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Dusty goes through the checklist as he graduates Captain from colt starting to cutting
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THE FOUNDATION

60 Days

Follow a variety of horses through their initial rides. This series is completely raw and unedited; we don’t remove the bumps. Colt starting, even on the smoothest days, never goes as planned. Dusty Whitford shows you how to overcome each training obstacle to put on the most important rides in a horse’s career. The first ride is the most important, followed by the second.

About the Trainer

Dusty Whitford

Dusty Whitford (Glen Rose, Texas) has been a professional colt starter for 25 years. He has developed a system for starting colts that eliminates human answers and relies on answers that come from the way horses think. 6 years ago he began working for Hall of Fame trainers and began his career as a cutting and cow horse specialist. He has since seen finalists from his program in many major futurities. “Forward motion is the answer to 99% of Colt starting problems” -Dusty
FILTER BY: Bay Bay | Boomer | Buttons | Captain | Hashgirl | Millie | Sven | ALL
In Season 3 we follow the 2024 training crop in Dusty Whitford's program. Dusty has assistant Garrett Oland to help with colt starting this year. Watch a group of different horses at different stages of training progress from groundwork to graduation when they are broke enough to start learning their specific jobs in the performance horse world.
Millie is a 2022 filly by Metallic Malice out of a Boonsmal Cee Lena mare. She is a fiery young lady that has a tendency to react and go straight to the flight instinct. She may take longer than other horses to be calm and confident, but all the feel she has can lead to a great cutting horse. Her full brother Peter was in the Cutting Horse series in Season 6.
Introducing Millie! She is a Sassy and feely young lady getting ready for her career. Dusty and Garrett work on lunging saddled, getting a horse's attention and bouncing around the colt.
Dusty continues ground work and Garrett works on ponying Millie to prepare her for the first ride.
Dusty puts pressure on Millie to help get her to have a breakthrough after many works of not progressing. Garrett and Dusty end up getting ride one done and Millie has a successful day in the training pen.
Garrett and Dusty are in the round pen with Millie and focus on keeping her calm and relaxed so she can graduate to the big pen.
Dusty ponies Garrett on Millie in the big pen and then releases her and help Garrett trot around the arena.
Dusty begins the ride by ponying Garrett and Millie, then turns the pair loose in the arena. They use the pony horse to help keep Millie thinking and as a safe place for her to seek out if she gets nervous.
Dusty rides Millie without a pony horse and works on keeping her focused, relaxed and begins working on advancing her riding since she is now more rideable.
Dusty works on softening Millie to his legs, and she becomes very reactive and does not think through the process. He works to get her thinking and soft minded so that she can move away from pressure instead of into it.
Dusty continues to work with Millie on her reactivity and starts to pat her while riding to get her desensitized to little movements.
Dusty gets Millie ready to walk through the herd and takes her through the herd.
Dusty and Garrett head to the pasture to get cows.
Dusty continues to work on getting Millie broke and thinking. He spends his ride today using a rope to move around and help her think through troubles.
Dusty saddles Buttons for the third time and introduces the snaffle.
Dusty and Garrett get the first ride put on Buttons
Dusty gets Buttons ready in the round pen and then heads to the arena for Garrett to pony and then help with riding Buttons using a broke horse to guide her.
Buttons is in the big arena without a pony horse and Dusty works on getting her soft to his hands and legs.
Dusty continues to advance Buttons and introduces opening a gate.
Dusty takes Buttons to the pasture and gathers cows before he goes over everything she knows to call her successfully started.
Dusty ground drives Hashgirl and puts another ride on her. They work through her being a little grumpy.
After a couple weeks, Dusty has progressed very quickly with Hashgirl and is ready to graduate her to the cutting series. You can follow her in that series for the rest of the year!
This video is about 15 rides later from the previous when Sven has started riding alone in the big arena.
Dusty and Garrett put ride one on Boomer
Dusty gets Boomer ready to ride and then ponies him and Garrett.
Dusty works on getting Boomer comfortable with the side of the arena he doesn't like and also works on getting him to move off his leg instead of into it so he can pick up the correct lead.
Dusty rides Boomer on a day that Boomer is not receptive to learning and is a little hardheaded about things like moving away from pressure and staying relaxed.
We join Dusty and Captain around ride 6 to work on more advanced colt starting beyond groundwork and the first rides.
Dusty goes through the checklist as he graduates Captain from colt starting to cutting

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