Speaker 1: Ty Evans is one of the country's top mule trainers
Speaker 1: and clinicians, and his journey with this misunderstood animal, the mule,
Speaker 1: has changed his life and through working with him, he's
Speaker 1: learned what true leadership is. Yeah, through training a mule.
Speaker 1: I think we're all going to learn something on this one.
Speaker 1: And hey, it's twenty twenty six. I'm ready to be
Speaker 1: something different, to look at life in a new way,
Speaker 1: and to become the person I've always known I should be.
Speaker 1: I think you're going to be surprised by this episode,
Speaker 1: and I really doubt that you're going to want to
Speaker 1: miss this one.
Speaker 2: There's a quote he would quote it a lot, but
Speaker 2: I learned later that it was a ray Hunt quote.
Speaker 2: They know if you know, and they know if you
Speaker 2: don't know. That might sound like a puzzle to some
Speaker 2: people listening, but what I've come to find is, say
Speaker 2: the mule or the horse, they are aware of your awareness.
Speaker 2: They know what you're paying attention to more or less.
Speaker 1: My name is Klay Nukem and this is the Bear
Speaker 1: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 1: for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the
Speaker 1: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land,
Speaker 1: presented by FHF Gear, American made, purpose built hunting and
Speaker 1: fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 1: place as we explore. On March third, twenty eleven, in Ogden, Utah,
Speaker 1: twenty one year old Tie Evans entered the Weber State
Speaker 1: University Rodeo and what happened would change his life.
Speaker 2: Well, they used to send out stock cross about a
Speaker 2: week in advance, and I remember stock dross came up.
Speaker 2: I was so excited to find out what I crew.
Speaker 2: So pull it up and I'm going down the list
Speaker 2: trying to find my name, and atlanted on a horse
Speaker 2: named Dakota Kid now Dakota Kid. This horse had busted
Speaker 2: two of my friend's legs the previous fall. This horse
Speaker 2: had a reputation it would jump out of the buck
Speaker 2: and shoot and basically spin around and hit the post,
Speaker 2: slam itself into the post behind it, which what's between
Speaker 2: the post and the horse, Well, that's your leg. And
Speaker 2: so two of my buddies had broken their legs in
Speaker 2: this fashion. So when I saw that horse, I was like,
Speaker 2: oh man, he was just really we would say hard
Speaker 2: to get out on meaning hard to get out of
Speaker 2: the bucket shoot on. Because of that little month, and well,
Speaker 2: being a horseman, being a trainer, I thought, well, I'm
Speaker 2: going to solve this, and I came up with a plan.
Speaker 2: I was going to have my buddy hold a pair
Speaker 2: of shaps, you know, our leggings we wear. Pull a
Speaker 2: pair of shops out over like ahead of the post
Speaker 2: a couple of feet, so it kind of tricked the horse.
Speaker 2: The horse would wrap around there and like it usually did,
Speaker 2: but instead of slamming to the post, it would hit
Speaker 2: the shaps and fade out of there.
Speaker 1: Dakota Kid was a dangerous horse, and Ty was a trainer.
Speaker 1: He was born in Bluffdale, Utah, into a training family.
Speaker 1: His dad trained horses and mules for a living, and
Speaker 1: Ty literally started breaking and riding them for his dad
Speaker 1: when he was eight years old. Lifelong exposure to a
Speaker 1: craft often delivers instinct and insight that can't be taught.
Speaker 1: These people think about problems from a whole other stratosphere
Speaker 1: than the casual partaker of the said craft. Ty was
Speaker 1: like that with equine animals. So he made a plan.
Speaker 2: Well, I thought this was a great plan. My wife
Speaker 2: thought I was pretty dumb, just like don't go, don't
Speaker 2: get on this horse. And I'll admit to you, I
Speaker 2: had a feeling I shouldn't go, like I remember the
Speaker 2: feeling don't go. And at the time, I'm a cowboy, thinking, ty,
Speaker 2: you're just a sissy, like you're just scared. Go cowboy
Speaker 2: up right? But inside you can't put that. Well, you
Speaker 2: can talk about it, but you can't put it away
Speaker 2: when you're worried. And I had that feeling don't go.
Speaker 1: A powerful human exercise is to do an honest evaluation
Speaker 1: of what value system drives your actions. But often we're
Speaker 1: blind to the truth about ourselves, and it takes something
Speaker 1: powerful to drop the scales off our eyes. Was the
Speaker 1: tough it out i'm a cowboy the right way or
Speaker 1: was that actually the easy answer consistent with his cultural upbringing,
Speaker 1: or should he have listened to his wife and his
Speaker 1: intuition to quote from the book Evidence Based Horsemanship. For
Speaker 1: someone to say I've been doing this for fifty years
Speaker 1: doesn't negate the fact that someone could do something wrong
Speaker 1: for fifty years end of quote. Is it possible for
Speaker 1: someone to use a wrong value system, even a long
Speaker 1: standing cultural bedrock value system like the cowboy way to
Speaker 1: make decisions.
Speaker 3: Is that possible for that to be wrong?
Speaker 2: Well, what do you think I did? I went? Of course,
Speaker 2: I went right, and I had this plan, like I said,
Speaker 2: And I remember getting on that bucking horse, sitting down
Speaker 2: the chute, get my feet in this, ups my legs
Speaker 2: up under the swells of the saddle. The swells the
Speaker 2: saddle on the front of the saddle, and I get
Speaker 2: my legs up under the swells. I leaned back, tuck
Speaker 2: my chin down to my chest, lift my bronch crane
Speaker 2: that's what we hold onto. Lift up the bron crane,
Speaker 2: put my free hand up and I remember that moment.
Speaker 2: I don't do it. I just remember a distinct feeling,
Speaker 2: don't do this. But then whatever, of course, cowboy up
Speaker 2: and you're there. You're gonna nod your head. And I
Speaker 2: nodded my head, and that horse belled out of that shute,
Speaker 2: and just as I planned, it wrapped around those shaps perfectly.
