Beals Horsemanship

08/05/2024

02/01/2024

01/29/2024

Still one of my favourite illustration. I will often use a plastic banana to demonstrate those movements and talk about the "banana bend" 🍌 😄

Do you find them helpful...?!

01/07/2024

09/18/2023

09/12/2023

How much bend???
Imagine two parallel walls smashed right against your horse’s shoulders. Taking the nose past that wall (4) takes away their power.
This comes in handy, because sometimes we DEFINITELY want to take away their power. Over bending definitely helps with getting horses supple. Sometimes “taking the neck away” (like during transitions) can help a horse use their core to balance instead of using their neck to balance. But make no mistake- it helps them learn balance by knocking them off balance, and then the horse has to find their balance in spite of the neck positioning. This is obviously not something you want to do all the time, or for long periods of time. But if you have a horse that throws their neck up to transition, this extreme bend can interrupt that behavior and teach them to find a new way to use their body.
Most circles only require about the amount of bend in sketch (2)- about half way to that imaginary wall. We want the horse to bend at the poll, with no head tilt, and keep the base of the neck fairly straight. If you practice any counter bend, (2) is the most bend you would want. So if you are tracking left (big arrow) with a little outside bend (2), you only want to go about half way to the point of shoulder.
Three (3) is a lot of bend, while maintaining balance. Like (2), the bend should come mostly from the poll joint, while keeping the base of the neck fairly straight. This is the amount of bend you would want for a 10m circle or a walk pirouette.  If you want the horse to have access to his full power, this is the most bend you can ask for- any more and you’ll throw him off balance and take away his power.

08/28/2023

Sand horse! This is a very clever artist making their own beach horse

08/22/2023

08/07/2023

I just had the privilege of visiting with lifelong buckaroo, Clyde Brown to learn about his life. What a remarkable journey he has been on with a history of working on many of the most historic buckaroo outfits of the Great Basin. That said, I asked Clyde if it would be OK to mention that he is now seriously ill with Valley Fever which keeps him close to home with his parents in McDermitt and the dialysis machine in Winnemucca. He misses the buckaroo life terribly. Visits from friends and family mean a lot to him as winters with this illness are the hardest! Thank you Clyde, for helping me gather up this info!

A lifelong buckaroo, Clyde Dean Brown, 48, grew up on the Paiute/Shoshone Reservation, at McDermitt, Nevada. He grew up helping his uncle, Craig Garfield, with his cattle and horses and working at various ranches around McDermitt. After high school, he worked as a buckaroo for Martin Andre, Arock, Oregon, near Jordan Valley, then he moved to Paradise Valley, Nevada, to help Charley Amos on his ranch. After that, he moved to Twin Falls, Idaho to work for several years for the Twin Falls Livestock Commission. Then he moved to Owyhee, Nevada where he buckarooed for various ranches around Duck Valley before he went to work at the YP for seven years when Nathan Kelly was the buckaroo boss. There, during slow times, he’d also do ranch hand work like haying. He worked for the IL Ranch for a little bit for Gordon Wines.

After a brief return to McDermitt , he went to Nebraska for a little bit. Upon returning from Nebraska, he worked for the Ten-Mile Ranch owned by Terri and Dan Wagner at McDermitt. Clyde says, “They were good guys to work for…they had a big feedlot by the Hotsprings where I helped take care of yearlings. I had fun working when the cattle were sold by video.” He then worked for the historic Whitehorse Ranch for Brit Laye. “Skeeter Clark was there are that time….I enjoyed working for Skeeter …he was a good guy,” he said. Then he went to Bishop, California where he day worked for Jim Cashbaugh on his ranch just outside of town. On weekends he would visit James Shoshone who was then living in Fallon, Nevada. They’d team up to ride around and day work for area ranches. After this, he went to Bakersfield, CA and worked in the oil fields where he ended up catching valley fever. “It really messed me up. I currently can’t work because I have pneumonia and I’m in dialysis treatment,” he says. “I can still ride a horse and help with brandings but I need to ride a nice bridle horse and no c**ts until I get well again. I wish I could…I am really weak…I’d probably get dumped and drug…I really enjoy the buckaroo life and miss it!”