Draft Horse, Saddle Horse Training at Bowers Farm

Latest News

"Harnessing, Hitching and Driving" Is Now On DVD!

Our popular video set, "Harnessing, Hitching, and Driving The Draft and Driving Horse" is now being offered in DVD. With all of the chapter divisions and a complete menu of subjects within this DVD, you're going to like the easy access! You can order your new DVD version of this title by clicking on our Video button and then going to our online store.

BIG FOUR PROJECT

Here's a photo from sometime during the late summer '06, showing Nate and me training the Big 4 Project horses. If you missed it, there's a link at the top of our Home page telling all about this new filming and writing project that we started in March of '06. Follow the links there to read a daily training blog that was written during the training of these horses. We hope you enjoy reading about this relevant and relational way of training draft and driving horses. Marlen (our videographer) and I are spending lots of studio time this winter editing the 92 hours of video we shot this year on the project. Soon, we'll have a few new DVD's that show exactly the steps that we took to transform untrained four and five year old horse into very valuable riding and driving horses. The pair on the front of the sled, Gus and Klaus, have been sold to Nordic Sleigh Rides in Breckenridge, CO, where they have been doing sleigh rides nightly - their new owner says they are the best handling team he owns! Clyde, the darker horse being led, has also been sold, to a lady who used to do carriage rides in downtown Denver. She bought him for a pleasure riding and driving horse, and thinks he's pretty neat. We still own Katie, but plan to offer her for sale sometime this spring. Give us a call if you are interested in her. She's priced at $5000.

On Friday, March 17, ’06, we picked up four head of draft horses that a gentleman in Loveland, CO had given us. You don’t often get an offer like that – free horses. We certainly weren’t looking to add on more horses around our place because we’ve already got ourselves into plenty of projects without having more horses around. But Free Horses! We had to do it. He told us the reason for this unusual offer is that he loves the horses, has always had great hopes for how well they would turn out, and he wants them to have a nice future. He further explained that he’s been over occupied with running his own business for the past few years, and had been feeling very guilty about not getting the time to do any training on the horses. He had taken good care of them, and managed to get time to go out there and pet on them and be nice to them every now and then, but they were getting older and hadn’t really learned how to be useful yet. His answer to the above problem was to give them to me so they would begin to get trained and hopefully they’d move forward into having long and useful lives. Before coming to this decision, he’d kicked the idea around about selling them as they were, but quickly changed his mind when he realized that the main buyers for older, untrained draft horses are killer buyers, and he didn’t want that to happen to them.

A New Filming Project

After realizing that we were going to take him up on his offer of free horses, we got the idea that this might be an ideal project to film from start to finish on all four horses. There should be plenty of “real life” horse training sessions to film and teach with as these horses progress from their current “low value” status toward being very highly valuable horses. We plan to show how we do ground work, long lining, introducing the bit, first pulling of objects, first harnessing, first hitching to vehicles, seasoning activities, hoof handling, and riding on all four horses. As you can see, we hope to get lots of useful footage to use for our future production of educational materials, both written and filmed.

New Natural Driving School at Bowers Farm

We've had a great first year with our new Natural Driving School. It's been busy, with folks coming from all over the U.S., and even a lady from "The Working Horse Trust" in England! Most of our guests have brought along their own horses for a week of training, but many who come just want to learn things on our Bowers Farm horses. Peggy enjoys cooking for hungry people, and so far, our guests have all had a knack for making her happy. A day of horse training and hitching out in the beautiful countryside around our farm seems to work up a healthy appetite! You can read more about this popular new program by clicking on our "Workshop" button over on the left side. We try to keep pictures of some of our latest guests posted on that page, as well as some information about cost and how to arrange a stay.

Horse Progress Days '06

Rich Hotovy driving a four abreast of Fjords on a hitch wagon during Horse Progress Days '06 in Clare, Michigan.

Steve had a great time teaching at Horse Progress Days'06! We got lots of great footage of local Amish horses being trained by Steve. This year, there seemed to be a huge shift in the amount of interest in this new way of training (instead of "breaking"), especially among the Amish. Nate even sold a "Training The Driving Horse" DVD to an Amish guy who watched our presentations. The Amishman said that he didn't really have any idea how he was going to watch the DVD, but that he was going to get it figured out. Maybe he knows where he can get a kerosene powered computer!

Consulting For Parelli In Florida

Steve has been to Florida several times as a consultant for Pat Parelli - helping to get their draft horse using program going. In this photo, Steve is keeping the horse facing forward with the long lines while Pat, riding his horse, Magic, adds some pressure to the traces. The idea is to drag the subject horse backwards with the traces until the horse resisits the trace pressure and leans forward, into the trace pressure. This is one of the ways Steve teaches horses to be strong on the traces while not pressuring the reins.