Speaker 2: I'm out of the shot. I've just accomplished the hardest
Speaker 2: part of this horse's ride, getting out of the shot.
Speaker 2: I'm the horse is bucking down the arena. I'm making
Speaker 2: a good ride. We're going jump for jump. I'm lifting
Speaker 2: on my rein, I'm I'm spurring, I'm leaning back. Everything
Speaker 2: was good, and I'm thinking myself, oh jeeze, big sissy,
Speaker 2: what were you so about? You got this? You got this?
Speaker 2: Buzzer rings. Eight seconds is up. I've made my bronch ride.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking check, I'm good to go. Picket men are
Speaker 2: coming in. Picket men are rescue rangers in rodeo. They
Speaker 2: come up. One comes up, fading on the left, one
Speaker 2: comes up fading on the right. They're almost to me.
Speaker 2: My horse slams on the brakes. The cody kids stops deadness,
Speaker 2: tracks flips over backwards. I remember seeing the horse, the
Speaker 2: horse's mane in my face, and I knew I had
Speaker 2: been flipped over on many times, so it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 2: a dramatic deal. So as a horse is coming over,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking I got to jump out. I go to
Speaker 2: jump out to my right, just in time to not
Speaker 2: get my body smashed. But the swells of the saddle
Speaker 2: came down, broke my femur in half, snapped my femer.
Speaker 2: It gets up, the horse gets up, kicks me in
Speaker 2: the head, and it was it was touching. Go there
Speaker 2: for a minute, I remember being in the ambulance and
Speaker 2: one of the guy, one of the paramedics, saying, hey,
Speaker 2: should we go code whatever? I don't know the codes.
Speaker 2: I can't remember that gold code whatever meaning lights and sirens,
Speaker 2: and the other paramat goes, yeah, you better.
Speaker 1: Tie was bleeding out from a broken femur and had
Speaker 1: a busted and banged up head from getting kicked. The
Speaker 1: broke leg took him completely out of rodeo for several years,
Speaker 1: crushing his dream to potentially ride professionally. But the crisis
Speaker 1: catalyzed the process of evaluation in Tie, which begs the
Speaker 1: question was it actually the right thing to do to
Speaker 1: ride the code of kid, because it did bring him
Speaker 1: to a place of honest evaluation.
Speaker 2: Long story short, I was out for a while, couldn't
Speaker 2: rodeo and all that down, and I couldn't ride my mules.
Speaker 2: I was still writing for a living, I was riding
Speaker 2: Colts for living. I was a newly red I'd only
Speaker 2: been right a couple of years, and we just bought
Speaker 2: our first little house, and I remember just being sick, like,
Speaker 2: you can't you can't ride, you can't work, man, what
Speaker 2: are you going to do? And so I had all
Speaker 2: this time on my hands, and I remember really thinking
Speaker 2: about what I want to do, And that's about when
Speaker 2: that documentary came out.
Speaker 1: By this time, young Tie was like his father, making
Speaker 1: a complete living breaking horses and mules. They were cult starters,
Speaker 1: the most dangerous kind of training, breaking to ride one
Speaker 1: hundred to one hundred and twenty animals a year. And
Speaker 1: I want to key in on something that could sound
Speaker 1: endearing to our ear.
Speaker 3: He was doing it just like his dad.
Speaker 1: But the spirit filled Judo Chop wisdom of this story
Speaker 1: pivots on this idea, doing what your dad did isn't
Speaker 1: always the best way. The way your dad the decisions
Speaker 1: may not be the best way. He may have been
Speaker 1: doing it wrong the whole time. In January of twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: a documentary called Buck came out that was about a
Speaker 1: man named Buck Branneman that many called the horse whisper.
Speaker 1: Buck taught what he called natural horsemanship, where you communicate
Speaker 1: with a horse through sensitivity and leadership, not punishment. This
Speaker 1: is a clip from that documentary.
Speaker 2: Do you see the expression on that horse? Get moves,
Speaker 2: but he's crabby, flagging the tail, it's annoyed. It's like
Speaker 2: asking your kid to go take the garbage out. They
Speaker 2: take the garbage out.
Speaker 3: If they flip me.
Speaker 1: The bird on the way out of the room, it's
Speaker 1: without respect.
Speaker 2: And the respect isn't fear, it's acceptance.
Speaker 4: Buck says, when you start handling horses, your own personal
Speaker 4: issues start coming out. And I was so anxious to
Speaker 4: see the saddle on Chief i rushed him to it.
Speaker 4: And now I've built I feel like I've built this
Speaker 4: fear on, this insecurity in him. But see I'm an
Speaker 4: insecure person. So the horses, they mirror you. They can't lie.
Speaker 1: Good boy, Buck Brannman wasn't the first to do this
Speaker 1: natural horsemanship. He was a pioneer in it though in
Speaker 1: modern times, and he was one of the first to
Speaker 1: be highly successful and gain national and even global notoriety.
Speaker 1: Ray Hunt, the Durnce Brothers Pat Perelli were also forerunners
Speaker 1: in this style of horse training. This method maybe took
Speaker 1: a little longer, took more patience, more precision, more attention
Speaker 1: to nuanced in detail. But the real kicker was that
Speaker 1: it took on a whole different kind of worldview about
Speaker 1: the horse. It required a whole new kind of trainer,
Speaker 1: a new mindset, a new empathy a new kind of
Speaker 1: strength that was absent in training the horse the cowboy way.
Speaker 1: In this new way was producing some incredible horses. Ty
Speaker 1: was deeply inspired by the documentary and had already been
Speaker 1: influenced by the natural horsemanship philosophy for the last several years.
Speaker 1: But what Ty realized while laying there with this broken
Speaker 1: leg was that very few people were doing this with mules.
