Paula Curtis (00:00)
You're listening to Because of the Horse, a podcast for equestrians who know that true horsemanship goes far beyond the arena. At the heart of this journey, horses teach us who we truly are, revealing what's possible when we let go of control, lead with love, and allow ourselves to be transformed from the inside out. Around here, horsemanship is lifemanship. And every conversation is a celebration of the ways horses help us grow into who we were meant to be.
Welcome, Martin. It's so good to have you here today. And so great to have you as a part of the horse fair this year. We're super excited about that. I talked with your son Wade. We had an interview, a year ago or so, and he was talking about how he would get maybe even home from school, but he'd have a string of eight horses that he'd have to go start and ride. And that was just kind of part of growing up. And
Martin Black (00:59)
Yeah, football practice didn't get him out of that.
Paula Curtis (01:02)
Yeah.
Martin Black (01:04)
In August in August one year he wanted to play football. I said, Okay, but you still got your string of horses. Yeah. Football at five o'clock in the morning and then come home seven or whatever time and ride horses all day. And then that afternoon he'd like at four o'clock or something, he'd he'd go back to football practice and then come back and we'd ride horses till dark. He still rode his string of horses. That wasn't gonna get him out of that. This was was when he was like a freshman or junior in nights high school.
Paula Curtis (01:33)
And not only that, but Tom Dorrance, Ray Hunt, and gleaning knowledge from people like that, who are legends, you know, in the industry. Can you talk a little bit about what that being brought in, you know, to or like how the learnings that occurred in that environment?
Martin Black (01:49)
Okay, so going back generations, my granddad and his brothers grew up in an environment where the vaqueros from California were coming in here with cattle in the eighteen seventies. And there was, I'm told this from several different people in the family, there was six vaquero wagons on the same for a period of time, not all year, for a period of time, as they was going through the country branding their their cattle, their calves.
Six vaquero wagons all camped at the same creek where my family would camp in the summer. So these kids grew up. And if you do the math, even if there's only 20 guys on each wagon, there's easily 100 vaqueros, buckaroos and vaqueros. And they distinguished the difference. The buckaroo is Anglo, vaqueros are Hispanic. Only difference. And they referred to each other as that. My uncle referred to
you know, this guy was a vaquero. They just mentioned him by name, you know, he was a vaquero, he was a buckaroo for whatever difference it made. Not being racist or anything. It was just it is what it is. So anyway, they grew up with these vaqueros and buckaroos. And I mean by looking at the old photographs of I got several photographs. I mean they had the silver spade bits and long tapaderos and riattas and I mean they obviously took that culture, not the Texas culture.
Or anything else. I mean, they were they were decked out. And that was just their everyday deal. They said my great granddad, whether he was gonna go anywhere or not, he would get up before breakfast and put his horse, tie his horse in the barn, grain him, comb his mane and tail out, and then go back and and get breakfast. And he might be doing something else and not even use the horse, go out and turn him out later. That was just what he did. He was real meticulous about that. And I grew up with that too. You know, my
My granddad and you know, growing up, you know. The deal was is clean your horse up every time you ride him, you never know when you're who you're gonna see that day. You don't just ride around your witches not in your horse's tail and his feet uncared for. You everything was was good. You might have an old wear out saddle, you know, might not have nice gear, but you took real good care of your gear and you took real good care of your horse and you know what not. So
That's that's what we grew kind of grew up with. And that was handed down. But also the horsemanship, by all accounts my great granddad, he was a very good horseman. You know, and when you say horsemen, well, teamsters are horsemen, blacksmiths are horsemen. I mean, how do you define horsemen? We think of Tom Dornston Ray Hutt. For survival, I mean, just the horsemanship that it took to rodeer them horses outside, that was it that took some horsemanship.
Not the same horsemanship that you see today in the round pen demonstrations. We're we're talking apples and oranges. But still understanding horses, understanding horses. And I don't know how you want to define horsemanship and that everybody's got their own opinion, that's all fine. But this bridle horse stuff, you know, making a good spade bit horse, that came from my great granddad to my granddad and my especially his brother and my uncle, Paul, who is one of my mentors.
As a young kid growing up, before Tom Dorns Ray Hunt ever came along. And Paul's mentored from a from a guy in California that asked him to be his cow boss on a horse delivery. They were selling horses down at the Battle Mountain area. And this guy's wanted him to come work for him, and he did. He worked for him for eight years and learned a lot about the refining bridal horses and whatnot. But that culture was here, is my point. And in the Bruno area.
Because my uncle worked in Nevada for this guy, and I've heard several accounts of this guy, Mr. Hill was one of the top bridlemen in Nevada, probably ever, but he comes from California, this Mr. Hill did. That was in Bruno. Ray Hunt, when he was nineteen, he was he grew up on a farm in Mountain Home, just twenty miles from Bruno. He got a r a job on a ranch in Bruno, and because of the cattle and this culture that was in Bruno and it
It kinda s not completely, but it really thins out once you cross the Snake River and and you get into the northern part of Idaho. But from the south of the Snake River all the way into Nevada, just the terrain and the the everything, this material culture was was pretty pretty thick. So anyway, basically Ray was on the other side of the river. That made that much difference. But when he got come over to Bruno, he worked with some guys that work in Nevada and they said if
You know, they told him if you wanna if you wanna do this cowboy stuff, you need to go to Nevada 'cause it's not irrigating, it's not feeding hay in the winter. It's twelve months out of the year your horseback. So he did. He went to work for the ranch that my uncle's on down there. And that was that was his first first cowboy job. First time to really do much of horseback. His dad was a teamster, you know, a farmer in Mountain Home.
And Tom Dornch actually came from the same area just north of here. The Dorch brothers all came from eastern Oregon, which there was probably a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty miles north of here, maybe not that much. But this culture went right on up into eastern Oregon, this great basin. And so they they was exposed to the not the same people necessarily, but the same culture. It's real heavy in eastern Oregon. The southwest corner of Idaho and and northern Nevada is is kind of the thick of it.
trickles into Utah a little bit and trickles into Washington, even even clear up into Canada to an extent. But you get a lot of other influences there the further away you get. So after I was in high school, but I already I already had a passion for the bridle horse deal and starting cults and understanding all that as best I I could. And I I sought people out. I if this guy said that guy was good, I'd try to get around that guy. And
learn all I could from just the locals around here. And not just about the horsemanship, but of the braiding rawhide and making your own silverwork and having the nice gear too. That was all that was all part of it. In high school I was making straight bits and building Riattas and braiding hackamores and stuff like that, learning from and some of these guys were good braiders, but they weren't necessarily that good a horseman. But I didn't care, you know, I was I was always looking for the smarter guy in the room. So when I
actually got around which at the time would have been my future brother in law. He was Ray Hunt's son in law. And I got around him and his dad and Van Norman's and that was kind of my link to you know, get introduced to Ray Hunt and then that was a link to get introduced to Tom Dorns. And after I got out of school, didn't waste any time getting around these guys and and Gene Lewis, I was another one of my mentors, but he's my mom's first cousin. He was born and raised on the Joyce Ranch. He went to California and
He competed in stock horse events down there with Don Dodge and Jimmy Williams and some of the biggest names in California. He was he was competitive with them. So he he was a good horseman. And anyway, I spent some time around him and Ray that first winter I was out of high school and and some with Tom. He was down there and just through the years I got to spend more and more time with not just Ray and Tom, but but anybody else, you know, some of these other
trainers, you know, the more modern trainers for snapple bit people and stuff like that. I might not agree with everything they done, but it you know I might not agree with what they had in their tack room, but if they got horses turning around or stopping better than mine, I was open to see how they done it. I didn't care if that was on backwards. If they could do something I couldn't do, I would overlook their hat on backwards and learn what I could from
Paula Curtis (09:54)
What were some of the lessons that you learned that really shaped what you were doing?
Martin Black (09:59)
There's thousands.
Paula Curtis (10:02)
Well right.
Martin Black (10:03)
Well, patience was Tom would always it was frustrating looking back on it 'cause he'd he'd tell me the same thing, basically slow down. But grew up working hard and putting in long hours and just like I raised my kids, but I thought we ain't got time to slow down. We got a lot to need to get done. And it was just the wrong approach for for horses. And of course I always heard, yeah, it takes patience and it takes lots of time and
Yeah, okay, well there there's the time allotted now, let's go. I mean but yeah, I was in my forties and my my kids were coming along, you know, in high school and whatever. And it took that long before I finally started realizing there's it's there's more to this patient stuff than I ever thought there could be. And that's actually when I started experimenting on just waiting on these horses after they do something right, just wait on
Which I later they'd lick their lips and I thought, Yeah, that's good and I always heard that it's when a horse licks his lips it's a good sign. But what I it took me till my forties to really learn and I seen Tom do it plenty of times, but I just I just couldn't wait that long. But what I learned is if you can you can set it up, you can't make a horse lick his lips, just like you can't make a horse relax. But you can set it up with just the right prescribed
amount of stress. And let the horse come off of that stressed area. And yeah, he'll relax and he'll lick his lips. And I learned later that that's homeostasis. Okay, I tell everybody I got a sixth grade education. I spent twelve years getting it. I never went to school to learn anything about chemistry or science or anything like that. But I what I wanted to do when I graduated from high school, I already had a degree and that was horses and cattle.
