Trade Secrets

Todd Crawford explains how learning to read, rate and stop with a cow are integral to success in the show pen.

By Bonnie Wheatley

The ability to perform thrilling fence runs and crowd-pleasing stops with precision are hallmarks of reined cow horse competition that require a rock-solid training foundation. For National Reined Cow Horse Association Hall of Fame and $2 Million Rider Todd Crawford, instilling rate and stop are key fundamentals, and he uses cattle to reinforce these skills in his training program.

“Obviously, every aspect of training, all the details, are very important, but if I had one main theme it would be having my horse recognize that when a cow signals him to stop, he hits his hocks,” Crawford said.

At his training facility in Blanchard, Oklahoma, Crawford instills the correct foundation in some of the winningest horses and Non Professional riders in the industry by helping them learn to read cattle.

“You have to have your eyes on the cow in order to see when that cow signals your horse to stop,” said Crawford. “Then you have to be able to back it up by any means that you need to in order to make sure your horse stops.”

Crawford says successful reined cow horses must learn to respect the traditional vaquero head gear, from the snaffle bit to the bridle. Since the snaffle bit is a milder piece of equipment, Crawford says it’s of utmost importance that horses be trained to respond to even the lightest cues from the earliest stages of their training.

“Whether it’s a snaffle or hackamore, or whether it’s a bridle or whatever, that horse has got to know that when that cow signals ‘stop,’ you get stopped now and there’s not another step,” he said. “Once you have that ingrained, then you know you can go down the fence and make circling turns and things like that, but you always have to have the ability to stop them anytime you want to.”

By teaching his horses to proficiently read cattle, Crawford is constantly reinforcing rate and stop.

“Cattle lower their front ends or withers as they’re preparing to stop, and I want my horse to recognize that signal from the cow,” he explained. “I want him to hit his hocks. The other thing is, if I’m running across the pen and the cow turns away from me, the moment that cow angles away from me it signals the horse to stop.”

During training, Crawford says he’s careful to create and reinforce softness.

Instilling rate and stop are key fundamentals in Todd Crawford’s training program, and he uses cattle to reinforce these skills in training.

ROSS HECOX

“Once you get them to finding that stop then you can kind of soften it up and take the resistance out,” he said. “Let’s say, for instance, I had to put a bridle on one to get them to hit that stop because they’re running through my hand, I’m going to do that.”

For the Non Pros Crawford coaches, he says success comes easier if they learn to read cattle the same way as their horses are trained to do.

“What I’m doing in training is I’m putting those brakes on that horse to

where the worst case scenario is that I’ve got to kick and make that horse go farther ahead, but I’m kicking rather than pulling,” said Crawford. “I’ve trained that rate in; I’ve trained that stop in. It doesn’t matter whether I’m cutting or whether I’m going down the fence, I will run up alongside that cow and if that cow signals, I’ll hit that stop and I’ll let that cow go on. By doing that and getting that stop deeply ingrained, then, most of the time, I don’t have that much work to do in the reining because I already have that stop kind of implanted.”

Crawford emphasized that it’s just as important, if not more so, to be as vigilant about your own riding habits as it is to focus on schooling your horse.

“You have to discipline yourself to watch your cow,” he said. “Most of it is me working on my self-discipline about watching the cow and being consistent in what I’m doing. It’s almost like I’ve got to work on myself just as much, if not more, than my horse.”

Without that mindset, Crawford says it’s tough to avoid sending mixed signals to your horse and, as a consequence, shaking his confidence.

“If I’m not disciplined to think that way, there’s no way my horse is going to be consistently thinking the way I want him to,” he explained. “If you’re not consistent in what you’re doing, your horse is not going to be consistent. You’ll be sending mixed signals.”

In lockstep with reading cattle well, Crawford says approaching the stop, whether it’s in the reined work or the fence work, is just as important and boils down to speed and body control.

“I have to make sure there’s no lean in the run,” he said. “I don’t have to stop a lot, like run and slide, but the approach to the stop is so important— the run—just as it is running down the fence with the cow. In other words, that horse has to let me put him in position so that when the cow stops, he’s in position to turn.”

In order to be able to put his horse in the correct position to turn a cow, Crawford says he has to have taught the horse to respect all of his cues.

“It’s just a lot of maneuvering and handling, teaching the horse to run with the cow. I have my stop ingrained, but I am teaching the run, the softness and the steering.

“You know, when he’s good in the face, good in the bridle and reads a cow, then I think you have a cow horse.”