00:00:05
Speaker 1: This episode is something that I’m passionate about, mules and mule riders or mule skinners as they’re called. We’ll talk about why that we use mules, how they compare to horses, and how they rise and fall to the experience of their rider. And we’re going to have a couple of very unique people talking to us about this. We’re gonna hear again from trainer and clinician Ty Evans about mulemanship. But you’re in for a treat because we’ll also hear from legendary Arizona cowboy Warner Glinn. That’s right, Beargreas Hall of Famer Warner Glenn. Once again. I think you’re gonna be surprised by what we’re gonna learn as we listen to these guys talk about mules. I really doubt that you’re gonna want to miss this one.
00:00:52
Speaker 2: A lot of the old timers rats that Warner, why do you ride mules t hunt rather than horses? And I said, well, tell you the truth. I just you know, I just don’t feel as sorry for mules. Can I forge that going to take him and be both or she and me? By and large, most of the Mountain Lion hunters in our area use mules now most of the type.
00:01:29
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Knukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we’ll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we’ll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by f h F gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
00:02:04
Speaker 2: Thank you Lord for this food, and thank you Lord for the guidance of safety you’ve given us today. And please watch over to the night and give us a a good night’s rest on it man.
00:02:17
Speaker 1: One of the most unique and impacting experiences of my life has been the time that I’ve spent with Warner. Glenn Warner is now ninety years old, and in twenty twenty two I was able to ride mules and lion hunt with him near his home in Douglas, Arizona. The southern border of his ranch is the US Mexican border. Warner is a cattle rancher and a dry ground lion hunter. He’s a true cowboy.
00:02:45
Speaker 2: Now, Claire will try a little Jesse pooka.
00:03:08
Speaker 1: If you’ve heard the super puncher Dale Brisbee harassed me about my mule. You might get the impression that cowboys don’t like mules, and some don’t. I’ve learned that a lot of rodeo cowboys don’t like them, but the cowboy hunters that I know love them. And I just did something out of the ordinary. I asked chat GPT, that’s right, chat GPT, if there were any common themes among mule owners, and it quickly spit out seven things. And I’d like to read you the list that it said. Number one, mule owners value function over flash. Number two. Mule owners are comfortable with earned trust, trust that’s negotiated, not demanded. Number three. Mule writers have a high tolerance for stubbornness and like animals that assess risk. Number four, they have a strong rural, working backcountry connection mule writers do. Number five. Mule writers are skeptical of hype and authority. Number six. Mule writers tend to be loyal once convinced. But mule owners may be slow to adopt new ideas, but once they believe in something, they stick with it, defend it passionately, evangelize it quietly through results. This mirrors how mules themselves. Operate number seven, the last one that chat GPT spit out. Mule writers are often experienced animal people. In summary, it says mule owners tend to be pragmatic, independent, patient people who value intelligence, self preservation, and earned partnership over obedience and appearance. That was a wild trip. Based on what I know of Warner, Glenn and ty Evans, these things sound about right. I want to talk with Warner. This interview is from twenty twenty one when I was down in Douglas, Arizona, and I want to ask him about his history with mules.
00:05:12
Speaker 2: In cattle work here on the rent, we like to use horses. They’re a little more responsive than that type of thing. We’re just although we use mules a lot of times. We don’t have the horses up if we have to work in cattle, but in the hunting. But that and I use a lot of horses. When they first started, early in the fourties and early fifties and sixties, we were horseback most of the time, even because we were raising all those horses in the mountains. Yeah, and we were breaking them ourselves, so they were good mountain horses. It’s kind of hard to find a good mountain horse now, But we want to use mules. We use mules all together now when we’re hunting. They take care of themselves in that rough, rugged country. They hardly ever get crippled, ever, hardly ever get hurt. If they do happen to fall with you. And I’m not saying a mule won’t fall with you, they will have them fall with me. But usually when they get in a real bad place and fall or get in the tight situation there, they’re kind of relaxing. Wait a minute. They don’t panic, where a horse will usually panic and go to london or kicking and get freddy. Well, you might find one occasionally that would, but most mules settle down and take a kind of ease out of a tough situation. And in doing that they allow you time to step out of the middle of the trouble too. They’re not they’re not lundon and fighting. And I tell you when you get it, when they go down with if there’s a pause, taught you better take advantage of you better get out of the way.