So I didn't need to go back to school. I hated school anyway. But anyway, I started experimenting with the homeostasis thing and not knowing, never even hearing about the word for probably 10 years or more. And that's why Dr. Peters pulled me out of the lineup. He says, Why do you do blah, blah, blah? And I said, Because it works. He says,
You know why it works? I said, No, but it's it works. And so then he started to tell me the chemical reaction, the serotonin and dopamine, and throwing all them words at me that I never heard of and homeostasis and so well that that all sounds impressive, but I don't know what the hell you're talking about. You might as well be speaking Spanish. But as time went on, you know, him and I got to doing more more together and exchanging ideas and
He had the science, he didn't have the experience. I had the experience, I didn't have the science. But I was very interested in putting my head together with his and likewise for him. And you know, we we still share a lot of things and work together. I guess that's I could go back into other mentors or whatever, but that's kind of my education in a nutshell.
Paula Curtis (13:12)
And what sorts of things did you learn through working with Dr. Peters that really confirmed the reason behind what you were doing and why it was working?
Martin Black (13:23)
Well, but in today's world this is an important point for horse owners today, I think. There's so much hype about desensitizing these horses and basically dumbing them down, to put it frankly, to the humans level. Got we got so many first time owners and I'm not saying they're dumb people. Most of these people are way more smarter than I am, more educated than I am, but just not with horses. I mean I got
Doctors, lawyers, I mean all kinds of really smart people, very successful business people coming to my clinics. They're definitely smarter than me, but not when it comes to horses. Obviously that's why they're there. But the clinicians today, for the most part, their deal is making these horses quiet enough for a first time horse owner, inexperienced person that we'll say got their first horse when they was fifty or
Maybe even older than that. Well, if your dendrites developed in other areas, you kind of miss the bus trying to ever catch up with the dendrites you have to work with on the horsemanship part of it. And the reason I say this is because I don't care how much people tell me how hard I try, I am not going to figure out these frickin' computers and cell phones. I don't have the dendrites for it. I can tell you what a cow is going to do.
Before she ever even thinks about doing it, because I grew up with it, just like my ancestors with the horses. But this is a different language, these cell phones and computers and everything. And people talk about the mode and this and that. And what the hell's a mode? I mean, that I cannot put a definition to what they're talking about. So it doesn't make sense. And I I get it. You know, when I'm trying to talk to people about these horses, they don't get it. Here they come back next year, we work on the same thing.
It's job security, and these people are smarter than I am, you know. Some of are like genius level, but they don't get it. So we have to bring these horses down to a level that they can accept whatever this person does. Whatever ridiculous thing they want to pack on this horse or come racing up to the horse, the chainsaw, the leaf blower, like you see at some of these competitions, cold starting things. The horse needs to tolerate that.
Back to what I grew up with. These horses were sensitive. It didn't take anything to stress them. Just putting these horses in the krill rose their stress level. As quiet as you wanted to be. And back to horses being amidextrious. I'll follow up on that in just a minute. These horses, if you let them go around the krill three times to the right, clockwise, and then turn them around and try to go the other way.
They wouldn't want to go that way because they start to get comfortable seeing you out of that right eye. Now the next horse you put in the krill, he's stressed, he goes to the left, to the point he starts to get a little comfortable, a little little let down, a little relaxed. And that left eye, you turn him and try to get him in that right eye. No, you have to be way further behind him to keep him going. And this is what I'm saying. I've done this I don't know how many thousands of times with cattle and horses.
You bring that stress level up and they get comfortable on one side or the other, they're left sided or they're right sided. That quick. In two minutes, you can create a left sided horse or a right sided horse. And most people never know it. And I tell people to you know, starting cults, now go up to his right side. Every opportunity you can, all your first impressions, try to make them on the right side. Don't even go to the left side till he's good on the right side. He'll catch up on the left side by the time you saddle him and bridle him and
Hall dream, do all the things that you wouldn't do on the left side because our gear's all set up to operate from the left side. He'll catch up. And what do they do? They walk up to the left side. It's such a habit for people. They just can't get it. And again, it's not because these people are stupid. That's not it. It's just they're wired a certain way. You know, I was pretty young, a guy said, walk up to these horses like you're balancing a full glass of water on your head.
Your feet have to hit the ground soft. The things I learned as a kid, you know, every mentor I got around just refined a lot of this. A lot of people, they thought I got my first horse when I was nine or sixteen or fifty two. And it's kind of like finding religion or finding, you know, born again Christians or something like that. It's a big aha moment for them.
I never really had any big aha moments. It was kinda like, well, I realize the depth of this more now or i it like I say, it just kept refining. And Dr. Peters, I didn't learn anything new from him necessarily. He helped me refine what I was already doing because I had more material to understand, more knowledge to understand the why. I knew it worked. Just didn't know why.
And it's not that I done that much different. If anything, it just identified kind of the landmarks in what I was doing. So I would make sure I look for those signs before we processed. It put more value to the homeostasis, which I was already working with that. I mean, I a lot of people don't think of this with cattle either, but people don't lick their lips, but they their tongue falls out and they run their tongue up their nose like they're licking their lips. You stress a cow.
And you put them somewhere where you want and just wait on they'll come to come homeostasis too. It's a little bit of a rabbit trail here again. But I like working cattle with people because I said they're so much like a horse. There's so many traits. Obviously there's things that they're not like a horse, but there's so many traits when you get inside their brain that they're almost identical to a horse. How you stress how you let them come back down to homeostasis.
And then they'll stay on the herd goes back to what my great granddad had to learn as a little boy, herding them horses. You stress you put back in the herd, then the herd is a safe place. They go they don't want to leave the herd. That might mean just chase around a little bit and put back. It might mean just kind of take three trot steps toward and turn back. It might mean rope and lay around, wrestle around a little bit and then let back, you know, out of air. That's where the whole
Green cow horse thing is circling cattle. That's where that traditionally came from. You take outside the herd, you circle till they're exhausted, put back in the herd, they get their oxygen back in the herd. They don't want to leave the herd again. So that's that's just what we learned. But anyway, the horses that I grew up with, they were stressed just to bring into the krill, 'cause it was a strange place for Just like first time loading a horse in the trailer. And so
I was always working to bring them horses down. Now what I find with these desensitized horses is they're already down. They're not going to learn anything unless you get them out their comfort zone. Which means you gotta stress them. Well, they've already desensitized these things to a flag, so I can't shake the flag and intimidate them. I can't even get a flight zone engaged because they're not afraid of anything. They've took that away from them. They've stripped them of any
fear that they might have. So now how do I get a response? I gotta inflict pain. I gotta spank this poor bugger to get him sensitized now. Then as I'm spanking this lady's horse, you're making my horse uncomfortable. Yeah, well, he's a prey animal. I'm a predator. You've erased that out of the equation. Now what's left?
Okay, you can you can get him to do whatever you want with treats, but whatever he learned previous to being desensitized is all this horse knows. And so if you didn't get it in on the foundation before you desensitized him, like halter breaking them and leading them and you know, picking their feet up or whatever, you have nothing to work with except treats to motivate this horse. And obviously that works for a lot of people. It doesn't work for me when I have to ride out here twenty five miles.
Because in the first mile it he doesn't have an appetite for treats anymore. Yeah, I'm dangling the carrot on the stick out there. Get him turn left, turn right. No. As soon as he loses his appetite, lesson's over. And how do I get home now? No, we gotta do the pressure release thing, which is stress back to homeostasis, stress to relax. That's the learning process. And Dr. Peters confirms that. I mean, it's I'm not making this up. It's been around as long as we've been working with
Not just horses, but cattle, I mean any domestic animals, prey animals operate off this.
Paula Curtis (22:39)
And you're leaving the horse as a horse rather than, like you said, stripping their true nature from them and not making that available to them, which is sad because now what are they? They're they're a domesticated horse, but they're not really the the horse which is which is beautiful and curious and interested and wants to learn and wants they don't mind a little bit of stress and
Then they come through that and now they've learned and now they're ready to learn even more because they're interested. Because I mean just like all of us, when something a little exciting happens, it's if if you come out on the other side, you feel like you've grown. And I do think horses like to grow and learn as individuals.
Martin Black (23:28)
Why do people have horses? Because if we get stressed, we can go play with our horse or our dog or whatever, and we can find a little relaxation with that. We get a good feeling from People operate off of stress, you know, the happy people are the ones that learn how to handle stress. Doesn't mean it does it's not there, but we handle stress. If we can't handle stress, you know, then we got P PTSD or whatever, all those all these things that they got letters for now that
We hadn't we as kids and whatever, but that's just being kids. Yeah. We get excited and too much sugar and not enough exercise and now they got names for all this, but you know, we grew up, we learned to handle stress and and that's what makes you successful in business or a lot of things. If you don't handle stress very good, well there's a lot of people have problems with that. But it's the same thing with horses. We we expose them to stress, we help them find where the comfort is.
