Breaking horses…

I saw a young man wearing this on his shirt: 

Break horses, not hearts 

Truthfully, I’m not a fan.  I (think) I understand the intent.  But I don’t believe people should take out their frustrations on animals (or other people for that matter).  Do you? 

Besides, professional horse trainers “start” a horse, they don’t “break” it.  On Reddit we find: 

“Breaking" a horse — more commonly known today as "starting" a horse — is the process of teaching a young or inexperienced animal to accept a saddle, bridle, and rider. Modern training emphasizes patience, pressure-and-release, and building trust over several months to ensure a safe, willing, and responsive riding partner. 

“… patience… building trust… willing partner…”  That makes horse sense to me; for the horse and for horse people, too.  When it’s done properly, horses can be as gentle as Big Mike was:

It’s that way with people, true?  Creating a safe environment can build trust at work, at home, within the family, within the neighborhood, wherever our herds gather.  Lose patience and we lose that trust.  It happens with people just like horses and when it does, we have to start over.  We can still succeed – it just takes time. 

I remember to this day when my wife’s mustang, Taz, wouldn’t load into our 2-horse trailer.  He had loaded countless times before but on this particular day he wouldn’t.  We’d walk him up to the back of the trailer and instead of stepping up and stepping in, he’d just stop.  We’d walk a circular go ‘round and return to the back of the trailer where he’d stop; over and over.  Seems we somehow lost his trust. 

We were told, you never let the horse win so we continued.  Oh, we tried a little bribery – hay in the trailer’s manger; treats; grain.  Nope, not that day.  Taz decided he didn’t want to load.  At 1,100 pounds we couldn’t push him in; gorillas either: 

But one thing for sure; when you wrestle with a 500-pound gorilla, you rest when the gorilla wants to. 

Unknown Sage 

Cowboys would tell us to lock our arms or hold a rope around his rear and pull him in.  Some say it was a test of the pecking order.  We had to show the horse who was boss.   

I’ve had that happen at the office, as well.  At both ends.  Taz might have been familiar with Rodovic: 

Rodovic's Rule 

In any organization, the potential is much greater for the subordinate to manage his superior than for the superior to manage his subordinate. 

Turns out, that was a great exercise to help me build patience.  It was a nice day.  We didn’t have a deadline, so we simply spent a couple of hours circling Taz until he finally agreed to load up. I don’t know why.  Maybe we demonstrated patience along with a pressure-and-release technique that re-confirmed our worthiness of his trust. 

Whatever the reason, Taz never resisted loading in our trailer again.  And at work, I tried my best to stop trying to show my people I was the boss. They weren't broken-hearted.

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.