Speaker 1: Would it even work for mules? The horse world had
Speaker 1: clinicians teaching people how to ride and train horses. The
Speaker 1: industry was huge, but mules. Very few people were training
Speaker 1: mules to the degree that they were training horses.
Speaker 3: Few were making what they call.
Speaker 1: Bridle mules or bridle horses, which describes a very high
Speaker 1: level of training that takes many, many years and it
Speaker 1: produces an animal with incredible safety, precision, control, and comfort.
Speaker 1: For thousands and thousands of years, the mule was considered
Speaker 1: a beast of burden, and Tie started to think about
Speaker 1: mules differently, and he learned a new way to train
Speaker 1: that required shuck in the past. Tie is now in
Speaker 1: his mid thirties. It's been fifteen years since the rodeo wreck,
Speaker 1: and I'm riding behind him and our friend named McClain Meekham,
Speaker 1: a well known man the lion hunting and mule world.
Speaker 1: It's the fifth day of a mountain lion hunt. The
Speaker 1: last four days we've been riding in some of the
Speaker 1: roughest country in the West. So I'm in Utah right
Speaker 1: now with behind Tie Evens this pretty round mule.
Speaker 2: What we doing to having the best day eversday alive?
Speaker 2: Little kidding?
Speaker 1: All right, we just busted some brush.
Speaker 3: What we're doing is following a lion.
Speaker 1: So we're we're about probably two and a half miles
Speaker 1: from the truck and we're we're following dogs through real
Speaker 1: thick and canyon, so we're having to bust a bunch
Speaker 1: of brush while we're riding.
Speaker 3: Kind of treacherous.
Speaker 2: You might get raked off your mule, so you.
Speaker 3: Kind of got to have a lot of control.
Speaker 1: This is when you need real control of your animal,
Speaker 1: need to be able to steer them precisely. And that
Speaker 1: is exactly what Tie Evans is good at, training them
Speaker 1: to be precise.
Speaker 3: To have control with a mule.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of place you want to be
Speaker 1: sitting in the saddle of a good mule that you
Speaker 1: have complete control over, one that trusts you so that
Speaker 1: you can trust it. Places like this are why Tie
Speaker 1: has dedicated his life to training mules. The backcountry is
Speaker 1: a good place to die, and a trustworthy steed is invaluable.
Speaker 1: You see a mule is across between a mare horse
Speaker 1: and a jack donkey. Hybrid vigor creates an animal more
Speaker 1: sure footed than a horse, with more stamina day in
Speaker 1: and day out. It has a longer working lifetime, and
Speaker 1: mules are easier to keep healthy than a horse. But
Speaker 1: mules have their drawbacks too. They're harder to find than horses.
Speaker 1: They're just less of them because they're sterile. They have
Speaker 1: a very strong self protection mechanism that the world has
Speaker 1: interpreted as stubbornness for thousands of years, which can make
Speaker 1: them more challenging to train than a horse, but it
Speaker 1: also can make them safer. I've heard it said that
Speaker 1: you can train a horse to jump off a cliff,
Speaker 1: but a mule ain't jumping off no cliff. Horses can
Speaker 1: also be so compliant, which is a wonderful thing, that
Speaker 1: he'll cross a raging river that you and that horse
Speaker 1: are going to drowned in. A mule ain't crossing no
Speaker 1: river that he's going to die in. Horses are incredible
Speaker 1: animals that are faster, quicker, and generally easier to bring
Speaker 1: to a place of compliance, and are often better on
Speaker 1: the ranch and in the rodeo arena, but in the
Speaker 1: back country, without question, a mule is the animal that
Speaker 1: I want to be on, and most people that ride
Speaker 1: equines in the back country agree, And that's why I
Speaker 1: love mules. So we just came up over the ridge
Speaker 1: and it sounded like a freight train. The dogs had,
Speaker 1: we think, jumped this line. We've been trailing for two days.
Speaker 1: Pretty pretty unique thing to be following the klan and
Speaker 1: tie hunting a line on meals, I wouldn't have a
Speaker 1: rare human experience, I'd say, with two guys that are
Speaker 1: some of the best in the world at what they do.
Speaker 3: Tay, how how far do you think we've rowed this
Speaker 3: week on mules?
Speaker 2: This week we've probably wrote, Well, this morning I was
Speaker 2: I was at sixty eight miles, but I had to
Speaker 2: trot some mules up. Yeah, so I'm a little bit more.
Speaker 2: But but by the end of the day we'll be
Speaker 2: over seventy miles, will be over some miles five days
Speaker 2: And I was actually thinking that might be some of
Speaker 2: the longest miles, non non cowboying miles I've ever done.
Speaker 2: Me and a cowboy when I'm working ranch and stuff,
Speaker 2: we'll do miles like that. But it ain't miles. It
Speaker 2: ain't lying miles. You know what they said, line miles
Speaker 2: don't lie. So I don't know if I've ever done
Speaker 2: over seventy miles riding this crazy, wicked mountain like this before.
Speaker 2: In five days time.
Speaker 1: I want to learn about Tai's backstory and how he
Speaker 1: transformed into a completely different trainer than the generation before him.
Speaker 2: Born and raised in Utah my whole life, I loved
Speaker 2: you my whole life. I love Utah. It's home. I
Speaker 2: love everything about Utah, over the mountains, the desert canyons,
Speaker 2: all of it. Growing up where we were a very
Speaker 2: outdoors family. For sure, I'm super grateful my dad took
Speaker 2: us camping and hunting and fishing and riding all the time.
Speaker 2: Part of that was because it's what he did for
Speaker 2: a living. He rode a lot of cults for a living,
Speaker 2: so young horses, young mules primarily. He started out with horses,
Speaker 2: But like any trainers trying to make a living, you know,
Speaker 2: people say, hey, what about a mule, Did you take
Speaker 2: a meal for training? And I remember, I still remember
Speaker 2: the first meal he started working with, UH, and that
Speaker 2: kind of opened the doors for him becoming the mule guy.