That's what motivates them with people. It might be money, it might be coloring your hair a different color or wearing different clothes or whatever. But horses don't care about their clothes or their hair. That's a that's a human thing. But yes, they they need they need that balance between the stress and the relief, the homeostasis, that's what motivates horses. But most people think, Well, I don't want my horse to be uncomfortable. Well, uncomfortable doesn't mean putting a big bit on him and bloody in his mouth.
or spurs and raking the hair off of him. And that's what I guess back to Tom Dorns to answer your question. That's one thing that I learned from Tom Dorns, mostly because I worked with him more around starting Colts, you know, that first impression stuff, than I did a lot of other people. My other mentors were maybe more on the I I would come to some of these other mentors with a horse that I'm already riding. And of course he's not
Not perfect. So it's like, how do we fix all these mistakes I made? Or how do I advance this horse to the next level? That's what I got from most of my mentors. From Ray and Tom, I'd started hundreds of horses before I got around them, from the time I was ten or twelve years old to the time I was in high school. And then I got around them. It what I learned from them is is how to refine the little things in my approach.
Whether be with a saddle or just approaching them with a halter or approaching them to get them to move out the first time. When I say approach, it's any new step. That first impression of taking my rope down, catching a calf, whatever it might be, that first impression how important that is. And that's probably what I learned from Tom and Ray more than anybody else. Again, I struggled with the the patience of spending more time in those areas, but how refined
and how important that is. Like I say, I learned I learned that from Tom and Ray like when I was in high school when I first got around him. And I I worked on that to re to refine that. I mean, but looking back, I was so ignorant to not just be more patient with dumb kids or dumb kids.
Paula Curtis (26:45)
it it's hard because we're products of our environment. And so you're in a situation where you've got a string of horses that you've got to get going in X amount of time. And you you've kinda had to find your way, even though you came from a long history of horsemen, they're not there to just be helping you. They've got their own stuff to be working on. So you're learning kind of through all this osmosis and that sort of thing. So the sitting and waiting, I could see where
That might get left behind a little bit because you've got more horses and there's only so many hours in the day and
Martin Black (27:17)
Yeah. Yeah. No, and the other thing is I we rode calves at the branding going up and then pretty quick we're riding cows and then riding buck and horses and I mean that was kind of our our sport growing up. I mean kids boys are rough and tumble and they're wrestling and they're ride a cow with the mane and tail hold and all this crazy stuff that boys do. We didn't bungee jump, but we had cows to ride. Yeah, wild cows. I mean not not milk cows. Well we rode the milk cows too, but but
That was kind of boring. But I started riding Saddle Bronx when I was in high school. You know, people later, it's a Tom Ray connection. Well, you know, how how does that work? You know, I mean, here you are riding a stressed horse and spurring him and all this, and you know, that just seems contradictory. I go, Well, okay, here's the deal. That's survival. When I was a kid, and even even in those days, we didn't do groundwork. We didn't
try to bring this horse down in his energy level before we got on because we might go a hundred miles today on that one horse. And we need to preserve all the energy we have because on the way home, we might need to sort some neighbors' cattle and put put back over the hill or something. We want all that energy we can to make sure we get the job done and not have as tired a horse. So you get on on a cold, you know, breezy morning
And get going. And if your horse bucks 'cause he's too fresh, that's that's part of the game. And my dad and uncles and great uncles and my granddad, they all rode bucking horses. It's rodeo or at least on the ranch. That was just part of the deal. You know, you don't wait till it's seventy degrees to to start your day. You get out there when it's cold. That's just part of the deal. Get going. If it's cold and dark this morning and your horse wants to buck
That's part of the deal. You ride the bucking horse, you leave in the dark, it's colder than hell. So that's just that's just part of the deal.
Paula Curtis (29:19)
Yeah. No, that that all makes sense. And I think you're working with the true nature of the horse and you're coming at it from where the horse is at that point. You know, and and I think that's something that you know, you talk about the desensitization, but there's also and you alluded to it with people with having stress and ADHD and that sort of thing is we're we're putting ourselves and our animals into very unnatural environments. And so
What we're getting is a natural responses. So now we're having to deal with an animal that is not in its anchored in its true nature. It's just a product of X, Y, and Z depending on where it's at. There's a big difference between helping a person and an animal that are coming out of that environment versus coming out of an environment where horses are horses and they've worked some things out in the herd.
And they've learned some hard lessons in the herd. And now they're coming into a situation that might be stressful, but again, it's not in confinement. You're going out now. Might have some energy in the beginning, but they're traveling and they're moving and they're they're trotting out and they're having to cover some ground. And so how do you help people that they are in these environments? They have a horse that's a byproduct of it, that maybe has been through some desensitization.
Now it's shut down and it's it's checked out, it's not really connected to the spirit of itself, of its hoarseness. How do you help somebody with that? But keep in mind yet that this horse and person are returning to a a natural environment because maybe that can't be changed.
Martin Black (31:07)
Well, if that's a question for me, basically it's a rehab program. So like we think of rehabbing horses as horses that have been neglected or abused, had bad experiences, and like say some racehorses or have had a long life in that industry or you know, we could name ten other industries in a stressful environment. But stressful environment could be locked in a s padded cell with two foot of shavings
getting all these high energy feeds that basically just fries their brain because they're not getting exercise and they're getting the wrong feed, but yet the owner thinks it's doing the right thing because it's giving it everything a nice home, a nice nice food, nice No, that's not what the horse needs. That's not rehabbing rehabbing horses is one thing. That's easy. But this lady that thinks this horse needs all these treats in this padded cell and don't let him go out of the stall 'cause he might get hurt.
She needs rehabbed. That is not how horses that's not a healthy horse. And that mindset that trying to humanize these horses, she's out there. I mean, that's that's that's horse abuse. And I mean, you know, when you say child abuse, what do you think of? Well, a lot of these nurturers, they grow up with children. I probably shouldn't step out here, but they grow up with children that are so nurtured they can't get along in the real world, end up on drugs.
animals or whatever, you know, and they just need to eat more dirt as a little kid and grow up on a ranch and learn to be working when they're five and six years old and instead of waiting until they're legally sixteen to get a job and you know, all that nonsense. So it it's a it's a rehab. For these horses, I have to rehab to make sensitive again. And you have to just like I said, you have to try to help the person, the owner or handler, understand where this horse needs to operate from.
Not where we think he should operate from. But I mean it goes back to Tom and all these guys. You gotta listen to the horse. Is the horse saying I want my stall blue now? I'm tired of red. You know, no, it's not like you're tired of looking at that refrigerator. Let's get a different color refrigerator with all the newest things on it. No. They don't they could care less if you braid their hair or not.
They could care less if you put an English saddle or a Western saddle on, as long as it fits and it's comfortable. They don't care if it's old or new or they don't care. All these things that people care about, most of the the horse could care less about it. Just treat good. Yeah. Just help feel good. But helping them feel good isn't built on a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better. Worse makes the good easier to find.
So if they're uncomfortable, they're a little bit stressed. If they even when I talk about refining that, we don't we might start out with a flag scaring this horse to get him to move. On a very low level. He doesn't run and crash the fence. He's not that scared, not panic. But he's just uncomfortable. And one of the exercises I do is I get these people to realize how sensitive their horse is. Get him to move. But only leave.
that spot with enough energy that he stops on his own in three steps, five steps, whatever. Now what does that look like? Well, to start with, we might start this horse and then get around, change the balance point to where you're ahead of him, and he stops in ten steps or five steps or three steps. Develop that feel. Okay, so now let's take that to your leg or your hand. How little can you do with your leg to get that horse to go?
And how little can you do with your hand to get that horse to stop? And then you just build on that. But if you don't have some stress to get that horse to get out of his tracks, he's been desensitized. It's like pushing a rock uphill. You do get it going, but as soon as you quit pushing, it stops. Now, if I got twenty five miles I got to go, I don't want to be holding the spur in this horse all day. And he'll get desensitized to that anyway. So
I want my horses. I use the word intimidation, and Steve says, you can't use that word. What does he say? situational awareness, not situational awareness, but he's got a friendlier word. I don't care what you call it. That horse has to think he's going to be safe if he continues to move. And he thinks he needs to think that he's going to be safer than the slack comes out of the rain if he stops.
Just like if he runs into a rim rock. He's not gonna keep pushing into that rim rock. He's gonna stop. That's a solid pressure. That's all I want. You know that rim rock is not gonna feel good if you run into it. Don't run into it. You know when the slack comes out of these reins, it's not gonna feel good. Don't run into my reins. That's logical for the horse. They totally understand that. But they gotta get out of their comfort zone to learn where the end of those reins are and it's more comfortable.
staying off the end of those reins or ahead of your legs and whatever.
Paula Curtis (36:36)
Yeah. I don't remember if it was Lee Smith that I learned this from or Ray Hunt or that that I heard this example from, but I'm pretty sure it was Lee. But she said it's kinda like refining gold. The fire's gotta be just hot enough that you burn off all the impurities, but not so hot that you destroy the gold. and I don't know if if fire does destroy gold, but it's that same idea that
To get that good thing, the thing that you're looking for, the gold in this instance, sometimes you gotta get rid of those impurities to bring that beauty out. And with horses, it's it's a similar sort of situation. You've gotta you gotta turn the fire up sometimes, especially on these horses that have been, you know, dolled down and desensitized so much. You've got to turn that fire up because there's some impurities there. They're not
A horse really. I mean they're they're the and so you you you gotta burn that off to bring them out of their shell so that they're actually like there to be able to work with 'cause otherwise you're not working with anything anyway. They're they're kind of just a checked out lump.
