In May of that year my mare, Bridget, had her second foal.  I was fifteen minutes late for the birth but I got to do and watch everything else including video taping it.  Also my sister and I went on our very first cattle drive with the Hendren's.  I took Bethany, who had appoximatly 10 rides on her, on this hard drive.  We had 30 head of easy cows in one pasture but the other had 80 stubborn head of cows that refused to go down the canyon for about an hour or so.  With steep canyon walls I was unsure of what to do and to make matters worse there were only 4 good horses out of 6 and only 3 of the 4 good horses could chase cows down.  Another thing I was the only rider in front that had a good horse.  The next thing I know my horse and I are loping the canyon walls chasing cows down that tried to run off in front and then I also was trying to keep the front from spliting on a horse that had about 10 rides.  One thing that was for me, my horse had been raised on steep hills from the time she was born and she knew how to handle cliffs but I was riding her and she wasn't used to that yet but we made it through alive.  In June we had another drive taking the cows up to the forest land and then I took Bethany to a McNamee clinic.  He had two competitions on Sunday and Bethany won both of them.  July came and Tabitha and I decided to enter the Kooskia Days Parade.  She took her trusty filly, Rianna, and I took my well trusted filly, Bethany.  They came through alive.  That pretty well wraps up what we did with the horses that year other than the time Mr. Hendren called in a panic saying his cows over by my place were out on the road and he needed help.  I hadn't rode Bethany in a couple months and she did quite well getting the runaways back in their pens.

Then my mom got a great idea for advertising my business.  Not only that but it was free.  She called the Clearwater Progress, Idaho County Free Press and the Lewiston Tribune.  They all did good articals on me and my business.  Clearwater Progress got me a few more horses to train (see picture).  I enjoyed the horses that came through and learn something from each one of them.

