I've spent over 40 years training horses, and one thing I've come to recognize is that earning a horse's respect is often a whole lot easier than earning their trust. I can think back to horses I've trained throughout my career that respected me. They understood my signals, responded to my body language, and did what I asked them to do. But looking back, I'm not sure some of those horses had nearly as much trust in me as I would've liked. And that's something I think we need to pay more attention to as horsemen.
Understanding the Difference Between Trust and Respect
Trust is about confidence and dependability. It's believing that somebody is reliable, that they'll do what they say they're going to do, and that you can feel safe with them. Respect is about recognizing somebody's value, understanding boundaries, and responding with consideration. Those two things are closely related, but they're not the same.
When I think about how that applies to horses, I can see some pretty significant differences in how we develop each one. Early in my career, I was pretty good at repetition and consistency. I understood that repetition creates a habit, and I could get horses to recognize my signals and respond to what I was asking. But I wasn't always as good as I needed to be with my release, my reward, or my pause. Sometimes I wasn't as clear with my signals as I should've been.
Because of that, I think there were horses that learned to respect what I was asking without necessarily developing a tremendous amount of confidence in me. They would do their job, but sometimes it felt like everything was being held together by a thread.
Just because a horse responds to your signals doesn't necessarily mean you've earned their trust.
Your Horse Will Tell You
I talk about this all the time at our clinics: Read your horse. Your horse will tell you. We have horses that are naturally confident and trusting, and we have others that tend to be more anxious, defensive, or insecure. Sometimes those differences become pretty obvious in situations we wouldn't necessarily expect.
I had an experience recently with my horse Boone that really brought this topic home for me. We'd had quite a bit of rain here in Oklahoma, and it had probably been ten days since we'd been able to get in the arena and rope. Boone had been getting some exercise, but there hadn't been much opportunity for regular practice. We finally got the arena dried out enough to rope one evening, and my three-year-old granddaughter, Stevie, was riding with me.
Now, Stevie isn't scared of much. She loves riding with us, and she's always telling me she's ready to ride by herself. Well, I needed to get off and open a gate, and I wasn't comfortable leaning over to reach it with Stevie sitting in the saddle. So I stepped off, and she stayed sitting there holding on to the saddle horn. I'd never had her sitting up there by herself on Boone before, and I could immediately see a change in that horse.
Boone got insecure. He recognized that something was different, and I didn't like the way he was responding. I had a good hold of Stevie, so I pulled her down out of the saddle. That startled Boone, and he backed into our scoring lane and got himself into a little bit of a predicament. Nothing serious happened, and Stevie wasn't scared a bit, but I learned something about that horse that evening.
Boone has a tremendous amount of respect for me. He's a good horse, and when it's time to compete, he shows up and does his job. But he's also a horse that can be pretty insecure about certain things. For example, we've got rubber mats underneath our hitching racks where we tie horses. Boone has been tied there for eight years, probably a thousand times, and he still hesitates when he steps onto those mats. He'll step onto them because he understands what I'm asking. He respects the signal on the lead rope and knows how to find the release. But that doesn't mean he's completely comfortable with those mats.
The situation with Stevie was another reminder that there's a difference between a horse respecting what we're asking and having complete confidence in the situation. That experience changed my level of trust in Boone when it comes to having a young child on that horse. And I'm going to respect what Boone showed me.
That's part of reading your horse. We have to recognize what they're telling us, even when it isn't necessarily what we want to hear.
Respect Doesn't Automatically Create Trust
One of the things I've been thinking about quite a bit is that we can do things to develop more respect from our horses without necessarily developing more trust. And I think that's where we sometimes get ourselves into trouble.
If a horse is naturally anxious or defensive, simply increasing the pressure or asking for more repetitions may get us the response we're looking for. But are we actually making that horse more confident? Are we developing a better understanding between ourselves and that horse, or are we just getting better at controlling the response? Those are questions I think we need to ask ourselves.
Now, don't misunderstand me. Consistency and repetition are extremely important. They're a big part of how horses learn, and they're something I've relied on throughout my career. But we also have to recognize the importance of our timing, our release, and the opportunities we give our horses to develop confidence.
Sometimes we need to slow things down, go back to something simple that the horse understands, and create an opportunity for success. We also need to recognize when what we're asking is creating more anxiety than understanding.
I've got a couple of horses in my program right now that I'm really concentrating on developing more trust with. They're naturally a little anxious and defensive, and I know that simply doing more things to make them respect me isn't necessarily going to improve their confidence. I've got to be more intentional about how I approach those horses, and that's a challenge I'm looking forward to.