Martin Black (37:48)
Yeah. I don't I don't know anything about gold, so that doesn't really have a lot of meaning to me, but I guess I can kind of understand it. But that's the same way when I'm trying to teach somebody. I didn't come from their world more than likely. The majority of people come to my clinics didn't come from my world. So how do I use an analogy that they understand? Because I've not really been in their world enough to understand how they process their thoughts.
And that's the hard thing about teaching. To me it's you teach how you learned. Well, how I learned was from basically cowboys and horse horsemen that grew up doing the same thing I done. They didn't get their horse when they was twenty one and became a horse trainer. They grew up with horses, they grew up on ranches, they grew up wanting the same thing I wanted, the bridle horse thing and refining these horses and getting them to a high level of performance and starting with raw material. Some of these I was
At one point when I was raising horses, I never even halter broke them until they was two years old. Because they was out on the range. They had everything they needed. They didn't have any they didn't need anything. They didn't need their feet trimmed. They didn't need vaccinations. They didn't need anything to make them any better off. So I'd get them in as two year olds, halter brake them, saddle them, be riding them pretty much all in the same day, maybe even the same hour. And you might have to get off to
open the gate and then get back on to ride them through the gate and then get back off to shut the gate because it wasn't even broke the lead yet, but we was riding That was I might sound funny, but that's a pretty common thing. We need to get on and get going. There's not that many gates to worry about anyway. That that's just a different way of thinking. Tell stories like that. And most cowboys can relate to that. But today's world they do however many hours or months of groundwork. And I'm not saying they're wrong and I'm right. It's just different.
Paula Curtis (39:41)
Yeah.
Martin Black (39:42)
I mean if if you don't want to ride that horse, that's fine. You can do a lifetime of groundwork if that's what floats your boat and go for it. I'm happy for ya. That's not me though. I'm good to get on on a cold morning and a big hump on their back. I know how to kind of sneak by that. Hopefully. I'm not near as durable as I was at once one time, but then my balance isn't as good as it was at one time, so I'm I'm learning to be a little more careful. But anyway, it's just it and it doesn't make one person right and the other person wrong. It's just different.
Paula Curtis (40:11)
Right. Well, is there any last things you'd like to share before we wrap up today?
Martin Black (40:17)
We gotta wrap up sometime, but we could talk all day about horses.
Paula Curtis (40:21)
Yeah.
Martin Black (40:21)
No I mean there's plenty of things we could talk about, but we we gotta cut it off sometime. Anything else anything else you have questions for me?
Paula Curtis (40:32)
Well, I I have one last thing. I created Because of the Horse as a way for us to first of all come together as a community and find the best way forward for ourselves and our horses. But also the name Because of the Horse is because I feel like if we come to our horses with an appreciation and a gratitude for what they bring into our life, what it does is it causes us anytime you're grateful for somebody or something
you want to show up as your best self and and you want to put your best foot forward with them because you appreciate them and you'd like to show that. And so I would love to hear what is the greatest thing you appreciate about your life with horses.
Martin Black (41:18)
Well, people there's a lot in bad in people that has nothing to do with what you're doing. And we gotta deal with it. The bad in horses is just there when we bring it out. Does that make sense? It's
Paula Curtis (41:33)
Sure does.
Martin Black (41:34)
yeah. I mean there's a lot of bad people that you're just gonna meet coming down the road that's gonna cause you grief and business or whatever interaction or somebody rude in the airport or
People have authority over you, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And I mean you might be able to do something about it, but more than likely you just need to to accept it, submit to it, and go on. But I think that's the thing with horses is we're totally responsible for any bad outcomes that might come out of And it in a rehab world, which I've worked in quite a bit, for horses that is, it's not the horse's fault he's got all this bad information.
It's somebody else. So not everybody wants to take that on, but I've always liked a challenge, whether it be in business or developing this ranch that I'm on right now. I mean I I like a challenge. And those rehab horses, they can be challenging 'cause they're not a normal horse. So why is this horse doing this? But he's always after the same ingredients as a as a colt. There's just not a lot of bad information that you gotta sort through.
cult that hasn't been handled. He's a he's his true self, but these rehab horses that have had years of whatever bad training, bad experiences in the performance world or whatever it might be, they've been rode hard and put up wet basically, and their mind is not is not good. So trying to convince those hardened criminals, those gangsters, that there could be a a good life, and I don't really know, I'm just pulling this out of the air, but
That's like taking some of these kids off the street that have had a a bad upbringing, a bad life on the street, or and they just think that that's the way life is. They don't know any different. You know, just like I don't didn't know any different when I was growing up. I thought everybody grew up like that. You slept in a house with no insulation and no heat, and there'd be snow drifts on the inside of the bedroom because the windows weren't sealed. It's like everybody doesn't do that. I didn't know that. And it wasn't that we were neglected. Hell, my granddad's.
He slept outside most all the time growing up. That's that's a whole nother f chapter in the book. But if you grow up with something, you don't know any different. And that's the way these cults are, good or bad. Yeah, horses are way more honest than people. People are greedy and they got egos. Horses don't they're not motivated by that. I don't even know that that exists in a horse. And that's the main motivation for people. Your your image is important. How long did you spend getting I don't mean to knock, I'm just saying making a point.
How long did you spend getting ready to go on camera here? Yeah. Of course you just walk in the room. He would not care if there was a cocklebur in his forehead.
Paula Curtis (44:16)
Yeah.
Martin Black (44:19)
These horses when you approach it's like they just got out of bed. You know, they didn't prepare for this. That's the fun thing about
Paula Curtis (44:27)
Yeah, the ability to come to something who is what it is. It's not it's you know, what you're what you're seeing is what you're getting. There's not all the layers to un well on some of these horses there's layers to unpack, but it's you're s you're seeing, you know, what where they're at in that particular moment and
Martin Black (44:45)
Well, there's there's two ends. There's the horse that has never seen a person, never been in a krill. And you know, I'd have people that's gonna bring me horses to start and they'd say, What do want me to do before I'd bring him to you? You want me to have him saddled?
Paula Curtis (45:00)
Not too many.
Martin Black (45:03)
I'd tell if you think you have to do something, just tie him up and brush him all the way down to the hairline, all the way down the coronary band. You know, if you get kicked, well, okay.
You might work through that or you might just leave it alone. But no. The more you stress that horse and bring him off of stress with whatever, it's more likely the wrong direction. Why else are you bringing him to me? If you knew what to do, you wouldn't even ask that question. You know, if you was a like somebody like me, I have somebody else put the first few rides on now just because I'm I'm not as durable as I used to be and my balance, my reflexes aren't as good.
If they did get scared and do something. I just put the grandkids on. they look safe for the few rides with the grandkids and I get on you know? But my crash test dummies. But anyway, I lost my train of thought.
Paula Curtis (45:48)
Yeah, it's it's such a different experience when you're working with a horse that has not been handled. And it's amazing how quickly they progress and it's amazing how engaged they become in the learning process in such a short period of time. And these horses that have had I was just talking to Klaus Hempling and he was talking about that too, where like
you could go to these stables and have to work with these stallions that have been in these environments. And the amount of danger that was brought on to the people in the stable, to the mares, even that these these stallions were servicing, because they were in these unnatural environments, whereas the horses that he was working with that were just wild horses
It would take so little, the stallions were not dangerous, they did not injure other horses, they did not I mean, they do stallion things, but it wasn't like sometimes these stallions will kill mares, which out in the wild you're not going to see that sort of behavior because there's enough of a pressure release valve, I guess, for the the horses to get out of that situation.
Martin Black (47:09)
Stallions stallions will inflict a lot on other stallions. That's a that's a f not necess well, not necessarily a fight for life, but a fight to reproduce, which is very important to them. That's just his nature. And a lot of animals in the wild, they'll get they'll get pretty rough to dominate the whatever females in a in a pack or a herd. But that's that's a testosterone. That's why we cut stallions. That's why we raid gildings. Take that out of the equation, that's easy.
But yeah, stallions is another is another whole nother level. Tom Dorn said stallions can be just like a gilding. You just gotta control the testosterone. And that's I mean, I got stallions here that I put with my gildings through the winter. And as long as there's no mares, there's not a problem. But in the spring of the year, nature starts, you know, the phone starts ringing, nature starts calling, and you know, then they're gonna start acting like a stallion.
But I've had plenty of stallions sue the ears that you just throw in the trailer with the other gildings. And there might even be a mare in the in the trailer. You just put however many gildings you can between so they don't smell put the stud in the front and take it along fine with gildings. 'Cause there's no threat to
Paula Curtis (48:26)
Have you ever seen stallions go after mares and do severe damage or kill them?
