Timeless Tradition

Horsemen agree that a good hackamore has life and so must the hands on the reins. Brady Weaver is constantly moving his reins, helping the horse find the center of the bosal where it doesn’t feel pressure. “It’s all about the release,” he said. “I’m constantly lifting and bumping with my reins but never pulling on them or the horse will become dull and resistant.”

Story and photography by Jennifer Denison

Brady Weaver sees a lot of horsemen who ride with their hackamores too high or too low on their horses’ noses. He adjusts the hackamore so the bosal sits at point where the bony part of the nose meets the soft cartilage. The bosal should fit snugly around the horse’s nose to work off the sensitive areas of the horse’s nose, sides of the face and under the jaw. “Benny told me to adjust the hackamore a little higher than the soft tissue,” Weaver said. “He and Tony both liked it on the harder part of the nose and fitted pretty snug, not to the point there’s no relief, but to where when you bump the reins the horse responds to it.” OLD-SCHOOL

BRIDLE HORSEMEN often remark about being able to ride a horse with only a piece of string in its mouth. Developing such softness and responsiveness comes with years of consistent training that starts with a rawhide-braided hackamore. A traditional piece of equipment introduced to early California by the

Spanish Vaquero in the late 1700s during the era of grand ranchos and missions, the hackamore has been refined through the years by generations of horsemen setting the stage for a horse’s training and preparing it for the two-rein and bridle.

With the evolution of reined cow horse and other competitions, horsemen added another tool to their training process—the snaffle bit, which is the foundation for the

National Reined Cow Horse Association’s prestigious Snaffle Bit Futurity®. Some horsemen incorporate this before or after starting a horse in a hackamore and before progressing to the two-rein.

Brady Weaver, a cow horse trainer based in Enterprise, Utah, grew up riding racehorses in Blackfoot, Idaho, and became familiar with the snaffle bit and its use in training young horses. However, he had only read about reined cow horses and

Vaquero traditions until he was 20 years old and moved to Byron, California, to start colts for John McDonald and cowboy on ranches. Master hackamore horseman Tony Amaral lived a quarter of a mile down the road from Weaver and

loved to talk about horses, hackamores and spade bits to young horsemen willing to listen and learn.

“I had no idea what he was talking about at first,” recalled Weaver. “I was earning $1,000 a month working seven days a week and 14 hours a day, and I’d go down to Tony’s at night and he’d cook me dinner and tell me stories of all the great horses he rode, and then I’d do the dishes. He had all of these [Luis] Ortega hackamores, Blind Bob [Mills horsehair] ropes and Gary Avila silver bits, and it was eye-opening to a young guy from Idaho. When I thought about all the guys Tony learned from, I realized he’s passing down hundreds of years of information to a young guy like me.”

Amaral sparked Weaver’s interest in cow horses and following traditional vaquero training methods. Weaver went on to train cutting horses for a few years before transitioning into cow horses as the discipline gained popularity with his clients. Through the years, he had opportunities to learn from renowned performance horse trainers such as Benny Guitron, Dell Hendricks, Russ Miller, Don Murphy and Randy Paul. One of today’s top cow horse trainers, Weaver shares tips on correctly using the hackamore and making a smooth transition from the hackamore to the bridle, also known as jaquima de freno.

Hackamores come in a variety of lengths, diameters and materials. Weaver bought this unique cotton rope hackamore from his mentor, Tony Amaral. “It’s great for a horse that is scared of the bump from a traditional hackamore,” he said.

The hackamore is a pivotal part of training a cow horse, yet it’s an often misunderstood and misused piece of equipment. Traditionally, the hackamore is the preferred gear to start young horses because it preserves the horse’s mouth while it’s shedding its baby teeth and erupting permanent teeth; this is especially important when starting young futurity colts to show as 3-year-olds.

The hackamore consists of a headstall (or hanger), mecate reins and a braided rawhide or leather bosal. Bosals come in different diameters ranging from ⅝-inch to ½-inch and up ,and often a horseman chooses an mecate of equal diameter. The bosal consists of four key parts: heel knot, cheekpieces, side buttons and the nose button. With a properly adjusted hackamore, these points coincide with the nerves and sensitive parts of a horse’s

nose, the sides of its face and under the jaw and send signals to the horse by the lifting and bumping action of the reins.

“In the old days, a lot of the hackamores were 12½ inches long, measured from the inside of the nose button to the heel knot, because the horses had bigger heads,” said Weaver. “If you look at old pictures of horses from the 1920s to ’40s, the mecate was wrapped only a couple of times around the bar of the hackamore because they needed more space to fit the horses’ coarse heads. Today’s horse heads are more refined, and they need shorter hackamores, like 10½ to 11 inches with a 7-inch nose button.”