00:06:40
Speaker 1: I’m gonna remember that. Yeah, Hey, you told me a statement today. You said you said, we’ve had some good mountain horses, but I sure felt sorry for it.
00:06:50
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Well, a lot of the old timers around said, wonder, why do you rude mules all the time hunting rather than horses, And I said, well, to tell you the truth, i’d you know, I just don’t feel as sorry for a mule as I do a horse. Can I figure that mule was going to take him and me both and showing me. I’m not saying there’s not some good mountain horses still around. Some of the hunters still use horses quite a bit, but by and large, most of the mountain lion hunters in our area use mules and meals most of the time.
00:07:24
Speaker 1: Tell me about tell me about your mule Machomo.
00:07:28
Speaker 2: Well, I tell you yeah. And he came out of Mexico where at that time that this would have been like fifty six, fifty seven, fifty eight, nineteen fifty six, fifty seventy, we were doing a lot of hunting in the northern part of Sonora in these mountains you didn’t see from here in south it was. And they had a mule called Motobo down there that one of the wranglers down there was riding. So when we came out of there. The rancher was making Armando Marella. He was making some really good horses. He had bonds of real fancy stud and he said for payment for catching some of the lines down, and then he said, wonder on when he gave you one of these good horses. And I said, man, I know, I said, I would really rather have that baby mule called. He said you would, and I said yeah. So he gave me the mule. That’s where he came from, and he’s one of the best mules I’ve ever hit.
00:08:21
Speaker 3: There.
00:08:22
Speaker 2: He was a little wild and rank. At first, I got ridy. He kicked me a time or two, really bad, but he got over that. When he got about eighteen nineteen years old, he got.
00:08:32
Speaker 1: I took a while. What was your favorite mule of all time?
00:08:35
Speaker 2: Well, I tell you I’ve had a lot of them, but of all time, if I had my pick for one to stay with, I had a white mule called Shnoy River and he would want He would do anything you wanted to do it, and he would do it good. And he was willing. He never balked. I mean he was good rough country. You could go ahead of cow and I mean you work cattle all you were doing, just a good all around mule butt.
00:09:03
Speaker 1: He carry a line too, Oh yeah, yeah, he carried a loah.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s some most of our I tell you, they’re not afraid of the lion as much as you are. Bear it seems like our mules here, of course they don’t. We don’t bear hunt much. It’s just very rare that they’re even around him. I’ve had I’m riding. You’ll see her in the morning, videan. She’s she’s one of those.
00:09:27
Speaker 1: How big a mule do you like?
00:09:29
Speaker 2: I don’t. I don’t like him too big. I like him. It weighs probably ten fifty to twelve fifty.
00:09:35
Speaker 1: These are pretty big mules you’ve got, though, I mean, they’re some of the more sixteen hands probably are they that.
00:09:40
Speaker 2: A couple of couple of them probably are.
00:09:42
Speaker 1: You’re a big, big guy, they’re they’re.
00:09:44
Speaker 2: A little bigger than those are good mules, the ones we got now, But I’d rather have a little smaller one. I’d rather have one. Snowy River was probably he’d probably weighed ten to fifty something like that. When he would drawing down, Yeah, drawn down, good condition. Mortoba would have been too.
00:10:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s clear that Warner knows a thing or two about mules, and he’s probably put as many miles in the saddle of a mule as any living person. Where as a rancher, a practitioner, and a man of function don’t have no doubt he could train a mule, He’s not necessarily a mule trainer. That’s not where he’s focused. Ty Evans is less than half of Warner’s age and has spent inordinate amounts of time training mules, and his expertise comes from a slightly different angle. Ti is a methodical student of the mule, and in the last episode we learned about Tie’s transformation as a trainer, going from the cowboy way of bucking a mule out and demanding its submission and allegiance to using the principles of natural horsemanship, where trust is earned and freely given, rather than taking using the herd mentality and leaning in to the way a mule thinks to gain its trust kind of inside its natural order. But I want to get back to the basics with Tie Evans.
