Kitty Lauman (Prineville) is a horse trainer whose grandfather was the legendary horse trainer, John Sharp. Working as a team, Lauman and her grandfather could gentle a wild mustang in two hours. Today, Lauman conducts horse training clinics at her home facility and throughout the region using some of the same bamboo pole and rope gentling techniques her grandfather developed back in the 1930s.
Bio
Kitty Lauman’s roots in horsemanship run deep. Her grandfather was the legendary horse trainer, John Sharp. In the 1930s, Sharp developed his own technique for training horses. "To me, he was one of the first horse whisperers," Lauman remarked. "When you chase a mustang, you put them in a flight or fight position. Mustangs are a prey animal in the wild, so if they are being chased, they think they are going to be eaten." Instead, Sharp would gentle a horse by using a bamboo pole as an extension of his arm to rub down the horse, to show them "this doesn’t hurt." He got the idea from watching Native Americans work horses with bamboo poles. The results impressed even his skeptics. Working as a team, Lauman and her grandfather could gentle a wild mustang, leading him around with a halter within two hours’ time. "My grandfather," Lauman continued, "gave me a basic line that I could do something with." What Sharp lacked, however, was knowledge of finish work. During her high school years, Lauman worked with a horse trainer to learn about cutting. She later traveled to Germany for six months to train and show horses. Ironically, while there, Lauman met a reining instructor from Oregon. After returning home, she ended up working under that same instructor for an additional seven months. This finish training complemented Lauman’s strong foundation in starting horses. Lauman now conducts horse training clinics at her home facility outside of Prineville and at locations throughout the region. Outside of horse training, she and her family of four compete in mounted shooting events in Oregon and elsewhere.
