Operating A Stable

Larry French says he’s been around horses his whole life. Now, he’s helping others experience what he calls “The Magic and Mystery of the Horse.”

French and his wife Michelle run 3L Horse Ranch, a sprawling facility located in Maumelle, Ark. It’s just five miles across the Arkansas River from Little Rock, but it’s all country. “On the other side of the gates, you're in the city,” says French. “You come through the gate, and it's like, 'Wow - here's all these horses, and the country.’ You get to leave everything that you've done all day behind you; now, you're in a totally different world.”

French acknowledges the business is different than what he’s done in the past, when he would visit ranches and work with the horses. He’s been riding since he was three and learned how to train horses at the age of ten from his father, the late Larry French, Sr. At 16, he began riding rough stock in rodeos, a vocation he pursued for 20 years. “Rode bulls and bucking horses. It’s been an interesting life; it’s been the only thing I’ve known. I did stop for a while and thought the Good Lord was telling me to do something else, and I didn’t know how to do anything else,” French says, laughing.

Now he trains horses and riders, and offers boarding stables at 3L as well. He has about 25 boarders, with 20 spaces inside a building with stalls, and room for about 35 outside.

“We’ve actually got a bigger space now,” says French, who came to the ranch in fall of 2010 when it was still called White Oak, and acquired it in spring of 2011. “We could take more outside boarders, but we don’t want to overdo it. At a lot of boarding facilities you go to, people have to call in for a scheduled time, and we don’t want that to happen here. Because I do outside training and we do lessons and have clinics we do have income coming in from other areas, and we don’t have to board 50 horses to pay for our bills.”

Instead, boarders have free access to the grounds at any time. They pay $250/month for the outdoor spaces and $350 for indoor stalls. French prefers that horses be kept outdoors - “We don't want to keep them penned up like a caged animal; we want them to get out and be horses” - but recognizes owners of show horses may not want their animals’ coats to be bleached by the Arkansas sun. The boarding price includes feed, twice a day indoors and once a day outdoors, although French says the horses get hay and “can eat 24 hours a day.” The feed is oats and pellets, bought locally from Little Rock or nearby Conway, which is home to Lewis Livestock Auction, one of the largest stockyards in the Southeast.

The Frenches also keep a close eye on their boarded stock. “If they’re getting sick, or feeling bad or lame, we will take them inside,” Larry says. “Michelle and I know how to give shots and doctor certain injuries, but if it’s anything that’s got to be done by a vet, we definitely call the vet. One good thing about it is we’re here all day, and we’re able to monitor and watch all the horses.” That’s particularly valuable should a horse develop colic, which must be treated quickly; French says afflicted horses frequently die if the caretaker doesn’t know what to do, or wastes time loading the animal to go to the veterinarian.

3L has three full time employees, and a lot of volunteers - one of whom is also full time. “She’s here to learn,” French says. “She gets to handle the horses all day, and she gets to attend the clinics.” Clinics, lessons and horse training keep him busy; French offers clinics in horsemanship for youth and adults, while lessons are offered individually or in groups of two or three. “We have found that the group has been better,” he says. “They're a little bit cheaper ($100-200 a month versus $50 apiece for private lessons), but what's good about the group is the student, while he's sitting on his horse watching another student, can learn by their mistakes and the things that they do incorrect, and correct. We've got a few students that just are not self motivators and it's been harder for them to get going, and since we put them into a group they have really advanced.”

Some of his classes are in what he calls leadership training - “Teaching the horse while the horse teaches you,” as their website, 3lhorseranch.net, puts it. This class is also targeted to people planning to acquire a horse, or considering it. “The first time you start working with a horse,” French says, “the horse is going to have a ‘pecking order.’ Immediately, you've got to let this horse know that you're Number One in the pecking order, to get that horse to watch you and pay attention...Horses look for a leader; they want a leader, and if you're not a leader or don't show good leadership, that's when horses get out of control.”

The facilities feature three arenas - an indoor arena, another near the entrance and a third, larger and round. At one arena, there are cones set up in patterns; these are designed to help a student learn how to use her hands and legs to get the horse to yield to pressure and go around the cones. “The reins are not for pulling,” French explains. “The reins, and the bit, are for adjusting the head to the direction that I want to go. What I use for riding is my seat; I do everything with my seat and my legs,” demonstrating on his own horse by going back and forth between a walk, trot and canter without pulling on the bit. The ranch also has an obstacle course, an extreme “Cowboy Trail,” and a 5-6 acre fenced off area where the horses can graze and play.

French says the initial lesson for a novice focuses on communication skills. “These are exercises that you're going to use for the rest of your horse's life,” he says. It starts with the hindquarters of the horse, not the front. “That's the motor of the horse,” says French. “A lot of people get bucked off because they don't understand the hindquarters. They come in here and they press on their horse, and because horses are very claustrophobic if they don't see it, they feel like somebody or something is sneaking up on them. We want to teach our horses from the nose to the tail on how to be soft, and the ‘softer’ they are, the safer they are.”

Getting “softness” out of the parts of a horse - the pole, neck, shoulders, ribcage and hindquarters - is crucial to safety. “If you warm your horse up and you see stiffness in one of those areas, then we don't get on,” French says. “We exercise and work our horse until we get softness there. It might take 30 seconds or it might take five minutes, but that's where a lot of people get hurt…When a horse gets tight, he can explode one way or the other, bucking, rearing, bolting—he's going to do whatever it takes to get out of that discomfort area.”

French also trains, and sells, horses; he says he has a waiting list for horses trained under his methods. “People say the market's down on horses,” he says. “If you're selling horses by the pound, yeah… We're going to set you up with a horse that matches your experience.” And he says he’s never had a horse he couldn’t train, unless the animal was suffering an injury. At his off-site seminars, he says, “I'll tell them to bring me a horse that has a lot of issues. A lot of times, they'll bring me a horse that's having bucking problems, and they’ve brought me some wild horses that they tried to break and tried to ride and just couldn't do. Within twenty minutes or so, I'm riding this horse around.” Some horses, he says, are passive and laid back; others are high on adrenaline, and “you've got to learn how to get that horse to control that adrenaline. I tell people, 'You've got to listen to your horse, and your horse will tell you where his fears are'.”

People learn about the ranch at the website or on Facebook; they’re also marketing their own signature tack and plan to make their own leggings and other riding wear. French says he’s done well despite the economy. “This has been perfect because our objective was to get more kids and family involved,” French says. “We've got students that have never even touched a horse or rode a horse before, and they just really get excited, and the horses love it. We invite the public to come in; you don't have to pay to come in and just visit the horses. It's really been good.”