What is a *Running W*?????.....

[cynthia]

Years ago a friend brought a little mule to my husband to train. The mule was about 12 hands tall and had been driven before and was a runaway.

My husband ground drove him in our arena and the mule would just take off. DH decided to put a running w on him. We rigged him up and DH asked him to walk off. the mule took off and DH pulled the ropes. Apparently the mule was experienced with running w's.

As soon as he felt the slack leave the lines, he fell to his knees and started grazing. He did that everytime.

DH did get him where he could be driven, however the owner never used him and he went back to his old ways.

Here's another story from years ago. The ranch where we bought our draft mares had a manager who would buy unmanageable draft horses because they were cheap. The hired hands would be given the job to train them to drive. Some of the horses were such bad runaways that they would work them in a plowed field with running w's. Being dumped on their noses a few times worked. Once a horse learns to runaway in harness, a running w or trip rope can be the only way to redeem the horse.

Some states require a trip road on one front leg on all horses being driven in parades as a safety precaution.

[Dick R]

Nov 21, 2005 11:14:11 GMT -5 dianei said:

The nearest thing I can figure out is it's a not-so-nice piece of training equipment, used to take a horse down.

Googled, it comes up as sort of a trip wire used in the old cowboy movies.

[br. Cruel device. Horse goes to its knees- damage knees- later horse gets huge painful weak knees. No reason to ever use me it

[Weaver]

I owned a Morgan- and we used the running Ws to aid in the building of muscle to aid in the “action” of the front legs. He was not a park horse but a classic pleasure as classified by the Morgan association. Yes this device can be used in a manner to cause harm, or control the front legs to bring down a horse. All depends on the manner you intend to use the device.

[Suzy Q]

My Dad used a running W to take down a young horse that "shied" at everything and was very unstable to ride. We then gave it a
"sights and sounds" treatment - sudden loud noises, rubbed it all over with blankets, anything we could think of to startle the horse. Gradually it relaxed and realized all the commotion wasn't threatening. Treatment completed and the result was a greatly improved ranch horse!