On this interview, the late Howard Hale had Ron Knodle, the unknown horseman, talking about his training methods. Let's check in on that conversation. Nebraska horseman Ron Knodle is our guest today.

Ron, give us some of your thoughts about how you ought to use your hands and your legs, particularly on that young horse that you're starting. The two-handed stuff, whether you're in a hackamore or a snaffle, the more that you keep pulling on one rein, the more that they fall to the outside, and you're not going to be able to, for example, make a reining horse when you need to push him through the turns. So one of the things that I've been doing really strong with most of my people that I've been working with in the later years is using almost equal pressure with your inside and outside rein and do more trying to push the horse through the turns than to pull him through the turns so that he was not as apt to fall out to the outside.

And what are your legs doing in that situation? I ride my horse as one-legged. For example, when I start a young horse, I open and close doors as a pre-signal. So if I'm riding a young horse along and I want to go to the ride, the first thing I do is my right leg comes off, the left leg comes on.

The right hand and the right leg work in unison. They come off of the horse and the left leg would come on if I was going to the right and vice versa. Trainer and clinician Ron Knodle with the late Howard Hale.

The timing of the release is everything.

We have horseman and clinician Brian Neubert on the program today.

After more than 20 years of training these colts, is there anything new that you've learned? Well, I don't know if it's something new, but more sensitive to the importance of observing, detecting the horse efforts toward what I want to accomplish. It's whole thing really amounts to encouraging thoughts and actions you want and discouraging thoughts and actions you don't want. And I suppose until I'm done working with horses, I'll probably get, hopefully, more sensitive on that aspect.

Relieving the pressure when the horse even has a thought in the direction that I want to go. And I don't guess I'll ever try to get more sensitive on that, but that's where the efficiency comes in and it makes it or breaks it. That's just very, very important.

Veteran horseman and clinician Brian Neubert on the Horseman's Corner. That's going to do it for today's program, but there's more on the web at horsemanscorner.com. And don't forget about that Facebook page, Horseman's Corner Radio and Podcast. Visit and follow today.

We asked Larry Reinhold from Lone Tree Ranch, what age of horses do you use there?

"I've said for years it takes about a seven year old horse because there's a lot of fellas, a lot of people can sure turn out a good broke horse, you know, and the horse is three or four years old. A good rider can get on them and keep them going the right direction. But, you know, when you're putting kids on them, and some of these kids might be good riders, but you've got a horse that you're putting three or four different riders on each day, it's pretty easy to mess up a young horse. And, you know, because they get so many, so many miscommunications from the different riders that it plays with their head and it seems kind of like the old adage, an old dog, new tricks. It's really pretty handy to have something that's been, you know, got some age on it. We like what would make just about any outfit a good ranch horse."

The Reinhold family lives on and operates the Lone Tree Ranch and Rainbow Bible Ranch, a well-known and well-loved summer ranch camp for kids and teenagers.

https://www.facebook.com/larryrobinreinhold/

https://www.lonetreeranch.net

The same question today that we've been asking the rest of the horsemen this week, what age do you start your horses?

Today we're going to dig into the Howard Hale archives, and pull up an interview from Bruce Sandifer.

So how old do you like to start your horses, Bruce?

LISTEN IN!

Now let's check in with this archived interview with the late Howard Hale and Oregon trainer and horseman Mike Bridges. The same question today that we've been asking the rest of the horsemen this week. What age do you start your horses?

"When I was a kid and a young man, you didn't start horses till they were five, six years old. Sometimes four, but most horses were five or six when they were started because they had to go do a day's work. You rode every place. We didn't have trailers and you rode to your work and you rode back. So horses had to be older when they were started. They were much tougher to start because their mind was set. They already knew where they fit in the herd and they were more reluctant to step down."

"Today, we start these horses at two. You have to be careful not to ride them very much and to be cautious of them until they're four. But the mind is much more pliable when these horses are two-year-olds. They don't, they don't, they have no idea. They don't know where they fit in the herd yet. They're still trying to shake out their position and depending on their personality. So they're much easier to create the starting process of it."

Oregon horseman Mike Bridges.

Mike has a clinic going on this week. Find the information below!

You bring those babies in, you ween them off their mom. First thing we do is toss a little rope around their neck, their foot, but just toss them that rope on there, start and roll the hind quarters in the beginning and allow them all the horses to learn how to come off of the feel to understand that that rope can touch them and it's not the end of the world and just start that mind kind of coming your direction. Working off of pressure, understanding a release of pressure, starting to get them to hunt that release and start drawing that mind in the direction you want it to go.

What age do you start working them?

They're born in May and they start getting halter broke sometime in the November timeframe. We'll be done halter breaking hopefully end of the December timeframe, take a couple months. Once we go through that process, they get bumped out. We'll bring them back in as two-year-olds, they have a crew of guys that come in December. They'll start anywhere from right around 40 head of colts in December as twos, put a handful of rides on them, they get kicked out. So then the threes from the previous year come in at the same time and then from then on they really kind of get camped on as three-year-olds and they get ridden and more moving forward with them into the five and six-year-old mark. So as a three-year-old, three and a half-year-old, they're getting used more, we start introducing to the feed yard, start introducing them to the outside ranching and then really by the time they're five and six they're pretty mature and they're working full-time.

Horse trainer Ricky Quinn with some great information. Find that full interview on Horsemanscorner.com.