Martin Black (48:32)
No. No, that would be that would be a mare that didn't know the rules. Some of these mares don't understand the rules in the herd. They'd leave. They'd go off and be by themselves. They would not stand around for a stallion to do that. There's no I I I've never even heard of a mare out in the wild or even a we call a range mare that was free to get away. Now if you got locked in a
And you're trying to pasture breed, we'll call it this marin stallion, and she's not ready and she's she's learned to be violent, she might throw up a fight, and the stallion's gonna be stronger and more experienced fighting, supposedly. Yeah, it could it could be get pretty violent. But if that stallion is in a herd environment, pasture breeding, when I say pasture breeding out here on the range, not not in a corral.
Lot of people call that pasture breeding. That's not really the ultimate pasture breeding. You know, I mean these stallions you look at these stallions, I run my stallions out with the mares. I want my stallions out with the mares right now, the open mares, and they're out on pasture, just so I don't have to feed hay. And they're happy. They race around. They never fight. I never see One mare's liable to pin her ears at another mare just as much as the stallion do anything. You rarely ever see it.
But even during the breeding season, a lot of these stallions will breed at night, I learned. That's why you never see breed pasture breed during the day. And I mean, out there where you can watch all the time, you never see breed. And here you have a whole twenty foals the next year out of a band of mares. How'd that happen? But I mean they they do stuff that a lot of people don't know. But they can if this mare's cranky, they don't give her a second look. They go to the next mare.
And if nobody's in heat, they don't mess around. They they'll just eat and do what horses do. And when one mare starts to come in heat, well then he I mean that's the whole chemistry thing. You know, that arouses him, she gets more aroused, blah blah blah. That's all natural though they take care of it. The highest percentage of conception is in pasture breeding. Why don't more people do it? 'Cause you're limited to the number of mares you can breed.
Now they mount a dummy and separate the semen, split it however many times, and they can breed a hundred mares. That's way more profitable. If you ask the stallion, would you like to have a live mare or the dummy? I'm sure he'd l rather have the live mare, but you know, he breeds the dummy every day, maybe multiple times a day. He's a machine. He's a semen producing machine. Is that natural? Well, that's what makes them so cranky.
Paula Curtis (51:27)
Okay.
Martin Black (51:28)
They're taking the natural stuff away from And the mares too. They hobble them mares and tie up and do all the things that they do. That's that's rape. No wonder the mares hate it.
Paula Curtis (51:40)
Yeah. Yeah, don't kidding.
Martin Black (51:43)
Yeah. Anyway, there's a lot about that I don't know of but I have been around the thoroughbred industry enough to see how they breed. It's ugly.
Paula Curtis (51:54)
Yeah, yeah. I hate to end on that note.
But I really I mean what it does call for is change. We need change in the way we are keeping our horses. We need change in our understanding of them and their nature and the fact that we cannot expect them to fit into our definitions of what we think their comfort should be, but we need to understand what their comfort truly where it actually comes from. And when we start
doing these things, they're going to become healthier, far safer. They're going to be the the animal that we when we picture in our mind's eye, we picture the horse and we picture the beauty in the horse. They're going to become that because that it's their true nature that actually makes them beautiful. And so I think it it's a calling for everybody to and that's my goal at the fair is to bring lots of voices together.
so that we start to understand other perspectives better because I think other perspectives bring things into it. And if we're all putting the horse first and trying to do what's best for the horse, we're gonna be able to start distilling down how we can create a situation where there are some things, like here on on our farm, our horses are in big pastures, maybe 10, 15 acre pastures, and they can go down to creeks and get water and stuff. So it's
Natural enough? Is it as natural as they could be? No. But it's easy for us to care for them and have them in this environment. And yet they can still they're with other horses and they can still interact and go over up and down hills and learn where to put their feet and get into a little bit of trouble, maybe slip on some wet ground, those sorts of things, which all help them be horses. And hopefully, as this message gets out there.
more and starts to I think it is already trickling into some of the higher level sports. Like you're you're seeing people in dressage have to reflect a bit about how they're keeping and what they're doing to their horses and in the show jumping world. I mean I think people are starting it's becoming part of the consciousness of people. And I I think if we don't all really step up our game and start to really understand and care for our horses.
for who they are as individuals, we might see the horse industry become almost even non-existent because it comes down to what's right for the animals. And eventually it's going to look like anything is abuse. Where if we can start to all come together, we can set it up so that that doesn't that doesn't happen. Because I do think that horses enjoy working with people and I think people
enjoy working with horses and they've got a job and a place in our lives on cattle ranches, but as well as in sport. And I think if we can be putting them first and their nature first and really understanding them, then we create the type of world that that horses and humans can be together and we can both be our best selves. Because I think horsemanship is a lifemanship, right? We there's there's all these concepts that
We learn from our horses and learn through working with them that we apply to our own life and we become better of individuals. And then as we're better individuals, we can create better situations for our horses. I went on a little bit of a rant there.
Martin Black (55:36)
Steve and I talked about what we could do with EBH just sitting around, we could do this, we could do that. One thing we talked about, and I believe there's some merit to it, is help people not just learn what is actually good for the horse as far as housing and feed and you know, just it what you're talking about, what is what does the horse want? What is the horse's natural environment? What keeps the horse
at peace, exercise, not too hot a feed, not the lack of feed, but to design like like people might have less than five acres. And maybe most of it is taken up with infrastructure. Entryways, roads, driveways, buildings, blah blah blah. And here their horses stuck over here in the corner. I mean he's he's got a nice padded cell and a nice little turnout area.
But something my granddad said that always stuck with me is he said, and he's talking about Maritian foals or even yearling or two year old horses. These foals need to be able to run as far as they want to run without offense stopping or deflecting them or anything. That's what develops their bone and their mind and everything else. You know, they race and this one's the fastest and that's they're but that's how they develop.
And if they're in a small crow where they got to run in circle, like I mean, we see the results of this in these training arenas, like cutters and where they lope them in circles for exercise. Now we have hawk problems. And not to get into that, there's a lot of other influences there, they're only two years old, no growth place, blah, blah, blah. But back to how could we make this better if they had more room? Like you see these horses that have a
fairly long run outside their stall. They'd run from one end of that to the other. I seen a a stallion that was kept away from all the other horses, and he would run up and down the fence. Run down here, maybe a hundred and fifty feet, and turn and come back. Run down here and turn and come back. Just pacing the fence. But he was doing it, you know, pretty good lope. It corrected him. It crippled him.
You know, he'd have been better off if he had a donkey or a chicken or anything in there, but he didn't. He had nothing to bond with. And not only did it wreck his legs, but he got to be a mental case like the stallion you're talking about. But anyway, how could we help people understand? First they gotta understand what is a good environment for your horse. Then how could we help develop their property into that? Change a few fences.
Or maybe they had one long lane on the backside. And you put them in there just once a day for an hour. Three times a day, whatever. But anything is better than nothing. But again, I see these mares of mine the other day down here with the stallion. The stallion, he's pretty quiet minded. He's kind of loping around there, just kind of watching the mares. But these mares, and they're they're Pendix mares, they're breadcrossed mares.
They probably ran as hard as they could run with their tail up over their back and their head looking back on everything, just having fun. And some of are in their teens. Most of are in their teens or or eight eight to fifteen years old probably. And they run around there I'll bet you for over a minute, between a minute and two minutes as hard as they could run. Just loving it. No supplements, and how much happier could they be?
They're not standing over there in the corner with their head down, you know. And like like you see a lot of horses that are well cared for and loved.
Paula Curtis (59:29)
Yeah.
Martin Black (59:29)
These things are kicked out there. I just look at every once in a while and make sure their water you know, your their water's working and you know, there's no wire cuts or anything. Which it's it's good. I rarely doctor a horse here. I rarely have to trim feet. And that's the other thing. Put some rocks put some rocks out there that'll wear their feet down naturally.
You can eliminate the farrier work. I'm not saying shooting, but trimming your horses, if they got good feet like these horses of mine, I never I bet I've only trimmed a brood mare just a handful of times in my life. And that's when I didn't have any place to turn them out and they was had to be on pasture. Too long. But yeah. I mean I've had I've had brood mares twenty years old that weren't broke the lead even. Never handled never had a hand on Yeah. They gave me a good colt, I weighed in the colt, kick back out.
What's her job? To produce colts. She's doing a good job. What else do I need?
Paula Curtis (1:00:22)
Yeah. Yeah, here too. You know, it's it's and I think we'll do these coaching call deals where like when people buy the fair, they can come and we talk and whatnot. And one of the messages that we put out almost every call is watch your horse, observe them, see what they are doing all day. You are going to learn so much about their nature and about who they are. You know, our every horse is a little different in the pasture. Some of them are a little more, you know.
kind of taking over the watching and and being alert. So you you know that. Let your horse be out in a way where they can they can slip on slippery ground and get themselves into some trouble. I would much rather be on a horse that's fallen down in the pasture a few times and learn from it than a horse that has never experienced that. It's been in a sandbox riding around and now you go on a trail ride and you're
You're in trouble. He doesn't know where his feet are at. He's never really learned out there on his own. And they do, they they travel and man do they gallop and go. And even like when if people have horses that are sore showing up a certain way, we'll say, Well, go watch what they're doing on their own first before you put yourself into the mix and maybe put on a lunge line or or whatever, because that'll tell you a lot about where they're sore, what's going on when you see what they're doing.
out there on their own. And when they're not running, they're dozing in the sun or they're working their mouth and they're eating and they're they're always kinda nosing around and chewing and these are things that people aren't always exposed to because they're maybe not watching. And even for people that have a horse, you know, at at a facility, well maybe you go and you set, you know, your chair out and just sit and observe.
