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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of The Horsemanship Journey podcast. My name is Shane Jacob, your host, and I thankyou for taking your time to be here with me today.
So, you know, with horses in the horse world, we have this idea, this concept called the finished horse. Okay. And so in this case, what people mean by finished horse is it's fully trained. This isn't a green broke anything. This isn't just started. This is a finished horse.
A lot of times, especially as sellers, like if we're selling a horse, we'll describe it as a finished head horse, a finished heeling horse, which means that he's fully trained. Theoretically, that he would be fully trained as a team roping horse on one end or the other, or he's a finished reiner, or a finished cutter or whatever. So that implies that in a specific discipline that he's fully trained to do a specific job, and he's fully broke and trained and whatever.
Another term that another word that we use besides finished is made, right? He's a made horse. He's a made, and then this put the same kind of sentences in front of it. He's a, he's a, he's a made ranch horse or he's a made Western pleasure horse or whatever. Whatever the discipline is, he's a, made reiner. I use that because I rode rein horses quite a bit.
Anyway, you know, so they mean or they imply that the horse is, you know, fully trained. To me, it implies that the horse is like fully mature, okay? It's fully mentally and physically mature and experienced and proficient in a certain job or in a certain discipline, like I said. And it also implies to me, finished implies to me that like there's no more, it's over. Okay? There's no further training or maintenance or effort will be required with this horse. Okay. And of course, that's not going to be true. That's a total myth when we use words like that.
In fact, the entire idea of finished, you know, having a finished horse is kind of, you know, it's kind of debated a lot in the horse world. Really, I think the only finished horse is one that is no longer breathing.
But I used to, me and my brother and Rick Steed for a few years, would take young horses, we'd take a two-year-old. So, if I took a two-year-old, and I've done this with John, my brother, and Rick Steed before, would take horses, two-years-olds, and start them and ride them four or five times a week as a priority for a year and a half. Okay. And after a year and a half, those horses are pretty solid at what they've been doing.
But the thing of it is, is after a year and a half, we had hauled them, I mean, would haul them all over the Western States, to different places, would trail road them in the mountains out in the desert, worked cattle on them, we've been to lots of different places. They'd been hauled with lots of different horses and seen lots of different country and stables and interactions and been in show settings. So they had a lot of experience and seen a lot of things and they'd had a lot of time on task and they were pretty solid. Were they finished or made? I would say that they were not finished, but they were definitely, they were definitely pretty solid.
The thing about, the thing about, one thing about saying a horse is going to be a finished horse, just putting the word out there… I mean, it's like, well, it sounds pretty harmless in that, but the thing of it is, is once that you deem that a horseman’s horse is finished, subconsciously for whoever that is, we've kind of shut off his chances of progress. You know, because, you know, your mind's going, why would you put time and money effort in anything that's already done? It's finished. It's over.
And even if, even if you don't really say it out loud, it does have an impact when we use that kind of language about, you know, horses. And so I, in my opinion, it's not ideal that call horses finished or made or whatever.
So it's, it's, it reminds me of with people, right? So when we're kids, just like John Wayne said in his great movie, The Cowboys. It's him and Mr. Nightlinger were watching these boys drink whiskey for the first time. He's like, kids are in a hurry to grow up, you know, and, and they are most teens are in a hurry to grow up. And when they get… As we're teens, a lot of us think that we're finished people. A lot of teens think that they're made by the time they're about 13. You know, they're ready. I mean, we're craving independence. We want our own autonomy. We want to be able to govern ourselves and make our own decisions and have the freedom and not feel like we're controlled and all of that. And so we can get the idea that we're pretty well finished. You know, pretty well done. I'll speak for myself. I know I did.
I can specifically remember a time when I was, don't know, 16, somewhere between 16 and 18. And I know where I was, I was driving my dad's truck by myself, back around Utah Lake, headed back to the east side of the lake, and from helping my dad do something out there, work. And I specifically remember thinking, you know, I pretty much, I just list all the stuff I knew. I really couldn't think of much I didn't know.
I'm like, don't know how much I need school, or I don't need any more schooling probably. And I definitely didn't need anybody to my mom and dad telling me what to do. And I just listed all the things I knew, and I just really couldn't find anything I didn't know. I did admit to myself that there were some small details about certain things that I might not know, but I could pick those things up along the way because I had to, the general overarching idea of all I needed to know about it. I just made a couple of details, know, details, couple here and there, and I didn't know.
Anyway, that's kind of comical now, but I really had that thought, you know, I really did have that thought. I thought that at the time of my life, unbeknownst to me how much I didn't know, right? I didn't even know what I was even available to know. I didn't even know what I didn't know. All I knew is what I had available to think at the time, and that's what I had.
And so our kids, a lot of times, they can have similar thoughts, right? Because we have this craving, it's the way of the world. I mean, it's as we advance and mature and our job as parents is to build independent kids and then we build kids and they want to be independent. We don't want them to, we want to hold onto them, keep them in here. But the job is, the end goal, right, is to have independent autonomy, kids that can manage and govern themselves and be independent, right? Be good citizens and have happy, healthy lives.
