Distinctly Montana Magazine

w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m 65 I GREW UP AROUND HORSES and I was taught two very important rules when around them. One, don't walk behind them because you can and will get kicked. Two, they are unpredictable, so always be on guard. So when I was asked to write an article on draft horses in Montana I was hes- itant. The horses I have always been around spook easy, could be ill-tem- pered and actually chased our neighbor's dog out of our fields. Draft horses in my opinion were this combination with the addition of weighing around 2,500 pounds. Kenn McCarty, who, along with his wife Susan, owns Live Oak Belgians outside Saint Ignatius in the Mission Valley told me to bring my skis so I could skijor with the horses. Let me say I had never skijored, nor did being dragged behind a horse the size of my truck sound appealing. But I brought them all the same. My directions to their place from Kenn were pure Montana: "crest a hill, look for bison, turn left and keep going over a little bridge, look for two mailboxes below two trees and you'll see our driveway." I was greeted by Susan and their two dogs, Daisy and Gryphon, and as we sat down for lunch, Kenn recounted the history of the draft horse. Draft horses fall into two categories. The first category is the working class. Any horse, from a pony to your saddle horse used to pull things is in this sense a draft horse. Draft means "to pull." Then there are the purebreds. There are 30 breeds of draft horses world- wide, but only eight made it to North America. During the industrial revo- lution, when everybody switched from horse power to machine power, draft horses became food. These breeds became so neglected that several almost disappeared. It wasn't until the late 1940s and 50s that interest in the animal started to pick up, and a new generation of breeders revised some of the bloodlines. Kenn then tells me about what he calls the five F's of draft horse history, which are farming, freight hauling, fighting (firefighting and warfare), for- estry (logging), and what he likes to call fanfare or for pleasantry. I had to know how they both got started down this path of owning and working draft horses. Kenn tells me he used to work as a seasonal firefighter in the southern Sierra mountains, and Susan showed up at the station in 1984. Susan was an intern from Utah State, and Kenn's crew finished the last section of the Pacific Crest Trail in the southern Sierra. The BLM brought Susan in to be the first mounted patrol person for that section of the trail. He had some experience as a young kid with saddles horses and Susan had no experience. article and photos by HALLIE ZOLYNSKI Bloods The Cold Draft Horses and the Art of Taking It Slow

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