00:11:12
Speaker 3: So a mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey, a female horse and a male donkey. Jack Okay, and that makes the hybrid we’re crossing. We’re acrossing these species here. It’s that hybrid makes all kinds of advantages.
00:11:32
Speaker 4: For performance animals.
00:11:35
Speaker 3: It just makes them double tough, makes a lot of unique things. Mules shine the best in rough country. The rougher it is, the more they shine. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t use mules for all the gentle stuff too, And you might not be riding rough country. You might be riding something pretty mild. You might be just riding in the arena. Maybe you want to just do some masage. Maybe you want to just do some arena events. That’s okay, and they do good there too. The diversity is awesome. But I’ll tell you what. The mules shines in the mountains. It shines in the rough country. It shines in using them day after day, year after year. The longevity that they have. And you know that’s why historically they have been beasts of burden too. You know, people have used them historically.
00:12:27
Speaker 4: The horse gets all the credit for the West, but the mules made the West. They really did.
00:12:32
Speaker 3: There’s you know, mules were very valuable to pioneers and I come from pioneer heritage on you know, multiple sides, and they came over with mules, and they made this country with meals.
00:12:45
Speaker 4: They plowed the fields with mules, They mined with mules.
00:12:48
Speaker 3: Mules made the West and pretty cool. I have so much respect for the mule. I’ve seen what they can do. From the some of the I’ll admit, some of the dumb situations I have put a mule in, I have seen what they can do and how they can get me out of those situations, and they can reverse those choices I made. You know, I’ve put my mules into situations that are very challenging technically in the mountains in the Red Rock Country of Utah, and I owe so much to them. I also love the mule because of their unique and dynamic personalities. A lot of people will describe will describe them as kind of doglike, and I can agree with that. You know, they do kind of have more of a dog like personality. Yeah, And I’ve had some horses with great personalities, don’t get me wrong, But the mules just more so. And that was one of Tom Dorance’s sayings. He said, the mule is just like the horse, only more so. And so it just seemed like if you’ve got a really friendly mual. They’re really friendly, you know, And I love that about them. I love how forgiving they are. And that’s actually a myth that a lot of people have, is that they’re not forgiving.
00:14:23
Speaker 4: Oh come on, everybody, you know.
00:14:25
Speaker 3: They’re forgiving all the stuff that all the stuff that the mule has put up with me and forgiven me for I make mistakes every time I ride, every time I rode today, rode twenty miles a day, I made all kinds of mistakes, and that mule is gonna forgive me, and I’m gonna fix it. I’ll be better tomorrow. And I love that about the animal there. They like to feel comfortable. So you might have messed up big time. And if you can just help them feel comfortable, get yourself right, and you help them get comfortable, they’re good to go. The hybrid vi is top notch. That is what makes the mule that highbred vigor. It’s not for everybody. That’s probably why I like the mule too. It is because not everybody likes the mule, and that’s okay, that’s all right.
00:15:13
Speaker 4: But that high bred.
00:15:14
Speaker 3: Vigor, oh my gosh, that’s what makes them so durable and so tough, and they can go and then not only can they go today, but they can go tomorrow.
00:15:26
Speaker 4: And I love that.
00:15:28
Speaker 3: I really love that in them. There’s nothing better than riding a mule and just going up a crazy steep side hill of a mountain, scratching through rocks, and that thing is just powering up it.
00:15:44
Speaker 4: It’s just so cool.
00:15:45
Speaker 3: You just fill that under you and you’re thinking that they might get tired, and then they give you more. You know, you take a lunch break and just let them relax a little while, and then they’re.
00:15:57
Speaker 4: Charged up for the afternoon. And I really appreciate that. Also, the diversity of.
