For a time, I ran a guided horseback tour company in Arizona (Trail Horse Adventures). At our location in Sedona the terrain was pretty severe in some places, so it was a good location for producing wet saddle blankets. That is to say, If we had a hot horse we could just have a guide use him/her on their rides for awhile and they'd settle right in. Before you knew it, they'd be in the dude string.
One day our shoer brought in a couple horses he wanted to sell. One of them, "Carmelo", was not broke, but was very gentle. He was somewhere between 1 and 2 years old, and was just barely over pony size. I paid $400 for him. We immediately threw a saddle on Carmelo and started sending guides out on him, but only in the drag rider position, meaning, at the back of the line, behind the guests. Sound dangerous? Well it was, not for the guide though, for the horse. You see, I rarely met a guide that knew as much about horses as they thought they did. It didn't take long and Carmelo was doing pretty good on the one hour rides so I started sending him on our 2 hour creek crossing tours. That didn't go so well because every time they got to the creek, instead of crossing, he would simply buck the guide off. This had happened a couple times when I sent a female guide out on him who had not tried crossing on him before. She seemed to think she could get him to cross. She came back to the ranch about an hour later, completely soaked, boots full of water, and crying. Because of these failed attempts to cross the creek on Carmelo, the guides were starting to use that four letter word that I don't like so well, "can't", and it was then that I knew I'd have to step in and do something. So, I threw my saddle, the one with the good buckin' rolls, on Carmelo and rode drag on the next ride out. He did very well and was surprisingly manageable, until we got to the creek. He stepped up, lowered his head and took a good look at the creek and then just started prancing around a little and hollering at the other horses in the string, who were by now, 1/2 way across the creek. I just let the reins go slack and took a seat, quietly letting him do what he wanted. So, he moved up the shoreline, down the shoreline and back to the crossing. I just sat, patiently, quietly, waiting for nature take its course. By now, the rest of the horses had crossed the creek and had started toward home. All of a sudden, Carmelo just gathered himself up and leaped as far as he could out into the creek. I think I let out a shout. Oh yeah, that was fun alright! He crossed for the first time and many multiples of times after that without a single problem.
Point is: I've never been a very patient man. It's really too bad we don't come hard wired with patience the way a horse comes with the instinct to join the herd. In fact, I'm not sure our own desire to join up isn't stronger than our patience. But, I can be patient when I can see that it's the thing that needs to be done to achieve a desired result. The rest of the time I just try to practice patience; you know, practice makes perfect.
