Proper Hitchin'

Alex, and Austin Noll with LeRoy Walls "Pa" in the horse cart driving Art and Melody, the "surprising" team! 

Photo by

  
Lora Noll  

Written by 
LeRoy Walls 
CEO 

We have several black Morgan horses and Melody, Black Cloud and Art are kept together in one pasture. Art is a two-year old gelding. I had been training Melody and Black Cloud who were two and three year old full sisters. They were coming along good as a team. So, when my granddaughter Alex - age 4, and grandson Austin - age 6, hopped on the cart with me before we set out, I thought that was just fine. Each filly had been driven single quite a bit and this was the fourth or fifth time to hitch them double.

Well, from the get-go, the two-year old was more jumpy than usual - in fact it looked like it was gonna be one of those "bad Mondays" or "bad hair days" that horses sometimes have. On our first left turn when the tongue bumped against her legs, she acted like she had never turned a corner hitched double.

But Melody, the three-year old, was steady so we headed down our rough hill and onto Cabool’s northern streets. We drove about two miles before returning home, and although they were more ragged than usual, we only had one real ruckus where the two-year old shied from something and crowded the cart into a shallow ditch. This wasn’t a big deal, but I was sure glad Grandma Paula or Lora Noll (their Mom) wasn’t driving by right then.

Upon getting back to the farm, I hitched the team to the rail and unhooked the cart as the kids went to the house. Although I’m not a particularly jumpy person, what I saw between the two-year olds hind legs as I unsnapped the harness flank strap from the bellyband gave me a real start - this wasn’t my calm black filly. It was my green-broke two-year old black gelding!

Yep, I had taken the grandkids on Art’s very first voyage driving double. Art had been driven a few times single but never outside the arena and not driven or even harnessed in the past six months!

Well - I’ve now got a pair of two-year olds that are trained to drive double. These two are so well matched that at least one self-proclaimed horseman can’t even tell them apart! And while you can tell a lot about a horse by checking their feet and teeth, now I’ll also be checking horses between their hind legs!

12/31/1999