Because until you can actually observe and see them, how do you expect to work with them? 'Cause you don't even know who they are.
Martin Black (1:02:27)
Yeah. No, and and as close as you can get, and that's what Steve and I was talking about. How close can we make your five acres to a natural environment? Well, you walk around and look at their horses. They're standing still eating. And probably in a raised manger. They're designed to eat off the ground on the move. And, you know, of course you can't you could scatter hay in a lot of situations, but no, then they're on the
Eating off the ground, they'll get parasites, blah blah blah, all this stuff. Well, that's not all bad. You know, I mean how do you how do you weigh that? Feeding on the ground where they do get a flake and walk to the next flake, walk to the next flake, like like they would if they was out grazing. Just the hoof care and whatnot and all the legs need movement for circulation. Again, are these babies? That's important for not to stand in a manger and eat. Especially if it's raised, their teeth wear wrong.
I mean, there's whole list of things wrong with the way ho people care for their horses because they care for the way that a human thinks they need cared for, not the way what you're talking about that horses would would do in a natural environment.
Paula Curtis (1:03:44)
Yeah, I think that's great that you're putting your minds together for that because so many people are living in a situation where they're very limited. But what can we do to make that better and more stimulating and more natural? And something just as simple as feeding them, like you said, on the ground versus a manger can make a big difference. They're gonna relax their whole digestive system and everything's gonna work better because they're relaxed and chewing properly. Yeah.
Martin Black (1:04:12)
If you only made it five percent better. Well, at least that's five percent better. You might not make it a hundred percent better. And that's I hear that all the time. Well, what can I do? I I don't have all the acres that you have. I don't have all this. No, but I'll bet you I could see some things that you could make it five percent, twenty percent, whatever, more like this. You don't need a lot of acres. They just need to move. They need to eat on the ground. These horses out here are chewing hours and hours.
through the day. Well, if they chew once every second, just for easy figuring, right? How many hours is their jaw working? They graze around for like two, three hours and then they go rest and digest, take a nap, whatever, and then a couple three hours later they come back and they graze again. Add that all up. How many times did their teeth strike and we feed them racehorses? They probably don't eat thirty minutes, and their grain and their hay is cleaned up.
And they stand there. They might do that three times a day. Okay, how much did their teeth strike? How much did their teeth wear? I got back there and I seen these horses, you know, you bridle You see their teeth, how long they are? That is freaky. I thought I don't I'm not sure what they're supposed to look like, but I've never seen that before. I mean that was a slap in the face. So I come home and I start, you know, there's skulls laying around, you know, horses that died on the ranch and whatnot.
I look at these skulls, and it's like their teeth are right down to the gum on the short side. Not the long side, the short side. And I'm thinking that's where they're supposed to wear, and then they erupt more. And horse's teeth that's not the right word, what's the word? Their teeth don't grow, but they keep erupting. Anyway, that's what regulates how much the horse's teeth their teeth were way longer.
than what a horse would naturally be. And then they complain, those veterinarians complain about these dentists taking too much tooth off. Well there again, how much tooth should the horse have? These are these are scientists telling us that the horse's teeth shouldn't be short. Well, that's different than what I'm used to seeing. So you're saying you're smarter than God, you're smarter than nature. Because that's not how horses' teeth were in nature.
That's not how God designed them. I'm sorry. I can't I can't agree with you on that.
Paula Curtis (1:06:45)
Right. Well yeah, it's like you're talking about maybe weren't exactly talking about this earlier, but it's are we taking and studying and looking at a pathological person out of an environment that's completely unnatural and and saying that that's how a person is. So the kids that are all having ADHD and those sorts of things, is is that normal or is that a pathology?
because of the environment that they've been in and we're all products of our environment. So to study that and to normalize it is taking us so far away from the actual truth that it's not gonna get us to where we need to go.
Martin Black (1:07:30)
I hear quite often these studies that are done on even Mustangs, horses out in the pasture or any anywhere in between. And so you go, okay, so what's what's the research here? Some college kids, more than likely, went out and done a study for the summer and mom and dad are paying for it or their student loan or whatever the case may be. But basically it's a summer vacation to go out and hang out in nature. That's a pretty nice vacation.
They're getting paid to do it, and as part of the requirement they come back with all this smart stuff on paper. Okay, so now they write up a paper that says, you know, in the research, this is what we found, blah, blah, blah. I go, Your research is pretty shallow. And now that's what's documenting, and everybody's gonna go by that document as the nature of a horse. You got one little sip out of the ocean.
And you're informing everybody else what the ocean's like. I'm sorry, but that ain't I mean, it just amazes me how when somebody gets three letters behind their name, you know, they're they get expert along with that. It's like you're saying that you don't have any more to learn? I'd never consider myself an expert. I don't even like that word. You know, other people might refer to me as whatever, but doesn't matter. Label labels are for people.
You can walk up to the horse and say, I'm a horse behaviorist and I want you to do this and that. He's gonna go, Huh?
Paula Curtis (1:08:57)
Huh. Yeah.
Martin Black (1:08:59)
I guess I guess the message that I'm trying to put out here is is there's a lot of information, whether it be university studies or from clinicians or whatever, and that's where people look and you're saying the same thing. That's all good, but it's all second opinion. If you want a first hand opinion, you gotta go to the horse.
But the horse doesn't speak our language. That's the big there's a big language barrier there. Is not only do you have to listen to the horse, you have to interpret what it says. Now I can't write a book that says how to interpret horses. It'd be real general. If he runs away, he's uncomfortable. If he stands there, he's comfortable. It'd be real general. But it's hard to teach experience. But that's what people need is the experience.
And not a lot of people have one horse for twenty years. And it dies or goes away or whatever, and they get another horse. Well they got forty years experience with horses. Two horses. And I'm not criticizing those kind of people. But somebody says, I've been around horses all my life. How many? How many hours a day? Well, I worked with them every weekend and I had this horse still for twenty years. Okay, that's good.
But like my ancestors, they lived with horses. I'm not trying to one up anybody or is if that's not what this is about. But if you if you want to get a second hand opinion, somebody to interpret what horses are about, yeah, Tom Dorson, Ray Hunt, and all of my mentors, they were around a lot of horses growing up. They grew up on ranches, none of them had any letters behind their name.
And everybody called them by their first name, not Mr. So and so or anything, Dr. So and none of that. I'm not putting most people down. I'm just just saying that the the experts on horses are the people that have worked around the most horses and tried to learn. I mean, there's been plenty of cowboys rode horses all their life. Does that make it a good horseman? No. But if they tried to learn and they exposed themselves to a lot of subjects, yeah, that's science.
Paula Curtis (1:11:14)
Yeah, you know, there it's the whole living, eating, breathing it over years and years because that's really what's gonna give you a full grasp of any individual, you know, be it person or or horse. There's so much depth to each one of us as individuals. And you have to be around that individual in good times, bad times, in different times, times where there's
The sky is falling. And in the same if you're watching horses in all those different instances when you're you're working with them and asking things of them versus just sitting there and watching, you're going to be gleaning so much information. And just like your simple example of the skull, it's just observations. When you're observing on a daily basis all of these things, you can share so much. And that's why we're so appreciative of
To have you in the fair and sharing your knowledge and and here today on the interview because it's so helpful for people to hear a perspective from somebody that has done this and has the lineage that has done this that has roots deep into horses, horsemanship, working with them, being with them, living with them, that somebody that's gone to school their whole life and and that sort of thing, they they can't.
They can't get that exposure or that experience, and that's okay, but they can get some information from you that's going to help them on their journey so that they have a better experience with their horses.
Martin Black (1:12:50)
Yep. There's lots of pieces of the puzzle. I'm I'm trying to you know, I get around these biomechanics people. And when you said do you come home and look at the skull? Well, the same thing. I started learning stuff about the biomechanics and whatnot. I've never done an autopsy on a horse or even been around for anything like that. I've butchered a lot of animals. We butcher our own beef and whatnot, so I have that exposure. But but when they start talking about the the components of the skull and everything, and I come home and look at the skull and I go, Okay, now I understand why that works the way. When you flex your horse,
You know, why why it works the way it works. You know, because there's the vertebrae aren't all the same and blah blah blah. Anyway, there's a lot I don't know about biomechanics, but it helps me, just like with Dr. Peters, it helps me understand why horses do what they do in movement. Steve helps me with the brain, but and and a lot of the biomechanics is like, well, I knew horses to done that, but I didn't know it be was you know, it was a a system.
Yeah, the whole neurological system, how it plays out and everything's yeah, okay. Now it just refines that knowledge more.
