I can remember commenting to my partner when we discussed a day and a run or a win, and I remember saying I never even felt my horse. He was so perfect that I never even felt he was there. All I had to do was think about roping my steer. To me, a horse that's so in tune to what you're doing is right in step with you. You've done it so many times just right that he just voluntarily is with you. You don't have to make him do anything.
That kind of teamwork with your horse takes time. Dee Pickett had a book he let me read one time. It was really interesting. It was about centuries and centuries of the art of breaking a horse. It went way back to horses that were used in war, and talked about the techniques these old masters have been handing down for centuries. So much of what today's trainers use comes from those old times and techniques. The methods of breaking a horse is knowledge that's been handed down for centuries. It was amazing to me how much time those people back in ancient times took to break a horse and get him to collect. It was all about bringing a horse over time into a collected state. When you give him a command, he moves fluently with what you're looking for. It took a lot of time, four or five years, to get a horse to a certain place in that progress. People were so diligent to put that foundation on a horse back then. That's what makes good horses. Time.
Nowadays, our society is in such a hurry. People want to make a horse in six months. It can't be done. Making a good horse and putting a consistent pattern on him takes time. You need to slowly mold a horse into the patterns of his job. Once he learns it, and if he has a willingness to do it, you have a broke horse. He's willing to do what you want him to do, and he's not working out of fear. Our game is too competitive to have a horse work out of fear. This sport is so competitive. If you don't win, they send you home. A broke horse is a key element. Because it's so competitive, sometimes it's hard to make yourself let that horse make mistakes, and to take the time to let him learn through those mistakes to get those areas solid. That's the challenge of being a horseman-to know how to take a horse from Point A to Point B, and have the kind of horse that you want at the end. That's going to be a horse you can win on time and time again.
