TRUE TRAINING 106 - Tumbleweed Attack
Jan 15, 2025 by Janet Jones
Welp, a horse is a horse is still a horse. True is 8 years old now and has been in training for 6 of those years. He’s a great horse with excellent ground manners, solid flatwork both English and Western, good low jumping skills, a budding ability to sort cows, and lots of experience with scary things like sheep, fence panels, big rocks, and snakes. He has mastered all of them well and, as you might recall, even chased a big snake out of an indoor arena one afternoon.
But of course his prey brain still exists. With 56 million years of evolution, we humans aren’t going to erase the prey brain. Instead, we are lucky to have learned how to lay lessons over the top of it to teach horses not to shy from every single leaf that wiggles. And most of True’s lessons have been very effective. He has mastered his fears of hundreds of things in our environment and has learned to slow his reactions enough to listen to my guidance. Yesterday was unusual, and a good reminder.
Our high temperature yesterday was 26 degrees. Not to mention the 20 mph wind that was blowing from the north, an unusual direction for our locale. The radio guy might have said the wind chill was 3 below, but I was trying not to listen. Weather affects True a lot, as it does most horses, and this was no exception. I elected to longe him because, well, because I was too cold to ride with strength and knew that in a cold wind True can be a handful. OK, more than a handful—this fellow can sunfish like nobody’s business.
So there we were, longeing at a canter in an icy wind. True was going along very nicely, when suddenly he spun, bolted, and bucked. When I turned him toward me, he galloped backwards. He was obviously afraid, but I was unable to see what he was afraid of. I glanced behind me for a split second while trying to manage a 17.1-hand warmblood with 1500 pounds of muscle on the end of a 30-foot line. And there it was.
A tumbleweed. Now this is not True’s first tumbleweed. He’s seen lots of them. He doesn’t like them, but he puts up with most. But this, True is quick to point out, was not just any tumbleweed. It was dense, tightly packed, heavier than most. It clocked in around two feet in diameter, not huge—but fast. And blowing from the wrong direction. Evidently, it had leaped the arena fence behind me, then began rolling toward True. Eeeeeeek!
I fought to keep him under control--well, ha! some semblance of control (since he had not pulled the line from my frozen hands). The murderous plant seemed to be on a mission to approach True, bending and turning on its path as he twisted and wrenched, like an iron filing attracted to a magnet. It finally came right up to his front feet, poor guy, where the wind popped it up toward his nose. True reared straight up, perfectly vertical, and used his forelegs to strike repeatedly at the the evil invader. True is neither black nor a stallion, but this was an Oscar-worthy imitation of the black stallion in the 1979 film adapted from Walter Farley’s book. He fought that tumbleweed hard!
He managed to strike it down to the sand and hopped away, snorting and blowing so hard you could have heard him wherever you live. I took pity on the poor fellow and rescued him by grabbing the tumbleweed. I talked to True for a bit, holding it low, then tried to bring it near his shoulder so he could feel it or near his nose so he could smell it, two techniques that usually work once I am holding an object that scares him. No way! He leaped away from the weed and from me, eyes wider as if I had somehow morphed into an evil twin weed that also had to be eradicated. I threw it over the fence—it was cold, I was tired—and approached True talking gently.
True and I are bonded up tighter than paint on a board by now, but he was having none of it. I had touched the evil invader, I had held it in my hand, and I was now part devil. “Don’t you come near me,” he seemed to shriek as the wind snapped my jacket around. He finally forgave me, but not without a lot of penance.
Did I mention: 8 years old, 6 years of training? Hey, he’s still a horse! I elected to finish our session in the round pen, then walk him cool in the arena. He was a bundle of nerves the entire time. Sometimes you just have to wait for tomorrow. So I did. Today True worked in the arena like a champ, no problems, no residual fear, and no nerves. He even let me pet him.
But of course his prey brain still exists. With 56 million years of evolution, we humans aren’t going to erase the prey brain. Instead, we are lucky to have learned how to lay lessons over the top of it to teach horses not to shy from every single leaf that wiggles. And most of True’s lessons have been very effective. He has mastered his fears of hundreds of things in our environment and has learned to slow his reactions enough to listen to my guidance. Yesterday was unusual, and a good reminder.
Our high temperature yesterday was 26 degrees. Not to mention the 20 mph wind that was blowing from the north, an unusual direction for our locale. The radio guy might have said the wind chill was 3 below, but I was trying not to listen. Weather affects True a lot, as it does most horses, and this was no exception. I elected to longe him because, well, because I was too cold to ride with strength and knew that in a cold wind True can be a handful. OK, more than a handful—this fellow can sunfish like nobody’s business.
So there we were, longeing at a canter in an icy wind. True was going along very nicely, when suddenly he spun, bolted, and bucked. When I turned him toward me, he galloped backwards. He was obviously afraid, but I was unable to see what he was afraid of. I glanced behind me for a split second while trying to manage a 17.1-hand warmblood with 1500 pounds of muscle on the end of a 30-foot line. And there it was.
A tumbleweed. Now this is not True’s first tumbleweed. He’s seen lots of them. He doesn’t like them, but he puts up with most. But this, True is quick to point out, was not just any tumbleweed. It was dense, tightly packed, heavier than most. It clocked in around two feet in diameter, not huge—but fast. And blowing from the wrong direction. Evidently, it had leaped the arena fence behind me, then began rolling toward True. Eeeeeeek!
I fought to keep him under control--well, ha! some semblance of control (since he had not pulled the line from my frozen hands). The murderous plant seemed to be on a mission to approach True, bending and turning on its path as he twisted and wrenched, like an iron filing attracted to a magnet. It finally came right up to his front feet, poor guy, where the wind popped it up toward his nose. True reared straight up, perfectly vertical, and used his forelegs to strike repeatedly at the the evil invader. True is neither black nor a stallion, but this was an Oscar-worthy imitation of the black stallion in the 1979 film adapted from Walter Farley’s book. He fought that tumbleweed hard!
He managed to strike it down to the sand and hopped away, snorting and blowing so hard you could have heard him wherever you live. I took pity on the poor fellow and rescued him by grabbing the tumbleweed. I talked to True for a bit, holding it low, then tried to bring it near his shoulder so he could feel it or near his nose so he could smell it, two techniques that usually work once I am holding an object that scares him. No way! He leaped away from the weed and from me, eyes wider as if I had somehow morphed into an evil twin weed that also had to be eradicated. I threw it over the fence—it was cold, I was tired—and approached True talking gently.
True and I are bonded up tighter than paint on a board by now, but he was having none of it. I had touched the evil invader, I had held it in my hand, and I was now part devil. “Don’t you come near me,” he seemed to shriek as the wind snapped my jacket around. He finally forgave me, but not without a lot of penance.
Did I mention: 8 years old, 6 years of training? Hey, he’s still a horse! I elected to finish our session in the round pen, then walk him cool in the arena. He was a bundle of nerves the entire time. Sometimes you just have to wait for tomorrow. So I did. Today True worked in the arena like a champ, no problems, no residual fear, and no nerves. He even let me pet him.
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