00:16:04
Speaker 3: The meal, Oh man, you can do everything with them, Like I can go my meals. I can go trail ride with them, I can go packing, I can go hunt, I can go rope and work cows. My daughter likes to bail race. She’ll take the meal of the bail race.
00:16:22
Speaker 4: You know, she might not be winning.
00:16:24
Speaker 3: You know, if you’re gonna ask me what should I get for bill racing, probably get a horse. I’m not gonna suggest meal for bell racing. But she has fun on that meal, and that meal takes big care of her in that brail race. So the dice, the diversity is one of my favorite things about it too.
00:16:46
Speaker 2: Right, ride a little one this morning, Go Rosalie.
00:16:51
Speaker 1: That’s the name of the meal you’re putting me on? How old is this meal?
00:17:00
Speaker 2: Problem with it? She’s about seventeen seventeen, Yeah, and it’s too bad. You hate to see them, You’re like, you know.
00:17:09
Speaker 1: So this is your go to meal. This is what’s this meal’s name?
00:17:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, Vivian?
00:17:13
Speaker 4: How old is she?
00:17:14
Speaker 2: Vid? She got to be about fifteen years old.
00:17:17
Speaker 1: This is your this is the one you go to when you got.
00:17:20
Speaker 2: To well, youm I write this at least other every other day. I’ve got three. I’m ride per regular, Ridger and Vivian and uh Brayer, Yeah so and Kelly. She got Rosalie and Pete and some of those others.
00:17:37
Speaker 1: When when does the mule get just right and at.
00:17:40
Speaker 2: Depend depends on a long but but I tell you what, as far as being general and trustworthy and everything, I would say like six or seven really to where you could trust them with anybody. Yeah, right down there, and you can you can write him into two or three. But you better be ready for a little wreck of it. Should have you know, should they’re just not used to it. Yeah, and all should these mountain I tell you they’re hard on you.
00:18:09
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:18:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:18:15
Speaker 1: Warner’s knowledge of animals comes from time in the saddle, evaluating how they navigate backcountry, and he’s been in a lot of bad wrecks. As a matter of fact, he’s been life flighted out of the back country once after a very bad wreck, and so has his daughter Kelly. He’s been in some harry spots. He told me once about a mule rolling over and flipping over him, but he didn’t get hurt. I had one experience with Warner that I’ll never tire of telling. Once I was following him in Arizona and the dogs went over the top of a high mountain. Warner basically turned and said to me, follow me, Clay, and he sent the rest of our crew around the mountain, but I was supposed to follow him. We proceeded up the steepest, roughest half mile mule scramble that I had ever been on. At the time, Warner was ponying a pack mule. That means he was leading a pack mule. Mules were slipping and sliding and scrambling, and we were getting raked by limbs and mules were jumping folders, and he never once looked back to see if I was there. Once we got to the top, he never acknowledged that it was a hard stretch. I kind of expected him to turn around and be like, wow, Claire, you okay, good job, but he never did, which then made me wonder if that was in fact a hard ride for him, because I knew it was for me. So that night at the dinner table, I cautiously asked him. I said, Warner, if you had to rank that hill that we climbed today on a scale of one to ten, and a one was walking your mule down a gravel road, and a tin was that you were dead, what do we do today? I waited anticipation as he paused and thought for a minute. He and I kind of thought he might say, oh, Clay, that was about a three or four or five. But then he said, Clay, I’d say that was about an eight. He said, if it had been much rougher than that, you couldn’t have done it. And I smiled and had a little sigh of relief and went on to eat dinner with him. I’ll never forget that here’s tie evens.
00:20:29
Speaker 3: The mule will rise or fall to their humans level of experience and understanding. So, for example, at this point in my career, I feel pretty confident that I could take a mule that’s pretty scared or worried or what somebody else might call problem, and I could help that mule. I could add value to that mule’s life, and I could bring it up to my level.
00:20:58
Speaker 4: However, on the other hand, and if.