Weaver likes to adjust the hackamore so the nose button sits approximately halfway between the horse’s eyes and muzzle. He ensures proper placement by feeling the bridge of the horse’s nose and placing it where the bone ends and the sponging cartilage and soft tissue begin. It’s also important that the hackamore be adjusted so the heel knot contacts the jaw when he lifts the reins and that the heel knot readily drops away from the horse’s jaw when he releases the reins.

For a tighter fit, Weaver adds a wrap around the heel knot, while for more space he releases a wrap. If the hanger rubs up against a horse’s eyes, Weaver ties a small piece of leather to each side of the hanger to pull down the headstall.

The hackamore functions through the life of the rider’s hands, offering a give and release motion through lifting and bumping the rein. Akin to a snaffle, the hackamore also works off direct rein pressure, but its main purpose is to introduce indirect rein pressure, or neck reining, which will be honed during the two rein and bridle phases of training.

“The hackamore has similarities to the snaffle, but it works differently and you have to ride differently with it,” said Weaver. “Tony always told me when riding with a hackamore to keep my hands up [above the saddle’s cantle] and wide with the [mecate] coming out of the ends of my pinkie fingers.”

With his hands in that position, Weaver uses direct pressure on the reins to turn left and right but also follow with a neck rein cue with the outside rein. However, instead of pulling on the reins he uses a lift and bump motion to help the horse find the center of the hackamore where there is no pressure.

Right: The two-rein prepares the horse for neck reining and packing a bit. Weaver adjusts the sides of his headstall so the ties face the outside and don’t rub again the bosalita or horse’s cheeks.

Below: Weaver rides his horses in circles while getting the horse used to the hackamore. He encourages lateral flexion through the neck and rib cage, and vertical flexion over the neck and poll by lifting and bumping his reins.

“If you pull on the hackamore, it’ll lock onto a horse’s nose,” he explained. “The horse will become numb to it and soon learn to run through it. You’ve got to keep your hands alive to direct the horse’s nose to the center of the hackamore where it finds the release.

“The hackamore is really just a bluff,” he added, “and you can lose control or scare a horse if you don’t know how to use it. I want to establish a little bit of control in the hackamore and teach the horse lateral flexion to the right and left and to arc over its topline for collection.”

After a couple of months in the hackamore, Weaver introduces the snaffle. Although it is not part of the traditional bridle horse training process, it is an important part of modern cow horse competition. He adjusts it so that there’s a slight wrinkle on the corners’ of the horse’s mouth.

“When you put a snaffle in a horse’s mouth you can get a little more drive and collection than you can with a hackamore,” said Weaver. “The horse also won’t run through it as easily. In cow horse, it can be really scary going down the fence if your horse doesn’t have a [sensitive] nose and you don’t have control.”

A snaffle works off direct rein pressure and applies pressure to the outside of the

In the two-rein, a rider can place fingers between the romal reins to adjust them or signal a horse Brady Weaver trains cow horses and coaches Non Pros from his facility in Enterprise, Utah.

bit and the bars of the horse’s mouth. He practices a lot of lateral flexion exercises, as well as sending a horse straight down the pen, collecting its frame and stopping.

“There’s no real secret in the transition between the hackamore and snaffle,” said Weaver. “If you’re good with your hands and keep them alive it’s not hard.”

In his training program, Weaver may use the hackamore one day and the snaffle the next, based on what he’s working on and how the horse responds.

Once a horse is proficient in the hackamore and snaffle, Weaver rides in a tworein rig, usually when the horse is 6 years old, in preparation for the bridle.

In NRCHA competition, a rider can compete in both two-rein and the bridle, but if Weaver could have his way, he would prefer to keep the horse in the two rein for an entire year for longevity.

“John Ward told me to ride a horse in a two rein for a year and take that time to get the horse in the bridle,” said Weaver.

In Amaral’s days, he would put a horse in a two rein and then hang the spade loosely in a horse’s mouth without reins to teach the horse to pack it before introducing the signal.

“They would put salt or glycerin on the spoon and mouthpiece and the horse would start licking it and rolling the cricket, which increased salivations, and would pick up the bit in its mouth,” said Weaver. “Pretty soon the horse is learning to pick up the bridle before you even touch the reins. Benny always said a horse would relax its neck muscles if it’s working its tongue and rolling the cricket.”

When the horse responds to subtle tworein cues while packing the bit, Weaver moves to the full bridle. Taking the time to take the horse through the entire process ensures a smooth transition to the spade and builds a confident cow horse for years to come.