More on bits and Turbo’s new training program

Well here’s my take on the Denver Annual Western Trade show, the largest in the world. Under one roof there was about 10 acres of booths that were about 10-12 feet wide and 10-12 feet deep some places that were 4 stories. It was incredible; you could see all the new fashions, styles, types of tack and everything that is going to be coming out this year. It was interesting and I got to be reunited with a lot of old friends.

The thing I paid the most attention to was our bits and spurs, of course there is nothing out that is exactly or close to our Performax line, we’re still light years ahead as far as technology and knowledge in constructing the better product that has meaning – that is you’re not stuck just guessing to try and come up with a bit that resolve a problem or maximize your horses’ performance. You can actually calculate it by a chart that we have on www.lesvogt.com that allows you to make intelligent decisions. This keeps you from buying bits that you really don’t need.

The other thing that I wanted to look at was the silver bit and spurs lines that are out there. What I see is that we don’t really have any competition in that area – our custom bits and spurs in our silver line, are made so much better. In the past year the price of silver has doubled and almost at tripled in cost and if the quality of the product is any good, the price had to go up too. Our custom line, Les Vogt’s Silver Bits & Spurs, is thicker silver with thicker silver inlays and overlays. Most of our competition has gone to thinner silver so they can keep the price down. The way you can tell, is that ours has have deeper engravings, and if you have thinner silver, you’ll cut right through your engraving if you cut very deep.

We also have calculated leverage positions, so we place the bit on the cheek piece perfectly for the horse it’s being made for, so that it’s a predetermined fact how this bit is going to actually perform. With all my years of success with horse training I have a lot of experience with these bits and spurs, and understand how I can make your bit or spur work better than any others. You can find a gallery of bits and spurs on www.lesvogt.com, just click on the silver bit and spur logo and you can take a gander at more than 500 pieces.

I have some very exciting news too: I was approached by Aaron Ralston who has a television show, “Ride with Aaron Ralston”, and he’s asked me to be a participant on his show on a bi-weekly basis. I’ll keep you posted on how that works out.

Turbo, the wonder horse. In case you have been wondering where he is, he’s sort of been on vacation, he’s put on a bit of weight and gotten hairy. He’s been taking the back seat since I’ve got these two Futurity horses which are really doing well and happy with both. We have Rango who is a big red colt with four white socks and Sparky is a plain little bay horse until you get on him, then he gets a lot bigger and prettier when you’re riding. Because the colts have been taking most of my time, so Turbo has sort of been on vacation. So I decided that he needed to spend time on roping, so to start, we’ve spent about a week to 10 days on the heel-o-matic machine, made by Cactus. Turbo took to that and now we’re taking him out of the box on slow cattle, and he’s really enjoying the roping. And I figure there’s really is no reason for a horse to stand around and wait while you’re roping on other horses, so I’ve been keeping him busy all the time. I wish I would have known how much good it does a show horse to rope on him many years ago, I think my horses would have been better, and a heck of a way to keep him fit and happy.

Here’s my brand new deal, so listen up. What I’ve been doing with Turbo is saddling him up, warming him up as I normally do, using my cloverleaf and other warm up exercises. I might rope a couple of steers, and while the other guys are roping, I might run him across the pen and fence him once or twice, might even stop him, then I might rope a couple more steers. For example, last night there was an old steer hanging out at the catch pen that hadn’t gone in the stripping shoot, so he’s hanging out at the corner of the arena, after I roped, I galloped down there and sent him down the fence and hammered him once each way. Then I galloped down the other end of the pen and roped another steer, after that I galloped some circles, did some speed transitions, and a lead change, then I roped another steer. Then there was another little Mexican steer looking at me, so I sent him down the fence again. What this amounts to is, I got to rope, I got to go down the fence, and I got to do my rein work. My horse never knew what I was going to do next, and that’s the lesson, he should only be doing what I ask him to do, nothing more or less. Makes it pretty hard for him to predict when I don’t even know what I’m going to do next. That’s my new gig, I really like it, and I’m on to something really big, listen for chapter two.

Thanks for reading folks!



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