Lewiston Tribune

Entrepreneurial spirit; Teenage tycoons Fledgling entrepreneurs are growing their businesses with help from parents and old- fashioned hard work Elaine Williams         Jacklynn Thompson doesn't have a driver's license or a high school diploma.    But at 17 she's a fixture at a Kamiah-Kooskia area farmer's market where she sells hand- made horse tack, and she is gradually earning a reputation for training horses.     The majority of her business' revenue last year came in Thompson's favorite kind of currency - horses. Thompson expects to gross $2,500 in 2007.     The hourly wages of the single employee of CW Lawns and Landscaping in Clarkston will likely reach $15 this summer, more than the average for the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley.    The business is owned by Cary Conklin, 17, and Isaac Woodbury, 17, who started it as a way to have part-time jobs that didn't interfere with school and almost year-round sports schedules.     Age isn't an obstacle for some of the region's youngest entrepreneurs in operating businesses.    Instead, the three capitalize on economic development incentives not necessarily as readily available to adults.    Thompson and Conklin have received interest-free loans from their parents. Thompson pays no rent for the use of the riding ring where she trains horses and feeds them hay she gets for free from her parents' land. "They're just happy to see me working,'' Thompson says.    Conklin's father, one of the region's most prominent bankers, Clyde Conklin, helped him with some of the paperwork that established the business.    "If I have some questions about the financial stuff, any help I need, I can pretty much ask him,'' the younger Conklin says.    But all three seem to have learned one of the basic fundamentals of business: Success depends on completing a job in a way that pleases your customers.     n n n    Thompson's business started as a hobby. She ran across a magazine article about a company that sold kits for making halters about the same time she had acquired some new horses and needed equipment for them.    Now she no longer uses the kits, since it's less expensive to buy the supplies in bulk. The kinds of items she makes include halters, bridles, breast collars, lead ropes and chin straps.    She's also is a self-taught horse trainer who got her start taming two of the horses the family owns. They took first and second place in a cowboy horsemanship race with an obstacle course.    "Most of it was stuff we had never done,'' Thompson said.     Her first customer was a farrier she met at a Lewis-Clark event. She mentioned her interest in training as they were talking horses and he offered to let her train one of his.    Her second customer was someone who owns a stud their mares have been bred with. He also owns land near Thompson's home and has observed how she handles herself around the animals.    Thompson, who was home schooled, spends 30 days with each animal, working them at least one hour per day, usually in the morning before it gets too hot.    She finishes around 10 a.m. and eats breakfast. The rest of the day is devoted to making horse tack or riding her own horses. Earlier in the year, schoolwork consumed some of her time, but she's now finished with her entire high school curriculum.    Her training technique starts on the ground, getting the horses to trust her and obey her commands. Most of the horses she sees have never been ridden and she never knows what will happen until about 10 days into the training, when she first climbs into the saddle.    The horse she rode for the first time last week almost fell asleep as she rode.  Another bucked her 10 feet into the air.    She landed on the saddle, which broke the fall and then hit the ground still holding the reins, which gave her some control, and then got back on the horse.    "I just sort of laugh it off and say 'You silly.' I've learned it's better not to hold a grudge against them.''    Holding a game face is important, Thompson says. "You just have to go to the horse knowing what it can do and knowing, if you keep calm, it might not do it.''    The work is challenging, partly because it requires so much self control, Thompson says. "You're working with a live animal and they've got a brain on them. ...They can detect the slightest muscle movement. Even right through the saddle, they know.''    Thompson has grown her business gradually. She went from training one horse to two at a time this year. The cost is $240 per horse with no extra fees for room or board.    The tack side is getting stronger too. Before, Thompson says she was borrowing for her supplies and repaying her parents. Now she has money available to buy the materials, probably because her upper-end pieces, which have higher profit margins, are growing in popularity.    Thompson has no plans to leave home any time soon. She's teaching Bethany, one of the horses she earned last year in trade for training, her first trick - how to bow.     Being finished with school will make it possible for her to commit more time to perfecting her skills as a trainer. "Horses are God's creatures. You have to treat them that way.''        n n n    Conklin started his business almost out of necessity. He needed a way to earn extra income, but only had Sundays available to work because he plays football, basketball and baseball.    Lawn mowing met the criteria. Conklin and his partner could cover about 20 lawns, with each customer paying, on average, $26.    Little had to be deducted from the gross revenue. Conklin purchased a trailer for $250 that he and his partner pull behind a pickup truck he already owned. Their parents allowed them to use their lawn mowers.    Keeping track of the book work is easy because Conklin keeps it all in an Excel spreadsheet. Maintaining the mowers was one of the only problems. One of them broke down on a Sunday last summer and, more than once, wheels fell off as they were working.    "Both of (the lawn mowers) were pretty much shot by the end of the summer,'' Conklin says. When fall arrived, Conklin and Woodbury had earned $2,500 each, after expenses were deducted. Conklin used part of  his share to buy a motor scooter.    This summer he projects they'll have $4,000 each by the end of the year, plus the same amount for the business' employee. Conklin hopes to do better at saving since he'll be starting college in about one year.    The forecast is based on some upgrades Conklin and Woodbury made. In 2006, used a home computer to make 200 fliers, which they left on doorsteps.  This year, they had 4,000 fliers made professionally and placed in the MoneySaver.    They now have a cell phone that takes messages and they've invested $1,000 each in professional quality mowers to avoid mechanical issues.    They chose push models, not riders, since people tend to like how push mowers leave fewer track marks, Conklin says. Plus it's easier to get push mowers into small corners of lawns.    Conklin expects he and his partner will be working about four days a week this summer, mowing lawns and doing special projects, such as cutting sod or moving rock.    About the only trouble he's encountered has been an occasional picky customer, Conklin says. "Some of them stand outside and breath down your neck. They want it done a certain, perfect way.''    CW Lawns and Landscaping is lucrative enough that Conklin plans to continue the business when he's in college. "I don't think it's too difficult to run it.''    ---    Williams may be contacted at ewilliam@lmtribune.com or (208) 743-9600, ext. 261.    