Speaker 1: Ty's dad, Dion Evans, was and is an incredible trainer
Speaker 1: and mentor for time. I want to pull back this
Speaker 1: idea of the time being pitted against his dad and
Speaker 1: training methodology because he was doing something wrong.
Speaker 3: People like Dion did the.
Speaker 1: Best they could with what they knew, and it worked.
Speaker 1: In a perfect world, a son starts from the position
Speaker 1: his father stopped, building upon his father's lifetime of experience,
Speaker 1: and that is exactly what happened here with TI.
Speaker 2: You know when I when I tell you I started
Speaker 2: like working for my dad when I was eight, I
Speaker 2: really mean it like I was working for my dad.
Speaker 2: When I say he started us out with like these
Speaker 2: little ponies. I remember one little pony named Patches. That
Speaker 2: son of a gun could buck like it could buck,
Speaker 2: and we'd ride it as long as we could, fall
Speaker 2: off most of the time, get back on write it again, UH.
Speaker 2: And then pretty soon that turned into, like I said,
Speaker 2: me working for my dad. And I don't know, maybe
Speaker 2: for lack of better words, I was a crash dummy.
Speaker 2: You know, he'd put us on cults for the first ride,
Speaker 2: so he would handle him on the ground. He'd have
Speaker 2: him by the lead rope, and he'd get a saddle
Speaker 2: on him, and you know, he would do his version
Speaker 2: of what groundwork would be, which would be getting the
Speaker 2: saddle on without them trying to kill him. And and
Speaker 2: then we would climb on and he would hang on
Speaker 2: to him and they'd buck around or whatever. But back
Speaker 2: in those days, a lot of times it was bucking
Speaker 2: them out. And my dad worked for so many horses
Speaker 2: and mules. He was he was a really good hand.
Speaker 2: And in those days you took whatever type of horse
Speaker 2: or mules that would come for work. A paycheck was
Speaker 2: a paycheck, right, and he would take them on the
Speaker 2: way my dad would start something back then is you
Speaker 2: get in a round pin, and a lot of times
Speaker 2: people would they'd drop them off. I remember one of
Speaker 2: my dreaded feelings is when somebody would back their horse
Speaker 2: trader up to the round pin, opened the gate, opened
Speaker 2: the open the back of the trailer and let that
Speaker 2: thing out, because that meant it wasn't broke to lead.
Speaker 2: That meant it was probably pretty wild probably a little
Speaker 2: what we call touchy or wash spear, a little watchy,
Speaker 2: meaning they don't probably didn't like humans much, right, And
Speaker 2: that was always that would always get me riled up, like, oh,
Speaker 2: here we go again, you know. So he would do
Speaker 2: some round pin work, move him around in a round pin.
Speaker 2: We use a round pin in training then and now,
Speaker 2: and it's pretty historic because there's no corners. But we'd
Speaker 2: get them and we would lunge them around in the
Speaker 2: round pin, and we would get them kind of more
Speaker 2: or less tired, and then we'd finally get him caught.
Speaker 2: A lot of times you could, you could catch them,
Speaker 2: but a lot of times you had to rope them
Speaker 2: and then kind of get a saddle on it, and
Speaker 2: it might buck a saddle off, it might kick you,
Speaker 2: and it was, I guess, for lack of otherwise describing it,
Speaker 2: it was a fight a lot of times to get
Speaker 2: those suals on. I've been kicked more times trying to
Speaker 2: saddle the horse or mule than anything else back in
Speaker 2: those days especially, you know. But we'd get them saddled
Speaker 2: up a lot of times, we'd you tie up, be
Speaker 2: hind legged, and that kind of restricted their movement. It didn't.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't hurt him or anything, but it would restrict
Speaker 2: their movement. They couldn't. They couldn't like run off and
Speaker 2: they and if they tried to buck it was really
Speaker 2: really mud. You'd get on them and then turn that
Speaker 2: leg loose. Then would and then I would go for
Speaker 2: a bron ride and hope I stayed on and you
Speaker 2: learn you learned to stay on like I got. I
Speaker 2: had a lot of bron crides in as a young
Speaker 2: You got a picture like a little kid doing this.
Speaker 2: I'm not a very big guy eight nine, ten, eleven,
Speaker 2: twelve year old tie you know, out there trying to
Speaker 2: stay on, and I looking back, I'm grateful for those moments.
Speaker 2: The old way, so people called the old way. It
Speaker 2: was hard, but it taught me to grid. I learned
Speaker 2: how to run. I learned how to fight for something,
Speaker 2: which in that case was my life, trying to stay
Speaker 2: on like you really hadn't learned stay on because it
Speaker 2: was easier to stay on once than to stay on
Speaker 2: five times. What I mean is it didn't matter you
Speaker 2: got bucked off or guess what you are getting back there.
Speaker 2: It's non negotiable. As long as you were physically healthy,
Speaker 2: and that is even negotiable, like what is this, Well,
Speaker 2: nothing's broken, you know, the saying nothing's broken long way
Speaker 2: from your heart. Okay, get on.
Speaker 1: It's easier to stay on once than five times. I
Speaker 1: like that TI has done a good job of describing
Speaker 1: the old way, the cowboy way of training, which is
Speaker 1: basically a tough man contest, a battle against fear. And
Speaker 1: it was the playing field of proving the cowboy way.
Speaker 1: But he would learn there was a better way. Haven't
Speaker 1: they always trained horses the cowboy way?
Speaker 2: People will ask, so is this how people have been
Speaker 2: riding and training animals for one hundreds of years? The
Speaker 2: answer is now in that answer, what I mean is
Speaker 2: I call it Industrial age horsemanship. So at the turn
Speaker 2: of the century, the industrial age, everything's faster, right, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of like what we deal with now with
Speaker 2: with our technology like a microwave, we won't think so fast.