00:21:00
Speaker 3: If somebody is very inexperienced or doesn’t have a lot of understanding or or the abilities, capabilities, all these things, and they get a mule like that, well this is this is bad news. There’s the saying green on green is black and blue. Well, that’s not too far off from the truth. On the other hand, too, I suppose that person with a lot of with not a lot of experience, they might buy a mule that is really awesome and they think it’s a you know, a turn key operation.
00:21:35
Speaker 4: Right, this this meal is ready to go.
00:21:37
Speaker 3: But if that person doesn’t continue to get better and to grow, that mule will that mual and that person will meet in the middle. At some point that mule is gonna come down. The mule doesn’t get to keep that level of training, that level of skill. You can think of it kind of like a knife, Like if you just got you might have the sharpest knife in the world, the best knife you ever had, and you just leave it out. You don’t take care of that knife. You don’t do anything to keep that knife sharp. Even though you’re not using that knife. That knife is good adult just from being just just sitting outside.
00:22:12
Speaker 4: It’s going to go downhill. Well, that’s what happens to the meals too.
00:22:17
Speaker 3: They got a meal, they bought a nice meal. It’s awesome, but it’s just sitting outside.
00:22:21
Speaker 4: You got to keep that thing sharp.
00:22:22
Speaker 3: You’ve got to get yourself sharp to keep that sharp. And that’s something in life I’ve learned with anything, any type of knowledge in life, any skill in life.
00:22:34
Speaker 4: If you’re not getting.
00:22:35
Speaker 3: Better at whatever it is you do, whether it’s mealmanship or hunting or playing a guitar, if you’re not getting better, you’re actually getting worse. We don’t in this whole life. We don’t get to just stay the same. We’re different now at the end of the toward the end of this conversation than we were at the beginning of the conversation.
00:22:58
Speaker 4: We know more, we’ve learned, we’ve.
00:23:00
Speaker 3: Chatted, we’ve talked, and things have changed, you know, they really have. You don’t get to be the same person you We won’t be the same person tomorrow as we are today. And it’s the same thing with the mule. They’re changing, so we better keep up.
00:23:13
Speaker 1: I hope this conversation has given us insight into the world of the mule, because, as with many things in life, principles in one area often work in another. Master one thing and you can master another. We’ve learned that a core principle of natural horsemanship is also core to being a good leader anywhere in life. A leader can’t ask the people that follow him or her to be something that he or she is not. Again, it may sound like voodoo, but it’s the furthest thing from impractical. It’s the law of the universe. I want to ask Tay about what he does in his mule clinics.
00:24:03
Speaker 3: When people ask me what my job is, it can be hard to explain, but basically my job is this. I use mules and horses to teach people leadership skills. So the mule is the vessel through which we teach and explain and demonstrate this leadership.
00:24:26
Speaker 4: One of my.
00:24:27
Speaker 3: Favorite sayings is mealmanship is lifemanship. Mealmanship is lifemanship, meaning how you work with your mule is how you should work with yourself and everything in life.
00:24:44
Speaker 4: I think we can be.
00:24:45
Speaker 3: Better parents if we just use the skills that work so good on mules apply that to being a good parent to your child.
00:24:53
Speaker 4: There’s all kinds of principles.
00:24:54
Speaker 3: That we teach in that. One of them is taking ownership of your actions. Jocko Willing calls an extreme ownership.
00:25:04
Speaker 4: He wrote a book about it.
00:25:05
Speaker 3: I think everybody that everybody should read that because it’s a great leadership book. But this, this idea of extreme ownership is basically, it’s my fault.
00:25:14
Speaker 4: It’s on me in a good way.
00:25:16
Speaker 3: It’s not a poor, oh boohoo, pour me way.
00:25:21
Speaker 4: It’s hey, this is on me. Let me.
00:25:24
Speaker 3: I’m gonna take ownership with this. I’m gonna fix it. So I put the mule. When the mule gets scared, I don’t say, oh, geezu, this meal is so scared, what’s wrong with you? Or if the mule does something that I’m not happy about, well, what’s wrong with you?
00:25:38
Speaker 4: What are you doing? No, I say, okay, how can I help you?
00:25:43
Speaker 3: What can I do to change this?
