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As a very young kid my dad preferred mules... they were trained to voice commands...
one of his cousins was a garbage collector in a little town in Texas... Jack picked up trash in a wagon hitched to a couple of mules... he tied the reins to a frame on the wagon, walked behind and just hollered at the mules with voice commands... "hup" for go, "whoa" for stop, "gee" for turn left, "Haw" for turn right. he did his entire route like that.
 
Chuck Ellis said:
As a very young kid my dad preferred mules... they were trained to voice commands...
one of his cousins was a garbage collector in a little town in Texas... Jack picked up trash in a wagon hitched to a couple of mules... he tied the reins to a frame on the wagon, walked behind and just hollered at the mules with voice commands... "hup" for go, "whoa" for stop, "gee" for turn left, "Haw" for turn right. he did his entire route like that.
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My father as a young man and my grandfather both worked field crops with mules. I remember them telling stories about specific mules who were smart and others that were not so smart or were stubborn and had to be persuaded out of their stubborn nature with a stick upside the head. Apparently the commands were standardized as those were the commands my father spoke of as well.
 
Jim DeLaney said:
Gee is right. Haw is left. You folks haven't plowed much, eh? :)
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I was fortunate that by the time I got old enough to plow, we had left the farm and dad had a town job... he became a carpenter and roofer... plus he wanted me to go to school and become a "civil engineer".... not sure he knew what that was but he talked about it for some time when I was in my teens.... guess he was disappointed when I became an international logistic manager.
 
Mike Stafford said:
My father as a young man and my grandfather both worked field crops with mules. I remember them telling stories about specific mules who were smart and others that were not so smart or were stubborn and had to be persuaded out of their stubborn nature with a stick upside the head. Apparently the commands were standardized as those were the commands my father spoke of as well.
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This is a second hand story... my mom told me about a little mule that Dad was trying break....(he used to take other farmer's green mules and break them to pull plows, wagons, etc...)... seems Dad would snub the mule up to a snubbing post, then gather his harness to toss on his back... as soon as the harness was air borne, the mule would step sideways and let it fall in the dirt.... Mom said he did that about three time, which is/was about the extent of Dad's patience with anything.... he grabbed the snubbing post, broke it off at the ground and smacked the mule between the ears, sat him on his hunches and before he could get up, tossed the harness on hims and hooked him to a breaking plow.... Mom said that mule shook his head the entire day, but next day he stood for the harness.

He also sometimes would break a horse to ride, but he had a little black mare that he couldn't ride.... she would stand for the saddle, he would step into the saddle and she would sit down... she never bucked or tried to throw him, just sit down... every time he got in the saddle....
 
Chuck Ellis said:
one of his cousins was a garbage collector in a little town in Texas... Jack picked up trash in a wagon hitched to a couple of mules... he tied the reins to a frame on the wagon, walked behind and just hollered at the mules with voice commands... "
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For stuff like that a good horse or mule is IMHO a lot handier than a tractor cause you don't have to get up and down and start and stop and brake and gas the thing. After a bit of practice the critter usually knows more about what you're doing than the fellow driving him does.
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My parents trained horses for a good part of their living when I was growing up. Dad still does a bit although he's not spry like he was. Dad had gotten more than a bit of reputation for being able to deal with almost any sort of horse, so I have more than a few stories.

This one was one we owned though. The other job we had (and I say we cause we all worked at it) was taking care of this fellows cattle ranch. We used horses for hauling hay to feed and various other projects around the ranch (horses pretty much always "start" at -35-50F tractors are a bit more challenging and the diesel would be plumb froze solid some of the winter so we could refuel if we wanted to). For this purpose we had a handful of Percherons which are a rather tall an athletic workhorse (at least the variant we had, the modern french ones are shorter and dumpier and more commonly bred as meat horse). They were originally french coursers used as heavy warhorses so they had a fair bit of "up and at em" for such a large horse.

One day I was over feeding some of the critters in the pen, and dad was out with a stone boat heading out to pick up a load of hay from the haystack a couple hundred yards away over the hill with one of the Percheron geldings (who was probably 3, maybe 4 at the time and at least partially broke unlike most of what we had). For the stoneboat think of a pretty heavy rig one man could just pull to the side made from two logs about 12" around, 7' long as skids with a solid 2x6 deck on top tied to the horse with traces and shafts - shafts because on the ice the stone boat would run over the horse without them. I reckon the stoneboat was easily 300lbs +- a little bit.

So here I am feeding the horses.. and I hear..

WHOA WHOA WHOA YOU (and then followed a rather long and imaginative stream of invectives).

Followed by a rather large CRASH.

Then silence...

Figuring this was probably not good I hustled up over the 4 fences in the way, across the garden behind the house and up over the hill to the meadow where the stackyard was.

Before me I see dad slowly walking towards the stackyard.

The Perchoeron WITH the stoneboat still hooked on behind him is calmly standing INSIDE the stackyard eating from the stack and.. nothing obviously broken.

Getting closer I see the top board on the stackyard fence, which was a bit over 6' off of the ground is broken. Just the very top board and looked like it had barely been nicked.

This horse had cleared the fence with the stoneboat on behind him and dang near cleared the fence with the stoneboat as well. Dad had intelligently rolled off of the stoneboat and abandoned the whole rig well before the fence arrived.

I still regret not actually seeing that horse make that jump. It must have been really something.

There wasn't an animal on the place that was safe from being trained to do some sort of trick or activity. My dog got really good with the toboggan at MUSH, never did get very good at Gee or Haw though (he understood well enough.. he just didn't care to much), and I certainly got a fair bit of practice at "Whoa Whoa you..." but that fortunately pretty much all turned out better than even the stackyard wreck probably cause the dog was a whole lot smarter.

I've kind of wondered what a 4 team up of boars would be like. I hear they can top 20mph for over a mile... I might be getting to old for such shenanigans though.
 
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