Speaker 2: When when cultures started changing with the horsemanship, it went
Speaker 2: from taking time to do stuff well and having the
Speaker 2: time to do stuff like think of these guys that
Speaker 2: you know back then there's a lot of ranches, and
Speaker 2: there were guys there were full time buckers. They were
Speaker 2: full time horsemen. And they were cattle with those horses,
Speaker 2: but primarily they're full time horsemen, so they spent a
Speaker 2: lot of time with their horses. And those old bookers,
Speaker 2: those old cowboys, those v carols, all those cultures, they
Speaker 2: they would they're with these horses all the time. Like
Speaker 2: making one of my passions is making bridle meals, and
Speaker 2: that is a long process. Well even now, but especially
Speaker 2: during the turn of the century. You go telling somebody
Speaker 2: you're going to be taking six, seven, eight years to
Speaker 2: get them finished out in a bridle. They go, what
Speaker 2: that's you know, because they're not because that puts them,
Speaker 2: That puts them between eight to ten years old before
Speaker 2: they're straight up in a bridle finished out. And you
Speaker 2: tell all people that, they're like, yeah, right, no way,
Speaker 2: they want it now. They want them wearing a bridle now. Anyways,
Speaker 2: turn the sentry, do it faster, do it faster. And
Speaker 2: so that's where I think a lot of the bronx
Speaker 2: stomping came in. Now, don't get me wrong, his trucking
Speaker 2: ranches do they go for a lot of bronc rides.
Speaker 2: I guarantee it. Like look at the old Charlie Russell paintings,
Speaker 2: you know, he's not making that stuff up. He was
Speaker 2: there with seeing it. There was some rough stuff. Like
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that it wasn't rough. It was for
Speaker 2: sure rough. But I think later on people wanting it
Speaker 2: so fast, go go go, go go push it, you know.
Speaker 2: And then you also got to think about Hollywood all
Speaker 2: the Westerns. It depends, but it's not really fun to
Speaker 2: watch a horse just ride around real nice. They kind
Speaker 2: of like a little grounk, right, And so I think
Speaker 2: a lot of people grew up watching that, including me,
Speaker 2: Like I didn't. I thought, well, yeah, they're gonna buck in.
Speaker 2: And to be honest, Clay, I kind of liked it.
Speaker 2: Was it was fun. So starting colts with my dad
Speaker 2: and all that was was a blast. I loved it.
Speaker 2: It was hard, it was tough, but I loved it.
Speaker 2: Can we talk about when things started to change? Yeah,
Speaker 2: So I think I was about fourteen years old, and
Speaker 2: I remember my dad got hurt really bad. My dad
Speaker 2: has the highest pitch whistle you would ever hear in
Speaker 2: your life. He would stick both pinkies in his mouth
Speaker 2: and just do that crazy high whistle. Well he was
Speaker 2: on a meal one day, did that loud whistle. So
Speaker 2: he sets the reins down and when he whistles that
Speaker 2: meal takes off lights it up, bucks him off, and
Speaker 2: he busted up a bunch of stuff, hurt his hip
Speaker 2: really bad. But he was he was beat up, beat
Speaker 2: up to the point that he was pretty well ready
Speaker 2: to be to call it. So got to that point
Speaker 2: where he was ready to kind of be done and
Speaker 2: quit training for the public. Anyways, at that point I
Speaker 2: kind of took over and took it on myself and
Speaker 2: that was my gig. That's what I did. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So I'd get home from school and I'd ride I'd
Speaker 2: ride meals and horses, and I did that all through
Speaker 2: middle school and then in high school. Of course you
Speaker 2: can get work release, you know, and I that was
Speaker 2: my job and I loved it. About that time, about
Speaker 2: time I was a senior in high school and kind
Speaker 2: of getting out of high school, my dad had a
Speaker 2: good buddy that give him some Brad Cameron VHS tapes.
Speaker 2: That's how loungo. It was VHS tapes, right, and I
Speaker 2: wore those tapes out watching them. And Brad Cameron was
Speaker 2: a bridleman, meaning he made bridle mules. I didn't really
Speaker 2: know what a bridal mule was I didn't really understand.
Speaker 2: I'd seen some bridle horses and people do that, but
Speaker 2: I didn't ever think you could make a bridle mule. Well,
Speaker 2: here he is, that guy's doing the thing. I wore
Speaker 2: those tips out, I washed him over and over again.
Speaker 2: I loved him. That opened my eyes to a lot
Speaker 2: of well, well particularly it opened my eyes to this
Speaker 2: thing called groundwork. I mean my version of groundwork up
Speaker 2: to that point, working with my dad and stuff was well,
Speaker 2: we'd sack it out a little bit, like literally, like
Speaker 2: with a feedsack or something. We'd rub it all over,
Speaker 2: or get a tarp or something and get him used
Speaker 2: to the tarp or things like that. But to get
Speaker 2: the sadlo on. Okay, check, now we've done our groundwork. Well,
Speaker 2: Brad was doing all kinds of stuff like moving him
Speaker 2: is this way in that way, and he'd he'd send
Speaker 2: the meal around in a circle on that lead rope
Speaker 2: on a loose rain, meaning no tension in that rain.
Speaker 2: He's not pulling that meal around. It was. It was
Speaker 2: going freely, and he was moving these feet in all
Speaker 2: kinds of ways that I didn't understand. He's using terminologies
Speaker 2: that I'd never heard before moving the hinds moving the fronts.
Speaker 2: I didn't know this stuff meant. Well I do now.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're going to move the hind feet one
Speaker 2: way to the other. We're gonna move to the front feet.
