of them are in the horse business of one type or another and we consider ourselves very lucky in that way.

We have been able to stay close to the horse business through the 46 years of our marriage. Jere and I both worked in feed lots, for veterinarians and on ranches. We have taken a few jobs out of our field, like working in a warehouse, working landscaping, and a few things like that. But mostly we have worked with and around horses.

This week was a pretty busy week for us at the Center. We have had 2 new horses come in and we need to get these owners, who don’t know much about Natural Horsemanship going on understanding the program and why their horses do what they do. We train the owners along with the horses. There is no use working with the horse and sending him home and then the owner can’t get the horse to do anything. We always say a horse is not like a motorcycle. You can take the motorcycle to the garage and have it overhauled and take it home and park it in the garage. The next time you want to ride it, you just put the key in and off you go. A horse is not like that. They are living, breathing, thinking animals and you have to have a relationship with them, make some time for them, and want to put them first.

Well, that is enough for now.  I am going to try to blog every week, so next Sunday will be my day again.  Thank you for reading it!!

Pintada

Pintada did well today.  We worked on getting her behind the bridle.  She still tends to heavy in the front end.  She pushes her hind end through her front end.  She tends to loose focus and get mad.  If you are patient and let her work through her fit, she will settle down.  She is tough to deal with when she has fit because she has won in the past.

We also worked at flexing at the poll.  She is doing well at this.  We worked on leg yeilds.  She does them, but she tends to push on the bridle when she does them.  That is because she is so heavy on the front end. 

We also worked a little on the walk trot transitions.  She has a sort of Western Pleasure trot.   

2011

Well, here we are in 2011 and time has just seemed to fly by.  We haven't written much in our blog, but will try to keep up with it on the horses we have now. 

The first edition of the new year is Pintada, a black and white Paint mare.  She is very dominant to everyone.  But this makes sense, since she lives with her two colts and has been the boss of them since they were born. 

We have been working with her for about two weeks and she is showing a lot of progress.  We first taught her that she couldn't run over everyone.  She was pushy and thought she should be able to come into our space. 

We have been doing all the ground exercises with her.  We also have done the catching exercise with her and she tied right on to Jere. 

One of her biggest problems was that she would throw her head when she had anything in her mouth.  We have been letting her wear the bit along with the Natural Halter on.  This seems to help her learn to not throw her head.  We don't know why she throws her head with the bit in, but it probably has a lot to do with the riders hands. 

This mare is very smart and catches on fast.  She is very willing since she has gotten over trying to be dominant over everyone.  This mare just wanted a leader that she knows will keep her safe.