Thompson, horse trainer  

KOOSKIA –  “She was a killer kind,” says Jacklynn Thompson.

 

It was the second horse she had trained, one that wouldn’t be led but would rather rear up or push you against the fence, “Anything she could do to get out of it,” Jacklynn says. And in the contest of several hundred pounds of horseflesh versus 100-plus pounds of cowgirl, the winner is quick to forecast.

 

Yet this year that once-difficult horse became the model for its class, winning grand champion green horse western equitation in the Idaho County Fair.

 

“And we’re pretty happy about that,” she says.

 

Getting a no-go horse to the point of attention and obedience takes one word: training. Jacklynn, 19, has been at this for the past three years on her parents’ 35-acre Tahoe Ridge property, “about a mile from Kooskia as the crow flies,” she says, a wide patch of pasture overlooking the mountains of the Clearwater Valley which she shares with two sisters and three brothers. Here she takes horses -- wild or spoiled or a mixture of both – through a gentle but firm process that brings nature under control to the point where they will take a saddle and bridle and obey attentively the commands of a human rider.

 

“Usually I can get one from wild to tame in around 30 hours,” Jacklynn says, “from halter break I’ll gradually work with them to where they’re not going to buck for any reason.”

 

Learning the process didn’t come through training or from a mentor or even her parents. It came from determination and experience. In other words, “I had to do it by the trial and effect process,” she says.

 

It started with two mares the family purchased at a bargain a few years ago. Up to this point Jacklynn had only ridden on two old geldings, and so her father was concered these more active, untrained horses were more animal than she could handle. Jacklynn started working with the horses until she was able to get the reins on them, “and the next thing I knew I was riding them.”

 

As of late summer Jacklynn has trained 30 horses for neighbors and clients across the county and spreading across the state from Moscow to Twin Falls . Her experience from one horse helps her in training the next, and when a problem comes up she has a phone list of fellow trainers to put the matter to and find a solution … maybe something new to learn or just something that she needed to be reminded to do. Her brother has also been of valuable help.

 

An example, Jacklynn was working with a three-year-old mare who let her know right away this would not be an easy time --  kicking and snorting, and anything faster than a walk, “it was a rodeo, total bucking business. My brother came up, and taught me how to get this horse collected, and guess what, that bucking went away.”

 

For Jacklynn, training comes down to trust and respect.

 

“You have to show you care about them so they’ll share their trust,” she says. “But you also need to show you mean business so you earn their respect; you need to back up what you just told them to do.” That doesn’t mean being really hard or abusive, she explains, but making situations uncomfortable enough for the horse without hurting it.

 

In some ways, training is like a military boot camp, requiring the horse to maintain attention and avoid being distracted by events going on around it or lapsing into grazing mode. Jacklynn demonstrated re-enforcing initial training through light movements on the reins that remind the horse to be attentive… even when just standing in the pasture the horse needs to be alert and that head up.

 

“If they’re looking over here and and there you haven’t done enough ground work with them,” she says.

 

Effective training also comes when you’re making the horse think you’re playing a game, she says. Horses play in the pasture all the time, and incorporating a playful aspect or training that incorporates a useful purpose, such as cutting out other horses or cattle, will better engage the animal that traditional repetitive lessons.

 

Horses have their own personalities and each needs its own attention in different measures of discipline, patience and persistence. One Nezperce filly, Boots, was pretty wary and difficult on the trust issue, which Jacklynn suspected was due to an old leg injury – possibly from an abusive prior owner – that continues to trouble her. Boots would see her and think “work” which would cause her pain in her leg, “and I hated that because I didn’t want her to think that. I wanted to think I take away pain.” Working and reworking through that, Jacklynn was finally able to get a halter on her and have her shod.

 

You can’t be too hard or too easy, according to Jacklynn. “You have to have a happy medium of trust, respect, love, care.”