Speaker 2: That's what it means. And so I started playing around
Speaker 2: with that stuff, and well, by golly, it made things
Speaker 2: a lot easier at that point when when I was
Speaker 2: I guess towards the end of high school in graduating,
Speaker 2: like if I had ten horses or mules, I was starting,
Speaker 2: out of ten, probably eight of them would buck. Now
Speaker 2: that's bad statistics for a trainer, that's bad news. Well,
Speaker 2: it's because how I was doing it. I was just,
Speaker 2: I was just I thought I was a cowboy. I
Speaker 2: thought I was just doing cowboy stuff, just riding them,
Speaker 2: and I was just bucking them out, and that's just
Speaker 2: what I did. Well, I started doing this, you know,
Speaker 2: I call it Brad Cameron stuff back then, and that
Speaker 2: eight out of ten bucking went down a lot to
Speaker 2: like one out of ten. Now, you tell me how
Speaker 2: does that work? And I didn't know. I thought I
Speaker 2: was just moving around. Maybe I was getting them tired,
Speaker 2: you know whatever. I didn't understand the psychology of it
Speaker 2: in that mule or that horse. I didn't understand how
Speaker 2: their minds were changing. What I really didn't realize back
Speaker 2: then is how I was changing. What was changing to me,
Speaker 2: like I started to see the mule different.
Speaker 1: This is worth stopping to consider what TDD just said.
Speaker 1: He went from eight out of ten mules bucking to
Speaker 1: one in ten, But he recognized that it was actually
Speaker 1: him that was changing as he started to see the
Speaker 1: mule completely differently, producing a new set of considerations. The
Speaker 1: mule was no longer an adversary to be conquered by force,
Speaker 1: but a potential partner that just needed convincing to give
Speaker 1: its loyalty, which it actually wanted to give. In twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: this book called Evidence Based Horsemanship came out and redefined
Speaker 1: the way people viewed horses. It pointed out how people
Speaker 1: had anthropomorphized horses, thinking that a stubborn horse with bad
Speaker 1: behavior made choices like a rebellious child, or that a
Speaker 1: horse didn't like people. But the authors, one of them
Speaker 1: a neuroscientists, described the psychology of the horse as desiring
Speaker 1: security and leadership. They're herd animals. They're always looking for
Speaker 1: a leader, and if a leader doesn't arise, they have
Speaker 1: to become the leader. And therein lies the conflict of
Speaker 1: the cowboy way, where leadership is taken by force. But
Speaker 1: Ty would learn that he could create the circumstances where
Speaker 1: a mule would give itself because of his true leadership,
Speaker 1: and this was revolutionary.
Speaker 2: Brad Cameron used all kinds of terminologies. There's a quote.
Speaker 2: He would quote it a lot, but I learned later
Speaker 2: that it was a ray Hunt quote. They know if
Speaker 2: you know, and they know if you don't know. The
Speaker 2: puzzle to some people listening. But what I've come to
Speaker 2: find is they the mule or the horse, they are
Speaker 2: aware of your awareness. They know what you're paying attention to.
Speaker 2: More or less, they can see it, they can sense it.
Speaker 2: So in my high school days, I wasn't aware at all.
Speaker 2: It was just me like totally physically manipulating and manhandling
Speaker 2: these horses and mules. I was getting along just with
Speaker 2: my brute force and strength. And the more I started
Speaker 2: learned about the mind of the mule, the mind of
Speaker 2: the horse, and my own mind and how I acted,
Speaker 2: and you know, how I carried myself around an animal,
Speaker 2: the less troubles I have, the troubles started fading away,
Speaker 2: and it was getting easier.
Speaker 1: What Ty learned was that a mule spoke a completely
Speaker 1: different language than a human, and when he started communicating
Speaker 1: correctly with them, they were ready partners. I'd like to
Speaker 1: read a quote from evidence based Horsemanship. The horse brain
Speaker 1: is about the size of a large grapefruit and proportionally
Speaker 1: one six hundred and fiftieth of their body weight. The
Speaker 1: human brain is one fiftieth of our body weight.
Speaker 3: They have a.
Speaker 1: Large cerebellum for balance and smooth movement. Most of the
Speaker 1: brain area is dedicated to motor and sensory functions. Horses
Speaker 1: do not have a huge frontal lobe like humans. They
Speaker 1: are unable to make fun of someone in return to
Speaker 1: share a joke with their pasture mates. Although they have
Speaker 1: personalities based on how they behave, it would be anthropomorphic
Speaker 1: to assign human personality traits to these animals. The temptation
Speaker 1: to want to believe that horses process things in the
Speaker 1: same way as humans may make us feel better, but
Speaker 1: it is inaccurate, leads to false assumptions, and is often
Speaker 1: at the expense of the horse's welfare and well being.
Speaker 1: End of quote. The cowboy way of breaking mules assumes
Speaker 1: that compliance must be taken by sheer force like a
Speaker 1: military dictator. That does produce compliance, but not the same
Speaker 1: kind of compliance as when it's freely given you see
Speaker 1: a prey. Animals love language is security. Their primary motivation
Speaker 1: in life is safety and not to get eaten. Natural
Speaker 1: horsemanship uses pressure and pressure, meaning like when you're trying
Speaker 1: to make an animal turn to the left and after
Speaker 1: this pressure when they do it, there is an instant
Speaker 1: release of that pressure as a reward for compliance, which
Speaker 1: these neuroscientists learn dumps a huge hit of dopamine. The
Speaker 1: mule loves a dopamine hit like Brent Reeves loves and
Speaker 1: honest Tree and Walker Ty learned that a mule will
Speaker 1: do anything to get a pressure release. It may sound
Speaker 1: like jiu jitsu, but just hanging there and it takes
Speaker 1: less and less pressure once the mule learns that you're
Speaker 1: speaking its language of release and security. It's all about communication.
Speaker 1: I think there are life lessons in here. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: solution to your problems might be getting a completely different outlook,
Speaker 1: not more of the same that isn't working. And good
Speaker 1: luck Brent finding an honest tree in.
Speaker 2: Walker Brad, I learned how a mentor himself named Buck Brannman.
