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By Lloyd Albritton

Columnist

There is no feeling more special than galloping down the trail on a special horse and a special saddle.

In my younger years I regularly indulged my love for horses. My father loved horses as well, and virtually always owned two to three horses for riding or plowing as I was growing up in the 1950s. This was also a time when western movies and television serials were at their peak in popularity.

All my heroes were cowboys and every western hero rode a special horse. Roy Rogers rode Trigger; Gene Autry rode Champ; Rex Allen rode Cocoa; The Lone Ranger rode Silver; and his trusty sidekick, Tonto, rode a handsome pinto pony named Scout. The horses and their fancy saddles were together an integral part of the cowboy heroes’ persona and stardom.

As a young boy, I loved to watch my cowboy heroes race across the prairie at a fast gallop while shooting at fleeing bandits, who always seemed to ride ugly, slow, unadorned nags. The starring heroes were all great riders too, and often performed thrilling riding stunts.

The Pony Express mount, for example, was one of my favorites. In this stunt, the rider would grab ahold of the saddle horn from the ground even as his hose took off a’running. He would run beside his horse for a short distance, then bounce his feet off the ground and swing into the saddle at a dead run. Sometimes the cowboy would run straight at his horse and leap into the stirrup with his left foot even as the horse took off after the back guys. He never missed!  Other times he would hop up into the saddle from directly behind the horse or even jump down into the saddle from a rooftop or a high rock.

Another favorite of mine was when the cowboy hero would reach up and catch ahold of a low limb as his horse ran underneath a big tree. He would quickly swing up atop the limb and when the bad guy (who had been chasing him) came up from behind, the hero would drop down on top of him, knock him off his horse, then beat him up real good with his fists. Other times he would chase the bad guy down on his horse from behind, leap over onto him from his own horse, and they would both roll down a steep, dusty hill. When they hit bottom and both had scrambled to their feet, the hero would beat up the bad guy with his fists, draw his pistol, and arrest him. Every western seemed to employ the same tree and the same hill for that scene and, oddly enough, the hero never lost his hat.

Cowboy movies were a great thrill for a young country boy like me and I tried every on-screen riding stunt I saw. Some of them worked pretty well. Most, however, turned out to be total calamities and I was lucky to survive them. In addition, the clumsy nags I rode as a boy were far from being the magnificent steeds my heroes rode in the movies. They rarely cooperated with my stunt designs.

Following my return home from military service in my late twenties, my interest in horses returned. I became an avid equestrian student, constantly reading and studying books and magazines of every kind on horse training strategies, breed genetics and health care. Though I never owned enough pastureland to raise horses in any serious kind of way, I was able to acquire and maintain a horse or two for many years. Some of these horses were nothing to write home about. Others had pretty good bloodlines and inherent athletic abilities. Just as I had attempted to immulate the stunts of my favorite cowboy movie stars years earlier, I now tried to apply all my new book learning to become a better horseman and to train my horses to be perform better. I am not sure which of us learned the most during these years of “home schooling,” but I believe I became a better rider and trainer because of it and I believe my horses were greatly improved as well.  This is more than I can say about my youthful horsemanship endeavors, which were mostly wild and unscientific and resulted in a lot of horses with some incurable bad habits.

During these learning years I discovered a horse training pioneer and scholar by the name of Monty Foreman. Foreman had come to prominence in the 1940s by filming the riding of many top professional performers and afterward studying the movements of both horse and rider in slow motion. He discovered that, despite their splendid split-second performances, most of the riders were not actually doing what they thought they were doing. In fact, many were achieving championship performances with their horses despite their poor riding skills.

I immediately purchased Foreman’s book, Monty Foreman’s Horse Training Science, and proceeded to study it so intensely that I practically read the ink right off the pages. After studying his techniques I went directly out to the horse corral and tried them on my own horse. I was amazed at the simplicity and effectiveness of the Monty Foreman horse training system. It worked splendidly!

A critical component of Foreman’s theory was the prevalent design and construction of the typical western saddle, which was antithetical to a natural balanced ride. Consequently, Foreman designed a western saddle which featured an all-leather ground seat which placed the rider sitting comfortably just behind the horses withers and over the horse’s weight-bearing front legs with the stirrups also moved forward so as to put the rider’s weight directly onto his legs. These modifications also necessitated a change in the saddle’s rigging (the girth cinch) from the saddle tree to the saddle skirts.

After reading about Foreman’s revolutionary design, I discovered a renowned cutting horse trainer and saddle maker in Tallahassee, Florida, named Dave Jones. Dave had adapted Foreman’s balanced-ride concepts into his own improved proprietary design resulting in a beautifully built balanced-ride western saddle. After driving to Tallahassee and visiting with Dave, I determined that I absolutely must have one of his custom saddles. I returned home and persuaded my wife that I would die if I did not get this saddle and placed my order the following week. My new saddle arrived at my door several weeks later. When I unpacked the box and examined it, I was not disappointed.

“I don’t see anything so special about this saddle,” my wife observed, “except the cost of it.”

Yes, it was expensive, but it was a special saddle in other ways too, and I rode it on several horses over many years.  Indeed, what made the saddle so special was not the price, the aesthetics of it or even the superior quality of the leather or the superb craftsmanship, but rather, the special ride it facilitated, which could only be appreciated by an experienced rider who had ridden a lot of “un-special” saddles to compare it to.

My handmade Dave Jones balanced-ride saddle filled me with joy and pride over hundreds of horseback rides. The saddle was very, very special to me and each and every ride on it was special. I don’t have it anymore and I don’t ride horses anymore, but oh how special were those days when I galloped through the woods and across the fields of Bratt, Fla. riding a splendid horse and looking good in an authentic western balanced-ride saddle. I felt right up there with Roy, Gene, Rex and The Lone Ranger. I felt special!