 

Quite a few of the horses she’s hired to train are tame, meaning stall-raised. Generally they’re halter broke while they’re young and then turned out, so they’re used to humans. But, she adds, usually they’ve been “spoiled rotten and allowed to get away with things.” Wild horses, they’re more likely to respect you, but they’re also more apt to run away from you.

 

Of the horses she’s trained, some are for riding, and some are put through the process by the owner to “make sure they’re a good horse,’ Jacklynn says, and they’re turned loose as brood mares. Training requires maintenance and use, and what Jacklynn finds is those horses that lapse are ones where the owner fails to follow through on discipline or “they just don’t ride them.”

 

What’s her favorite breed? “I like the mixes because a lot of the breeds have a lot of quirks, “Jacklynn says, or are muscle-bound. Cross-breds work out a lot of those problems. In fact, her sister, Tabitha, 17, has one such horse, Rianna, a filly: “I call her a Belgian quarter-horse paint,” laughs Tabitha.

 

Jacklynn enjoys the whole process which daily keeps her occupied for hours from horse to horse, “but I train so many horses I don’t have time to ride my own.” Her dad used to ride and is now getting back into it, but her mom is another story.

 

“Mom hates horses. She always has,” Jacklynn says, stemming from a past riding experience that ended with her getting bucked off. “She never went riding again. She says, ‘Don’t bring those near me.’”

 

“But she will watch them in the pasture from a distance,” says Tabitha.

 

To find out more about Jacklynn’s training services, as well as her tack supply business, call 1-208-926-4240 or e-mail tahoetack@yahoo.com.

We are attending the BCH&O show in Lewiston at the fairgrounds on March 2

Then came day when we entered our first competition on those two mares.  It was an obsticle course race and with my flighty mare I didn't know what to expect.  There were flags and plastic bags every where that we had to run by and between but thankfully we didn't have to pick up.  With a 1/4 Belgian mare we got the fastest time of 2 minuets and 11 seconds, and my sister got 2 minuets and 26 seconds with the 3/8 Belgian filly.  The race horses there got 2 minuets 38 seconds or worse.  To top things off, I was riding a mare without a bit and everyone else, including Tabitha, was using a bit.  First place prize was a show bit and I thought 'just what you want Bridget.'

  Thinking back on the days before the show, Bridget had been doing things when I asked her to do them and she'd do them well but she do all the manuvers stiffly.  When the show came, I had never felt that mare so relaxed.  That was one of the best rides I had on her.  I did run her through some of the obsticles before the show just to see if she would do them.  If she wouldn't I'd pull out of the show and then practice more.  At first she was a little 'goosed' by them flags on the ground but she loped right through them the first time as she tried to look at them,  the next time she didn't even look at them and I was suprised.  Tabitha's filly was to blod to even notice the flags.

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I started out when I was 13 years old with my first horse.  A black, Quarter Horse/Morgan gelding named Nicky.  He had been used in 4H for years and was 'bom proof.'  I learned a great many lessons from that horse such as learning how to ride, control a horse plus teach an old dog the trick of loading in a strait load horse trailer.  Next, I bought an abused mare and my sister bought her filly.  The mother was extremely flighty and was scared to death of whip-like objects as well as plastic sacks and sometimes ropes.  The filly at 2 years old was still nursing on mom and had a killer-like temper.  After 3 months of battling her she finally started to lunge around the corral but that wasn't the end of it.  When I tried to ride her she picked up her old tricks of bitting, stirking, kicking, bucking and pinning me against the fence.  I outsmarted her a few times and sometimes I had close calls but she never got to hurt me.  Soon she stopped the harmful tricks and picked up the useful tricks such as riding smoothly, bowing, kneeling, laying down, playing dead, sitting and honking a bicycle horn.  She has been through two local parades and was named Grand Champion in Green Horse Western Equitation in her first year of 4H.