Speaker 2: And so when I learned that Brad learned a lot
Speaker 2: from Buck, then I started paying attention to him. And
Speaker 2: that that was at a little later on about the
Speaker 2: time where Buck Brownman had a documentary come out on
Speaker 2: its life. It's called Buck and it was about Buck
Speaker 2: teaching clinics and his life. But I remember more or
Speaker 2: less seeing Buck's job, and I knew about clinics from Brad,
Speaker 2: but Buck was making a career out of this, teaching
Speaker 2: people and helping people and studying Brad and Buck. I
Speaker 2: had so much change in myself. And you know, when
Speaker 2: you find something good and you can see the good
Speaker 2: and you can see like the joy coming into your life,
Speaker 2: you just want to share it with others. And when
Speaker 2: I saw that documentary that he was doing that, I said,
Speaker 2: I told my wife, and we were newly wedded at
Speaker 2: the time, we had only been married for a couple
Speaker 2: of years at that time, I said, I want that job.
Speaker 2: That's the job I want. Getting bucked off and having
Speaker 2: that wreck breaking my leg, what it did is that
Speaker 2: I'm a go getter. I'm ninety miles an hour all
Speaker 2: the time, drives my wife crazy. But that wreck slowed
Speaker 2: me down. It forced me to slow down, and I believe,
Speaker 2: I believe it was it was God saying slow down, Ty,
Speaker 2: get on the right track, because I think I was
Speaker 2: going off track. But that wreck slowed me down and
Speaker 2: reoriented my life. And I had all the time to
Speaker 2: think about it. I had all kinds of time to
Speaker 2: watch videos. I watched so many training videos sitting on
Speaker 2: the couch with a busted leg, and I just would
Speaker 2: learn and I would read, and I said, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: make I'm gonna make a go of this. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: I really want to do this. And so I didn't
Speaker 2: get back on a bucking horse for a couple of years.
Speaker 2: And when I did go back to rodeo and I
Speaker 2: went back, I wrote it for summer. I went to
Speaker 2: fourteen rodeos that summer. Coming back finally took me, yeah,
Speaker 2: two years to my leg to heal up and to
Speaker 2: get muscle back. But when I came back, it didn't
Speaker 2: have the same drive. I remember sitting on the back
Speaker 2: of a bucking shoot in Sant Quentin, Utah, looking up
Speaker 2: at the at Mountain Nebo, beautiful Mountain, and I think
Speaker 2: to myself as I'm sitting there, man, I'd rather be
Speaker 2: up there with my mule. I'd rather be riding. I'd
Speaker 2: rather be camping anything. And so that was my last rodeo.
Speaker 2: I was in twenty fourteen, and up to that point
Speaker 2: I had actually started doing a couple of clinics like
Speaker 2: at home. I couldn't ride mules after that wreck for
Speaker 2: a period of time, but I you know, later that
Speaker 2: that summer and that fall, I got to riding again,
Speaker 2: and I got to training again, and we started doing lessons,
Speaker 2: and we started doing like little clinics at home, and
Speaker 2: our first clinic was in I believe it was May
Speaker 2: of twenty twelve. Where I work with meals now is
Speaker 2: a lot different than I did back then, not in
Speaker 2: the sense I mean, you can only do so much
Speaker 2: with the mule, Like while I'm talking about the actual
Speaker 2: training pieces. You can go forward and back and side
Speaker 2: to side, hopefully not up and down. So in that sense,
Speaker 2: it didn't change, Like we still accomplish the goal, and
Speaker 2: the goal for me is to make a nice, dependable,
Speaker 2: reliable partner that we can go out and go for
Speaker 2: a good ride. I can go work cows, I can rope,
Speaker 2: I can go on pack trips, we can go hunting
Speaker 2: a reliable partner. But it's how I get to that point.
Speaker 2: It's how I get there that's different now. Back then,
Speaker 2: in those old days, it was a lot of force.
Speaker 2: And I'll admit to you, I forced a lot of
Speaker 2: meals horses, and I have a lot of regrets. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of them that I wish I could have
Speaker 2: a second chance at. However, I do realize that some
Speaker 2: of those meals and horses were kind of the I guess,
Speaker 2: for lack of better words, the sacrifice for today's mules.
Speaker 2: They had to deal with old tie, so that these
Speaker 2: mules today can rape the benefits of new tie, you know,
Speaker 2: the new tie events. And today I spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time using what we call free agency, teaching free
Speaker 2: agency and letting these mules have a choice. So I'll
Speaker 2: set up a scenario where I want it to be
Speaker 2: easy for the mule to do whatever I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: There's a principle we teach, make the right thing easy,
Speaker 2: wrong thing difficult. Well, you got to be careful with that,
Speaker 2: because some people can take their anthing difficult part all
Speaker 2: the way to the bank. They just want to make
Speaker 2: wrong thing difficult, long and difficult. My focus is making
Speaker 2: the right thing easier.
Speaker 1: I've got to stop right there and ponder the applications
Speaker 1: of this principle outside of training mules. As a father,
Speaker 1: I often find myself focused on making the wrong things hard,
Speaker 1: but putting little focus on the reward of the right thing.
Speaker 1: As I look back the way I've fathered, I see
Speaker 1: that I've used conflict inaccurately. I've applied too much pressure
Speaker 1: in the wrong places, trying to get an external response
Speaker 1: that really doesn't teach my child anything or it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually change them. But as a more broad application, after
Speaker 1: hearing Tai story and learning about natural horsemanship, I realize
Speaker 1: the solution to some problems isn't achieved by doing what
Speaker 1: you're already doing.
Speaker 3: Just harder.
Speaker 1: I hope that makes sense, but may be it's the
Speaker 1: adoption of a completely new paradigm that will show you
Speaker 1: a solution you had no idea existed.
Speaker 3: Here's some specifics.
Speaker 1: Of this make the right thing easy philosophy.
Speaker 2: So if I want to get something done, all I
Speaker 2: have to do is let it be the mule's choice
Speaker 2: to do that, and set up that scenario to where
Speaker 2: that thing that I want to do, whether it's go
Speaker 2: across that water, load up in a horse trailer, walk
Speaker 2: up on a mountain lion, it make that easy to do.