Paula Curtis (1:13:56)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and we've got to outsource that information because we can't you can't learn and know it all. You've got to be able to pull and draw from other people that are really taking a deep dive in their area expertise and that. You have been a influential member in the horse industry for many years and come from a long, long, long line of the tradition that many have not been exposed to but have heard of with the the great
basin and the Vicaro style horsemanship. So I would love for you to share a little bit about your history and the lineage. I mean that that goes your roots go deep and how that's shaped you as an individual in your life to this point.
Martin Black (1:14:41)
So how far back do you want to go? As me as a child or five generations ago where my family started?
Paula Curtis (1:14:48)
I think it would be really neat to share the story just because it's very unusual to have somebody that's got such deep roots. So I think if you wouldn't mind sharing all the way back, that would be that'd be n neat to hear about.
Martin Black (1:15:04)
Well, I'll try to give you the sh short version of a long story, and if you want any more details at any point, you can just interrupt me. My maternal great great grandparents both came from Ireland after the potato fathom. Stopped off in the Midwest and the Civil War was in the s was kind of brewing and and so they headed on west to California. She was had a troubled pregnancy
child delivery, whatever, just west of Winnamukka, and they dropped out of their wagon train there. And they was actually there for three years living in a dugout and providing stuff for the wagon trains going through there. I mean it's desert desert. I I I have a good idea where it was. And then eighteen sixty they had a gold and silver strike here in Hawaii County. And they turned around, came up here and started ranching basically
And they approved up on a homestead the second place they lived actually. So they was here nobody knows 'cause they didn't write anything down, but they they had to be here two or three years before they proved up on a homestead. 'Cause you file one year and then you approve up on it the next year. And but anyway they started providing whatever, fruit, vegetables, cinder, wood, milk.
Cheese stuff to the miners. And the town at one time grew to to ten thousand people, and most of it was tents. And it's at an elevation of like seventy five hundred feet. So winters are pretty tough. And that's where they started out, is up on the higher elevations. And but where they homestead was down about the same elevation I am here. It's just two creeks over to the north, which is about thirty five hundred feet. And that place is still in the family. My mother's cousin.
Well he's kind of turned it over to his son, which would be my generation. So I guess he'd be a second cousin to me. But anyway, that family's been in the that ranch has been in the family since eighteen sixty five or before that actually, but it's the oldest family owned ranch in the state of Idaho, continuously owned family ranch in the state of Idaho, and it's the oldest iron recorded in the state of Idaho that they still use, my great great granddad's brand. That's the maternal side.
My paternal side came here in the eighteen seventies, mid eighteen seventies. My mom always teased my dad about being a newcomer 'cause he was here his family was here about whatever, twelve or fourteen years later. So but they were more into the livestock. They started out the same thing, providing for the mines, milking cows and and meat and whatnot. But the second generation, which would be my
great granddad and his brothers were talking into this eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties and there there was a lot of livestock came from California, cattle, mainly in the eighteen seventies. So they got in on the livestock more than providing other goods for the mines. But this particular country where where they homesteaded is really scarce on water and it's real rough, rocky.
rocks and and pretty tough country for so there was more sheep and horses in this area because they could range out from water further than cattle could. So they utilized the country better. So my great granddad and and his brothers were all big into the horses. They as a as a family they had my uncle told me about five thousand horses at kind of their peak. And after they kind of got billed up, they got into the
remount program with the army, which provided them with some really nice thoroughbred stallions. And they had pretty reputable horses in the first place, but not as nice as what the the army got really nice horses off the track and brought them out here. And so that really upgraded their horses and on to the next generation. Actually my granddad was in on the remount program also. He had stallions after the turn of the century that were remount horses. And so he was a
really into the thirdbreds and that carried through my dad's generation and and on to me when I was a kid I grew up on these I won't say the same thirdbred horses, but they were thirdbred horses. I mean we're we're talking seventy five years or whatever after the remote program was dissolved. I mean World War Two pretty much mechanized revolution pretty much done away with the the horse market. And so in the forties, nineteen forties, the blacks and
The Joyces, my mother's side of the family. Their horses weren't worth anything, but the Joyces had they had about five thousand head too, a cousin told me. But about half of them was cattle and half of them was horses. So they had a fair number of cattle, where the blacks didn't have hardly any cattle. They only had horses. But so anyway, they they got rid of the horses and and when the Mustang act
Wild Horse Act came along in the early sixties. Ranchers had seven years to either claim the horses or they become government property. And so the late sixties, anything left on the range became government horses. And my granddad could see what was coming just the way the government runs business, but never turns out the way it should. So he gathered all the horses in a
Pretty good percent of Wahhee County, the Waihee drainage and the Bruno drainage, he had horses scattered all over. And when I was a little kid in the kind of mid I don't remember exactly when it was, but in the mid to late sixties, I was born in fifty nine. They were gathering and shipping some of the last horses out of some government krills in Bruno. I remember the semis, there were several semis, I don't know, three or four semis, I don't remember exactly.
loading these they called them range horses. We didn't call wild horses 'cause some of were been handled quite a bit and some of were even horses that they'd handled and turned back out, you know, I mean, rode and turned back out. So some of were saddle horses, they'd been started and rode however much and but we didn't call mustangs. We you know, they everybody referred to as as just range horses, as opposed to your saddle horses, your cabbie that you had
have in your field and that you handled on a regular basis. Now some of these range horses, maybe they got away from other people and whatever. So they was they was pretty rogue, but most of were handled quite a bit. They they held up out on the range, no fence corners, no trails, no nothing, and would sort horses and brand the colts and and things like that. So they had to had to be pretty broke. But most people today they they can't even hold their cattle up out there. They're not they're not broke to it. They're not used to it, but but
I mean I grew up with stories of of them holding Rodier with a bunch of horses, maybe several hundred, and sorting out neighbors and sorting out horses to sell, and and then they'd bring them from whatever location. It might be however many miles, it could be ten miles, it could be fifty miles from where they needed to take them. They put together a thousand horses one time and trailed them to the Midwest.
My family trailed them to about two hundred and fifty miles east of here, American Falls into kinda east more eastern Idaho. And then some other cowboys from Wyoming I don't know if took the rest of the way, I guess, to Missouri or wherever they went. But they just sort of mouth road deer and they kept herding you know, day and night kinda you and kept them together until they had a thousand horses all put together.
And they trailed them however far that is. close to a thousand miles. But that's just the way they don't they they they would normally ship by train, but you could only ship about a hundred and seventy five horses per train load. Then the little steam engines, they didn't wouldn't like these big freight trains today where they were just a mile along. There was only I think five cars maybe that they could put thirty five horses in, something like that, without doing the math.
So it's pretty limited. That'd been oodles of train loads of horses. So they just trailed back.
Paula Curtis (1:23:50)
It's incredible. I mean what a that is a unbelievable display of horsemanship and of understanding the true nature of the horse and being able to work with them in a way I mean, some of the people here might not know what a rodeer is, but essentially you're you're bringing the animals into a central location and you've got, you know, people on the outside that are helping maintain this working fence, this live fence around them, but
You're talking about bringing horses that have never known each other, or maybe they h they have, but at very large distances, right?
Martin Black (1:24:28)
Some some of would, but the way they'd been handled, assuming most of would have been handled, they accept going into different groups of horses. You know, for example, the breeding herd's bit of a rabbit trail, but it's a pretty good story when you're you want to hear unbelievable stories in horsemanship. Well, was handed down to the youngest of the siblings, in other words, my great granddad, he was sixteen years younger than the oldest boy.
And then there was three other two other boys in between there. There's four boys total. So he's quite a bit younger. So as the older boys got their herds established, they would have select stallions that they wanted to breed to select mares. And my granddad's generation done the same thing. The youngest brother herded these horses. What they would do is they would sort off the mares that they wanted, say
Twenty, twenty-five, thirty, whatever. Mares. And okay, so they wanted them with this stud. So they'd herd them over to a certain area, maybe put them in a canyon or something, and put this certain study in with them. Then they would sort off some other mares and have them over here. And they might have two or three or five or six, I don't know how many, but it'd be multiple herds of mares. And it would be, say, within five or ten miles of home.
But they'd have all these different groups of mares and stallions together, and they might be a mile or two apart on different waters or in a basin or something like that. And they would they would I gotta believe that they would hold them mares there till they kinda got established and they learned where the best feed and water. And so they kinda and you can break cattle or horses to stay in a certain area if you just keep turning them back and keep putting them there pretty quick. It's it's easier to stay there than it is to
wander around, get harassed when you get out of that. And that's how you train them, is you harass them when they get out of there, leave them alone. Wrong thing easy, right thing, right thing, easy, wrong thing, difficult thing. So anyway, they would have all these different brood mare bands with the stallions orbiting around the ranch there. You know, however long a distance. And that was the youngest child, and we're talking like maybe five, six, seven years old. And it was his job
To go around and make sure these horses was in their designated area and not get too close to another stud bunch and not let any outside horses come in either. So if there's any other horses just wandering around, they would chase them off and they just patrol around, make the rounds, you know, just like a security guard, you know, this five or six year old kid. So and that's and then so at night.
