Breaking a Colt, Not a Spirit

There are two ways to get a saddle on a young horse, and old hands will tell you they can spot which one a man chose years later — long after the colt is grown and gentle and the whole business is supposed to be forgotten.

The old way was fast. They didn't call it "breaking" by accident. Snub the colt to a post, cinch the saddle down over his panic, climb aboard, and let him buck until he learns that bucking doesn't work. You could have a horse rideable by sundown, and plenty of outfits did it just that way — there were a hundred horses to start and no time to do it slow. But ask anybody who's ridden one of those horses what the shortcut costs. A colt broke by force learns to obey, but he never quite quits watching you out of the corner of his eye. Somewhere in him he stays braced for the next fight. You end up with a horse that submits. Not one that trusts.

The better way is slower, and every good hand knows it now. Hours of groundwork before a saddle ever comes near him. Pressure and release — ask small, and the instant the colt gives even an inch, you let off, so he finds out that giving is safe. It takes weeks instead of an afternoon, and it doesn't make for much of a show. But the horse you get at the end of it isn't broken at all. He's made. He'll cross water for you, stand quiet for the farrier, meet you at the gate. Not because he's afraid of what happens if he doesn't — because he's learned what kind of hands he's in.

The Fruit That Grows Slow

We've been chewing on a verse this week that reads like it was written in a round pen:

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." — Galatians 5:22-23 (NIV)

Two things stand out to us — and as always, we'll say plainly that we're new to a lot of this ourselves, working it out one Sunday at a time. The first is that gentleness makes the list at all. The world tends to read gentle as soft. But watch a good hand start a colt — a thousand pounds of scared muscle in front of him, and he never once raises his voice or his hand — and then try calling that weakness. Gentleness isn't the absence of strength. It's strength with the temper trained out of it.

The second is that word fruit. Paul didn't call these the achievements of the Spirit. Fruit isn't forced; nobody stands in an orchard hollering at a green apple to hurry up. Fruit comes on slow, in season, from roots you can't see — which sounds a lot like a colt coming along right, and nothing at all like an afternoon at the snubbing post.

People Don't Break Any Better Than Horses

Here's where the story quits being about horses, because most of us handle the people in our lives one of those same two ways.

There's the fast way. Raise your voice until the kid complies. Win the argument on points and call it settled. Ride the new hire hard because that's how somebody once rode you. And it works — the same way the snubbing post works. You get obedience by sundown. It just costs you the same thing it costs the colt: the people around you learn to stay braced. They give you compliance with their eyes somewhere else, and the trust that makes a family or a crew worth belonging to never quite takes root.

And if we're honest, this one stings at our house too. We're quicker to reach for pressure than we'd like to admit. Force is always faster, and everybody's short on time. But we've never once pressured somebody into being closer to us. Near as we can tell, nobody ever has.

Reward the Smallest Try

So here's the takeaway for the week, kept small enough to actually do. Horsemen have a saying: reward the smallest try. The colt doesn't have to get it perfect — he leans an inch the right direction and the pressure comes off, and that's how he learns the right direction is safe.

Pick one person you've been leaning on. A kid you've been on all summer. A spouse mid-standoff. Somebody at work who's been getting the sharp side of you. This week, the moment they give an inch — a half-apology, a small effort, a step your way — let off. Meet the smallest try with slack instead of more pressure. You may find a week of that does what a month of leaning never did.

Whether faith sits at the center of your life or you're just curious and passing through, we're glad you rode along this morning. Same time next Sunday.

— The Sackett Ranch Family