Speaker 2: I want it to be easy to do, where before
Speaker 2: in the old days I might just kick and pull
Speaker 2: and force them to get there. Either way we're going
Speaker 2: to end up there. It's just how I do it.
Speaker 2: And I might be able to force that horse or
Speaker 2: force that mule to do something one time, but the
Speaker 2: chances of me forcing it to do a couple of
Speaker 2: times probably slim. So it's easier to set up the
Speaker 2: situation where they want to do it. And then when
Speaker 2: they do it and you give them the reward, which
Speaker 2: the reward really is just relief for a release, meaning
Speaker 2: you leave them alone, you stop asking them, you just
Speaker 2: let them dwell and relax. That's the best reward. And
Speaker 2: so when they do that or they get a big
Speaker 2: dopamine hit and it feels good to them, and so
Speaker 2: when they finally accomplish the task you're trying to get done,
Speaker 2: they're like, hey, I like this. It's a good experience,
Speaker 2: and so then they want to do it again, just
Speaker 2: like anybody else. You have a good experience and you
Speaker 2: enjoy you want to do it again. Probably one of
Speaker 2: the best things about my journey I'm really grateful for
Speaker 2: it is how I've changed. I realized the emule's meal
Speaker 2: horse is a horse, and a humans a human, and
Speaker 2: it's all about how we think. And if I want
Speaker 2: to get along with these animals, I need to understand
Speaker 2: how they're thinking. But in order for me to understand them,
Speaker 2: I need to understand myself. Like if I don't recognize
Speaker 2: when my adrenaline is high, how am I going to
Speaker 2: recognize when THEIRS is high? If I don't recognize when
Speaker 2: I have some fear or doubt or even excitement, or
Speaker 2: maybe overly overly brave, you know, or overly I don't know, cocky,
Speaker 2: you know, or or too forward, like if I don't
Speaker 2: recognize the life in my own body that I'm put now,
Speaker 2: it's really going to be hard for me to control
Speaker 2: the animals. If I can't control my emotions, how can
Speaker 2: I expect to control theirs? Like One of the principles
Speaker 2: that we teach in our clinics, we teach leadership in
Speaker 2: our clinics, and one of the principles of leadership in
Speaker 2: our clinics is to this two parts. We begin with
Speaker 2: the end in mind? So what is it that you
Speaker 2: want your mule your horse to be like? Well, what's
Speaker 2: the end in mind for you? Is it? I want
Speaker 2: to make a really good calmule. I want to be
Speaker 2: able to rope. I want to be able to trail ride.
Speaker 2: I want to be able to hunt, I want to pack,
Speaker 2: I want to barrel race. Oh, it doesn't matter what
Speaker 2: it is. Maybe you just want to pass your pet. Cool,
Speaker 2: But what is that end? What do you want them
Speaker 2: to be like? And then the second part is you
Speaker 2: have to be what you want them to become. And
Speaker 2: that's my favorite part is be what you want them
Speaker 2: to become. So how can I expect my mule to
Speaker 2: be confident if I'm not confident? So if I come
Speaker 2: to an obstacle and we ride some rough country here
Speaker 2: in Utah, we ride some tough stuff. And if I
Speaker 2: come to this obstacle and it might be a crazy
Speaker 2: rocky slope, it might be some ravines or some deep canyons,
Speaker 2: whatever it might be. If I go, oh boy, I
Speaker 2: don't know about that, my mule's going to fill that.
Speaker 2: They're going to fill that and it'll take a really
Speaker 2: confident meal to overcome my lack of confidence. But if
Speaker 2: I come up with the obstacle, I'm like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: we got this, we can do this. That is contagious
Speaker 2: to the animal. If I want my mule to be relaxed, calm,
Speaker 2: whatever words you want to use, I have to be
Speaker 2: all those first. That's what a good leader does. I
Speaker 2: can't tell you to calm down and I'm freaking out.
Speaker 2: That doesn't make any sense. Everybody calm down. No, I
Speaker 2: need to be calm. I need to be that example
Speaker 2: and an exam. Being an example to an equine or
Speaker 2: a horse is not exactly the way human to human work,
Speaker 2: but it's very similar.
Speaker 1: A mule mirrors your confidence, in energy and insecurities, and
Speaker 1: the followers of a leader also mirror a leader's confidence, energy,
Speaker 1: and insecurities. The primary function of leadership and listen to
Speaker 1: this man, take this to the bank. The primary function
Speaker 1: of leadership is to be the pattern and the example
Speaker 1: of exactly what you want those who follow you to be.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: This is the key to true leadership. Period leadership as
Speaker 1: a parent, as a business owner, as a member of
Speaker 1: a basketball team, as a productive member of your community
Speaker 1: or as a mule trainer.
Speaker 3: The natural, physical, and spiritual.
Speaker 1: World responds and rewards authenticity and rejects falsity. Tie's journey
Speaker 1: of transformation and the way he trained mules also highlights
Speaker 1: something that can be hard for human beings, and that
Speaker 1: is to realize that you're doing something wrong and completely change. Today,
Speaker 1: Tye and his wife Sky are successful mule clinicians traveling
Speaker 1: all over the country teaching people how to communicate, ride
Speaker 1: train their mules. You can find them all over the
Speaker 1: internet as TS Mules. You can check him out on Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and the TS Mules Podcasts.
Speaker 3: Tie has a podcast.
Speaker 1: These are some really great people and I've learned a
Speaker 1: ton from Ty's story and I hope that you guys
Speaker 1: will follow along. And we've got some more coming from
Speaker 1: Tye next week. Thank you so much for listening to
Speaker 1: Bear Grease Brints this country Life and Lake's Backwoods University.
Speaker 3: It's twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: We're excited about the new year and keep the wild
Speaker 1: places wild because that's where reversed the