And as parents, if we know, okay, if we know that teens have a tendency to think that they've already finished, that they're already there, they've arrived, right? We already know everything. It can be helpful and we can, it can be helpful to know that, okay? And to prepare for it and to, so we can make a difference. And the sooner the better. It's never too late to make changes and to think about things, but if you're already in the middle of it or if it was too late, it doesn't really matter. You can still do something about it with yourself.
So the question is, is how can we best support our kids when they think that they're finished? And we're sitting back there going, man, I cannot believe you can even think that if you knew a fraction of what I know, you wouldn't, you know, you don't know nothing you little whippersnapper, compared to me. I mean, now you, when you're me as old as being done, all things I've done, not done you, you'll know what there is to know. And you won't know, you don't know, you'll know you don't know nothing. Okay.
And so, so the question is, is how can we best prepare to support our kids when they might be thinking that they're finished, okay, or made as young teens and young adults.
And so there's three things that can best support your kids in being able to do this, okay?
And number one is, same as always, basically, it's pretty much always the same thing, which is look at yourself, okay? And take an honest look at yourself and say, am I really demonstrating a growth mindset in my own life? Okay? When it comes to progression or evolution as a human being?
I mean, do I exemplify, am I setting an example of somebody who believes in, you know, that progression is endless? Do I have goals? Am I going for it? Have my kids seen me set goals and get to goals and not get to goals and, you know, talk about goals and have we had family goals?
Do I encourage my kids to have goals and look at the future and think about what's possible for them? And regardless of what I've accomplished or not accomplished, my age, maturity, and whatever I think I've done or not done, am I still out there going for it with a growth mindset as if growth is endless and infinite? And have they seen that in myself? Am I setting a good example?
When kids see our example, they're just more likely to adopt this growth mindset and they'll stay trapped in this, “I already know everything phase” for a lot less longer time. First thing to take a look at yourself and see where you're at. Hey, today's a day to turn that around if you want to, if you're not already doing it exactly how you want to.
Next thing is to teach your kids about goals and dreams and what is possible. You know, a lot of times with kids and even with ourselves, we take a look at the world and what we deem as possible, you know, in the scope of our perspective. In our paradigm can be a pretty small view of what is truly available in this world.
So it's to teach not only for ourselves and set the example, but to teach our kids about, to teach our kids about goals and dreams and possibility.
This is kind of hard for me, but I believe in it, and that is to encourage dreaming and using your imagination. I've talked about this before. As far as using imagination, I thought it might be a waste of time to live and make the leave of land, but imagination to be able to, know, looking back is pretty easy. I mean, I can see that because I've already seen it with my actual eyes. But looking into the future takes, it's a skill and it takes some practice and some effort to be able to see that. But being able to use your imagination to visualize into the future is a extremely powerful skill that we want to teach our kids.
And then the other thing is to as we do that is just to not limit what's possible, right? Just to help kids understand that the goal setting process. Work on them with, you know, set we can have games and work together if they're willing to do that with family goals. And even with their individual goals, make it fun. And then talk to them about possibility, right? About what limits us and try to instill in them an idea of open possibility rather than limited possibility.
Number three is to encourage positive mentors. Okay? The thing of it is, is peers are powerful. They're powerful to us as adults, and they're super powerful for kids as we try to make meaning about who we are to our kids. Other kids, mentors, kids close to the same age, or even other adults that are not us as parents. I mean, that's kind of hard to hear if you're the parent, but sometimes kids can hear things a little bit more easily from other kids close to their same age or even other adults sometimes. So, a slightly older young adult or a coach that they look up to, they can make all the difference.
The bottom line is that, with horses and teens, when we consider themselves finished, it's a mindset that it stalls progression, is what it does. And it doesn't even just, it doesn't even keep us flatlined, it actually, we actually regress.
I've said this, you may have heard this before if you, know me or if you've listened to podcast, but horses don't stay at equal, equal ground. Okay, when human beings in the relationship between a horse and a man, when a human being comes into proximity... So when you come into the area of a horse, like when you come, in a general vicinity of a horse, there's one of two things that's happened. That horse is going to move, he's going to react to what you do and that reaction is going to move him further away from or closer to the desired result that you want.
So everything that you do matters in that horse's life, everything. And it can be like with stalled horses, here's an example of that. With the stalled horses that we have at our barn, all our stall cleaner makes a difference on how those horses think and react in their lives to their riders and everything else. Okay? Or the person who comes by to feed, that interaction, that daily or twice a day interaction that those people have that are coming into closeness with that horse, they make an impact on that horse's life.
And it, it's not, it doesn't stay the same. They either help him by reinforcing good habits, or they create new habits or they create bad habits. But whatever they do, nothing's staying the same. Okay. It does not stay the same.
And the thing, a lot of times we think that we're stalled out or we're stuck or we're this and that. And the same thing that happens with other, with humans. And I'm not going to go too far down that because the main point with this was, that when we use those words and when our teens get to thinking this or we use it about horses, what we're doing is we're stalling, stalling out or actually regressing our progress.
Instead of being able to see the infinite possibility that exists in our world and be able to move towards that, we just like slowly shut it down or go into regression. Which is usually not where we want to be, okay?
So that's the bottom line on this that the progression, perfection. Okay? Perfection you know what, it might not be possible but progress is infinite.
And remember this, you cannot fail as long as you Don't Ever Stop Chasin It.