DRAFT HORSE JOURNAL

Steve has had articles published in the Draft Horse Journal fairly regularly starting with the Summer '96 issue with the article about lateral alignment. His articles are often bought by other magazines, but usually you'll see them in DHJ first because we think it's the best. Recently, instead of writing about the dynamics of hitching and driving horses, Steve has been writing some new articles, geared more toward training and handling draft horses that we know you'll find useful.

"Space Invasion" talks about how important it is to be a person who knows how to win the game of controlling the space between the horse and the human when the horse is being led. The article goes on to show three different methods for the human to gain control of that all important space. Winter '03 -'04 issue of Draft Horse Journal has an article Steve wrote about the safe use of shoeing stocks. For Spring '04, he has an article on how to train your horse to be nice about having its feet handled for shoeing. For Summer issue, Steve has an article about line handling called "Driving Toward Lightness", where he teaches how to get a horse to lighten up on the lines. Autumn, '04 issue has an article called "The Warren Mount", about how to make and use a line handling device that makes it possible to triple the power of the teamster on the lines, as a safety device. Winter 04,'05 has an article about holding your horse for the veterinarian, and Spring '05 has an article called "Tall Horse, Short Stirrups". This article tells you how to teach your horse to side step into position near a fence so it is easy to get onto a tall horse when riding. Summer '05 has another training article called "Putting The Cart Before The Horse". For Spring, '06, we have an article in that issue about the New England D Ring harness. This is great information to know about, so we hope you rush right out and get a copy of Draft Horse Journal if you aren't already a subscriber! You can find out more about the Draft Horse Journal by going to their link on our Links page, which is accessed from our Home page.

New Book By MBI!

SOME SHORT STORIES

SELLING A VIDEO SET TO AN AMISH MAN!

I know, some of you are going to be disappointed that we've eroded the morals of an Amish guy by selling him this bit of our modern technology! But we were so flattered! Eli from Indiana called with some training questions. He had watched me train some horses at a Horse Progress Days in his area a couple of years ago. When I told him that a lot of what he needs to see is on one of our videos, I just knew he'd think I was crazy for offering, since Amish people don't even own TV's, let alone VCR's! Eli only hesitated for a second, then said "Send me a copy. I have a neighbor who'll let me watch it on his TV!" Selling a video to an Amishman is going to go on my updated resume, under "Sales Experience".

THE BENEFITS OF OWNING A BICYCLE HITCH

Recently, we've been selling bicycle hitches to many of the bigger hitches in the country. When we ran into one of our past customers at a draft horse show in our area this winter, we asked the owner of the hitch how he liked the eight up of bikes he'd bought. He said, "I'll tell you about those bikes. Before owning the bikes we were competing with the other outfits, but not winning. Since we bought the bikes, we've been winning!"

FIRST AND SECOND AT THE 6 HORSE HITCH CHAMPIONSHIP!

We recently watched the North American Classic 6 Horse Hitch Competition at the National Western Stock Show in Denver, CO. When they got the placings down to #'s 1 and 2, and the crowd was waiting to hear which of those two had won, all I could think about was how the class had finally wittled down to something I could get excited about. Those two hitches, Ames and Simpson, were the only two hitches in that lofty class that had something that relates to Bowers Farm. They were the only ones in the class who own bicycle hitches they had bought from us!

THE CHUCKWAGON RACE DRIVER

They had an obstacle driving competition at the Big Four Fair in Nasua, Iowa, with hitch drivers bringing in their golf carts with the bikes on the front for the competition. These guys had been practicing with their bikes and there was a lot of friendly boasting going on between the competitors about who was going to win. A guy from Canada who drives in chuckwagon races came to the fair as a spectator and was amazed to see all of these American hitch drivers having a competition with bikes - something he'd never seen! He politely asked if he might be allowed to give it a try in the competition. Guess what - this guy won the obstacle drive with the bikes! Not only that, but he really kind of smoked them! Beat them by a wide margin! To those who ask, "Do those things drive much like horses?" we now tell this story.

NEW COMPETITION WITH THE BICYCLE FOUR UP
( See It In Action)

A recent issue of The Draft Horse Journal has some interesting show results. It seems there was a new hitch driving class at the Scott County Fair in Jordan, Minnesota. We've reproduced part of page 175 of The Draft Horse Journal, Autumn 2004 issue, so you can read all about it.