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OKEECHOBEE, FL – Quiet, tall and very mannerly Mack ‘Hoot’ Worley of Okeechobee enjoys starting young horses and training them to be used by everyday cowboys. He states “The best compliment I can receive is for a working cowboy to buy a horse that I have started. When I sell a colt I want him to have seen everything and done everything that he will be asked to do the rest of his life.”

Originally from Tennessee, family tradition has his mother’s family continually involved with horses as far back as the 1700’s.

In 1964 his father moved the family from Ft. Pierce to Okeechobee where his father developed and managed Rollins Ranch. With 17,000 acres for a backyard Hoot had plenty of opportunity to learn from horses and cowboys working on the ranch. After graduating high school he ‘dayworked’ for other families in the area and thereby got the chance to learn different ways of working with horses. Many of the techniques that he uses today are the same that he learned from those old ‘hands.’

Hoot knows what he wants out of a horse and himself. The main thing he is looking for is ‘light hands.’

“I am constantly working toward a lighter, more subtle cue,” states Worley. He finds that he gets faster results by going slower with the basics. “If I present a problem, a pressure, a ‘feel’ to a colt he will try a lot of different ways to relieve that pressure, to solve that problem when he gives me the movement that I want I give him the release that he is seeking. If I can do that three times exactly the same he will always look for that release in the same way.”

Hoot doesn’t believe that it is necessary to pat or stroke a horse as a positive reinforcement. In fact, he believes it is counterproductive.

“The only positive reinforcement that I think a horses needs is to release that pressure. I think that any repetitive motion is negative to a horse,” he says.
Another thing that Hoot tries to train into a colt is confidence. “These colts are like adolescent boys. They want to try but they don’t really believe that they can do what you are asking of them. So I have to go slow to build their confidence. I try to let them see everything: the woods, open pastures, arenas, and parades. If a colt will drag a squealing hog out of the palmettos, not too much else will overcome him.”

When Hoot starts a colt for someone else he believes it is essential for the owner to come and be a part of the training process. “If I teach a colt to do everything at the lightest touch, but don’t show the owner where to make that touch, then the owner is just going to say ‘this horse ain’t even trained’.”
Here we sat in the breezeway of his place, talking, sharing his story, and I realized why he does such a fine job with each horse.

His calmness and self assurance is exactly the traits he is looking for in the geldings he trains. When I asked him why I didn’t see any mares at his place he responds “I’ve found it’s hard to make a good ranch gelding out of a mare.” Humor, lots of humor, in this horseman.

Hoot Worley of Okeechobee with one of his prospects. Photo by Bobbi Poole