Yeah, so the kid could sleep and didn't have to be out there in a black of night. They would bring each bunch in to the ranch and tie the stallion up at night and then start putting the brood mares together. And and then they would hold them around there and they might have had a field. They didn't have much for for fenced areas though, but they might have had a field or an area that they put them in. And then the next morning they'd sort the group A.
put Stalin A with them and they take them over to their area, Stalin B put the put them with the B mares and take them over to the B area and so on and so forth. Then the kid that was his job all day.
Paula Curtis (1:28:01)
Six years old. I mean that's
Martin Black (1:28:04)
Yeah, and and they might have done that till they was ten or twelve years old, but but I know my uncle, you know, he said he was like five or six years old when he started my great uncle when he started doing that. I mean if the if the livestock was trained and I mean if you know how we train our cattle, it's it's not a big deal, but you know, to think that there's a hundred head of horses and f you know, how many different groups, four or five different groups, you know, and and putting the stallion with them and taking the stallion out.
You know, of course they would have had help with that, you know, when he got got into the ranch with them and may they might have helped him bring him in and, you know, d do whatever's necessary. But point is these little kids, they they they grew up with this. They done this. I mean when you're out there all day and you're just studying horses, what else are you gonna do? There's no no cell phone to, you know, get on Facebook or anything.
like that and I doubt that they even had a book to read. I mean you wouldn't want to be reading a book when you're supposed to be watching horses. But they just, you know, maybe go from ridgetop to ridgetop and check those horses, check those horses. You know, just rotate around as long as you're satisfied that all the livestock's horses are where they need to be, you might work a little quick nap in there. But that's what they grew up with. What a
Paula Curtis (1:29:22)
intensive study of the animal, the horse. I mean, to be just living, breathing and being with them nonstop like that. And then also having to manage and make sure that they're all staying in the appropriate places without tiring out the horse that you're on. So you need to work together with your horse as a team. And I think that's so lost in many horse human relationships today because
First of all, you know, we've got people that are so it's it's a separate life that they're living and they maybe go to their horse for an hour a day. So understanding the horse as a unique, innate, well, individual, but also as just like the type of animal that they are and understanding how they would be if they were free and you know, with other horses, that's completely missing nowadays.
Martin Black (1:30:18)
Yeah. Now I hear these horse behaviors usually got degrees and three letters behind their name and blah blah blah. And they've studied domestic horses for their behavior. It's like, yeah, okay, but how much of that is influenced by you know where the horses live and the human activity that they've had. Like left sided horses, you know, everybody says left sided horses. Promise you I've done enough research with cattle and horses
I would say they're probably one hundred percent amideous until we start making them left sided. And I've done enough research with tens of thousands of cattle, maybe hundreds of thousands of cattle, I don't know. But cattle or horses, livestock that have not been handled, and it only takes two or three experiences for them to develop a habit. A habit of keeping you on the left side, a habit of keeping you on the right side. And today, when I was a kid,
Our cattle they rarely came to a krill. We'd we'd done our branding outside. We didn't wean. We sorted the yearlings off. And in the old days they sorted the two or three year old steers off to market. We sorted the yearlings off. Most of that would be the first time that they'd ever been in a krill is when they got shipped on a truck, you know, to be sold. And here they are eighteen months old, never been on a krill. Well take that back. I mean, well, there's more fences than
krills and stuff avail available at at my time. They didn't use to truck stuff. They trailed them to the railroad if they was going to ship them anywhere, which is 70 miles or depending on where they're at, 70, 80 miles away. So they didn't put things in animals in krills to do all the all the processing, just amount of branding them and then sorting them off and taking them in in the railroad was either in Winnemucca, Winnemucca back in the old days or a mountain home.
Those were the closest shipping points. Some cattle went to Elko, but there's a lot more mountains between this Hawaii country and Elko. And you can just go across the desert, the Hawaii Desert to Windamuka or Felconda to shipping points. And so that's what a lot of animals in this area done. My uncle, my dad's brother, he was in on a horse gathering. He was only seven years old, and he told me a lot of stories about this. Personally, this isn't secondhand.
And his granddad, my great granddad, went on this this journey, it was all summer. But they was down on the Black Rock Desert, which is northeastern Nevada, north of Reno, which would be a good two hundred miles from here, maybe two hundred and fifty miles. I don't know exactly where they was in that area, but north of Liverlock, Nevada, something like that, west of Winnemucca. And they had a contract. They didn't only handle their own horses.
There was a lot of people would contract them or a certain number of people would contract them to go gather other horses. They didn't have time or they didn't have the know-how or whatever. The blacks and some of their crew around Bruno here they could gather up. It was always game to go gather other horses for other people and sort and whatever. So anyway, he had a contract, my granddad did, to go gather these horses off the Black Rock Desert or that area. And
I don't know all the particulars or how many horses there were, but they was there for like three months or whatever. And they had their own chuck wagon, which was a a nineteen forty something truck or a thirty something truck, an old truck. I I got pictures of it. That was their their camp wagon, but they trailed their saddle horses from this from the Waihe area here down there, we'll just say two hundred and fifty miles. And then they had their saddle horses there and there was a crew, some cousins and relatives, a crew of guys.
They would gather these horses, sort off the ones that they wanted to keep, and the blacks kept some, and this rancher kept some, and I think he turned some of them back out. But after a month or more, and you know, they had all the horses all sorted off and everything, which meant somebody had to be herding the horses that they wanted to keep hold of. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't had fenced areas. And a lot of times when you have those horses like that, you've got to train them to stay in the bunch.
you put in a field, they're liable to go through the fence and go back to the wild anyway. So most fences in those days at least, you know, they w they wouldn't have been reliable, I'm pretty sure, on that. So after however many months, they c they had a couple hundred head of horses and so it was a sharecrop deal. They didn't get paid any money, they got paid in horses. So they had a couple hundred horses and they trailed them from from this area, Black Rock Desert area and
come up the Humboldt River to Winnemucca to Golconda, and then across the Wahee Desert back up here. So we traveled a couple hundred horses. Well they traveled whatever they had, fifty or seventy five saddle horses down there to do this job, turn or fifty miles, then turn fifty miles back. They come back with another another two hundred head of horses. And they're incredible. Yeah, but their business was selling horses and
Sometimes they sold unbroke horses, but they weren't worth much. And if they if you could ride well, then they was worth two or three times what they was worth unbroke. But they sold a lot of horses, not just to the army. Well, the army would have been the minority. The army inspectors would come around and they would take first pick of the horses out of their stallions. But if they wasn't army horses, army out of army stallions.
they'd sell them to anybody. And another story that falls into on that is they would there's a lot of big ranches in northern Nevada. I mean, ranches that run from ten to it, some of them run as many as fifty thousand head of mother cows. Well that took basically an army of men on each ranch, which meant a pretty large bunch of horses for the men. So it would be nothing to have a hundred head of saddle horses on
caveat of for these cowboys. So, and they didn't always raise all their horses, enough horses, or maybe any horses. So the word on the street was if you need horses, get a hold of blacks. So they'd make a deal for however many horses and they would either deliver to the ranch or they just trailed horses through the country like the door to door salesmen. The guy that I worked for ran out of high school down in Battle Mountain.
He told me, says the first time I met your dad and your great granddad, he was a little boy. This is Tom Marvel and and he was in World War II to give you an idea of you know what era we're talking about. It's like whatever, in the twenties, maybe the he said, Your granddad and great granddad came through here with a bunch of horses and just door to door you only might sell ten, they might sell fifty or whatever. But they'd make a loop there and if you do the math, you know
Down into that country and then you kind of, you know, more or less go the follow the Humboldt River, that's where all the the most of all the ranches headquartered was on the river, you know, toward Winnemak. That'd be a four or five hundred mile circle. You know, from the time they left home, you know, to to make that circle and and come back home. They'd just keep going until they run out of horses, and then when they ran out of horses, well they'd they'd come home. That was their business. Ow. A lot of it was putting horses on the train.
My granddad, my his younger brother, my great uncle, my great granddad all had stories of their dad loading a train of horses and sending the kids back there when they're like sixteen, seventeen years old. And there they would have a contract with somebody back there in in Missouri or wherever Illinois, wherever they was shipping these horses to, and it wouldn't be an auction yard like we have today.
But it was a a place where horse traders would come for horses. So these kids would be back there handling these horses, getting them broke to at least broke to lead or whatever, and and maybe riding them or whatever. But my granddad on one one visit, he was back there a year before he got rid of all the horses. A train load of horses, 175 horses. But and by the time they paid for the feed and, you know, put him up in town and everything, and I'm he probably slept in the stable. I doubt that he had a hotel room.
But
Paula Curtis (1:39:07)
That's
how they lived. Yeah, the depth of understanding to be able to be doing all of that and having information passed down from generation to generation. I mean, you're building layer upon layer upon layer of really truly understanding these animals. Well, Martin, thank you so much for being here today. I really, really appreciate it. And thanks for being a part of the fair.
Martin Black (1:39:30)
Yep, okay, well thank you.
Paula Curtis (1:39:32)
Where
where can people find you?
Martin Black (1:39:36)
Martin Black.net. You can just Google Martin Black and I'm the first Martin Black that comes up.
Paula Curtis (1:39:42)
All right.
Martin Black (1:39:43)
Not the rock and roll singer from England. That's the wrong Martin Black.
Paula Curtis (1:39:48)
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