The Difference Trust Makes in Competition
If you've competed in timed events, you understand how important trust becomes when you're trying to perform at a high level. I think one of the best examples is scoring.
When we're talking about scoring a rope horse, we're talking about whether that horse will leave when we ask. When my hand moves, does my horse move? Does the horse respond without hesitation? That doesn't mean you're always going to be right on the barrier or that you'll never break a barrier. It means you've developed a horse that responds to your signal when you ask.
I've always said that if you have to trick your horse at the start, you've got a trust problem. Because now, instead of concentrating on your run, you're thinking about how you're going to get your horse to leave. You're trying to anticipate a hesitation or figure out what you've got to do to make the start happen, and that's a difficult thing to overcome.
The horse may understand the job. There may be a tremendous amount of respect for your hand and your signals. But if you don't trust that response, it affects your own confidence and your ability to compete.
When you've got a horse that's rock solid, and you know you can trust that horse to do the job, you're a different competitor. You can concentrate on what you need to do instead of worrying about what might happen. That's the level of confidence we're trying to develop.
Building Trust Through Everyday Training
Going back to Boone, he's a horse that does better when he's being used consistently. The more of a job you give that horse, the better he gets. Time off isn't necessarily his friend, and I know there are things I can do in our everyday training to continue developing more trust.
I can put a snaffle bit back on him and go through some simple maneuvers. I can slow things down, work on our communication, and give him opportunities to respond without the pressure of competition. I can be more conscious of my signals, my release, and the way I'm rewarding the responses I'm looking for. Those are all opportunities to continue building that relationship.
Trust isn't something we earn one time and then never have to think about again. It's something we have to continue working on, and the same is true in our relationships with people.
I have friends that I respect tremendously, even though we don't necessarily agree on everything. And I've got people in my life that I know I can depend on, regardless of the situation. That kind of trust develops over time through consistency, honesty, and the way we treat one another. Our horses are no different in that regard. We have to give them a reason to trust us.
Never Underestimate Your Influence
As I've been thinking about trust and respect, I've also been reflecting on some of the people who have had a tremendous influence on my life. I recently lost a longtime friend, Gay Lewis. I met Gay and her husband, Junior, back in 1988 when I moved to Pratt, Kansas, to coach rodeo.
Junior was an NFR calf roper, and both he and Gay knew an incredible amount about horses. They took me in like I was one of their own, and I learned a tremendous amount from them. At the time, I thought about how much that relationship was helping my roping and my horses. Junior helped me become a better competitor, and I had opportunities to ride some outstanding horses through that relationship.
But looking back now, I realize their influence went a whole lot further than that. Gay and Junior were a big part of the reason I stayed in Kansas for three years. Kansas is where I met Bridget. That's where we got married, and that decision ultimately led to the family I have today.
When I look at my children and grandchildren, I can't help but think about how different my life might've been if I hadn't met those two people. They believed in me. They made me believe I could accomplish things that I wasn't sure I was capable of doing. And they did that for a lot of people, not just me.
I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to tell Gay before she passed away just how much she'd influenced my life. That's something I'm extremely grateful for, and I think there's a lesson in that for all of us.
We don't always recognize the impact we're having on somebody else. Sometimes it's the encouragement we give, the confidence we help somebody develop, or simply being somebody they know they can depend on. Those things matter.
As I think about the influence Gay and Junior had on me, I realize that's something I want to continue getting better at with my horses, too. I want to develop a level of trust and confidence in my horses that I haven't necessarily had before. I want them to look to me as somebody they can depend on, and I know that's going to require me to keep improving my own horsemanship.
Trust Is Earned, Not Owed
I've always believed trust is earned, not owed. And that goes both ways. I have to earn my horse's trust just like I expect that horse to earn mine.
I can't assume that because I've worked with a horse for years, or because that horse understands my signals, that we've developed all the trust we need. There's always room to improve.
I talk a lot about the one percent rule. What can we do today to be just a little bit better than we were yesterday? Well, I think that applies to trust just as much as it applies to anything else in our horsemanship.
Maybe today we can be a little clearer with our signals, improve our timing, or recognize an opportunity to reward a horse that we would've missed before. Maybe we can spend a little more time helping an anxious horse develop confidence instead of simply trying to get through the exercise. Those little improvements add up, and a thousand days from now, I hope I'm still looking for ways to get one percent better.
So I'd encourage you to evaluate the relationship you have with your horses. Do they respect your signals? Do they understand what you're asking? And just as importantly, have you developed the kind of trust that allows them to approach their job with confidence?
Those are two things I think we need to be working on throughout our entire horsemanship journey. Because no matter how long we've been doing this, there's always something we can learn and something we can improve.