00:25:46
Speaker 4: It’s on me. I don’t blame the animal. I’m the one that brought the mule into my life. In real life, it’s the same thing.
00:25:54
Speaker 3: I can’t get mad at my kid, one my daughters for doing something that I didn’t explain. Well maybe, and I’m definitely, I’m definitely guilty of this. You know, tell me go do something, but don’t give all the directions that you really should because you’re in a hurry. Well, that’s on me. You know, I can’t get mad at him because I didn’t explain it. Well, you know, another thing is and we’ve talked about a little bit, but like being flat in your emotions, working with these animals and controlling your emotions and being present and getting quiet, you know, take that into your life, take that into the work, into your office, whatever you do for your living to take it to the shop, take it to out in the field. You know, something goes wrong, it’s all right, it’s okay, no, big bill, we got this. You reset and you go again. You don’t need to get upset about it. But it doesn’t help anything to get upset. I figured that out a long time ago with meals and horses. Getting upset solves nothing, nothing, It doesn’t help me. So controlling those emotions is so important in every example of life.
00:27:15
Speaker 1: When you talk about going flat, I think there’s a lot of application there with the way that we deal with people, because I think we all the time go into a relationship, whether it’s with your spouse, or with your boss, or with your kids or with your neighbor, we go into some kind of engagement with a completely filled in graph of how this person is going to respond, and it influences the way that I even talk to them and deal with them, and oftentimes it could be negative. And if you came into the situation just thinking the best of someone, giving them the opportunity to make the right choice, and not preloading the thing with your I know they’re about to say something stupid or I know they’re about to do this wrong. And I think people would read our will read our confidence, They’ll read our our intent. I mean, because humans are the same way, like a mule can pick up your energy from forty feet away, he sees you just the same way with your spouse, with your boss, And uh so I really like that kind of go flat. It doesn’t mean die to your emotions. I mean, like emotions are okay if they’re used right, but but it means don’t but don’t come preloaded thinking how someone’s going to respond.
00:28:38
Speaker 3: The science behind this being able to control your emotions and be flat like we’re talking about, or be neutral is learning to self regulate, learning how to have coping skills.
00:28:50
Speaker 1: And that’s what you’re asking a mule to do too.
00:28:53
Speaker 4: That’s exactly it.
00:28:54
Speaker 3: I want the mule to learn coping skills, to learn how self regulate. So when I’m trying to get a mule to be you know, good in in maybe a scary situation or a crossing a big deep river, yeah, anything just that they might scare them. Well, I learned that they’re scared of that, not because they just.
00:29:13
Speaker 4: Want to be wimpy. They don’t know.
00:29:16
Speaker 3: It’s just like think back when you learn how to drive pick up. My dad taught taught us how to drive. I was probably I don’t know, probably twelve thirteen years old. We just drive round out back in our little side pasture we had and he just let us drive the trucks around.
00:29:31
Speaker 4: Well, I was pretty nervous.
00:29:32
Speaker 3: You know, I was pretty scared to drive in that little circle of the pasture.
00:29:37
Speaker 2: You know.
00:29:38
Speaker 3: Well, now I drive, I drive across the country in a couple of days. Don’t even I mean, don’t even blink an eye at it. Just it doesn’t even phasee me to drive, you know. But I learned how to deal with those situations a little out of time. With the mules, it’s the same way. I’m not just going to throw them in the deep end. I’m not gonna just just totally saturate them with something that’s scary. I do a little out of time and controlled and do you know, engage you a little stimulus. Maybe they’re scared of some dogs, maybe they’re scared of you know anything, Walmart bag that’ll always get Walmart bags.
00:30:16
Speaker 4: Whatever it is.
00:30:17
Speaker 3: We just do a little out of time and we’ll expose them to the stress a little bit, and then we back off the stress and we wait and let them totally self regulate and come down off of that small amount of.
00:30:30
Speaker 4: Stress before we add more. That way, we don’t trigger stack.
00:30:33
Speaker 3: I don’t want to pile this stuff on the mule because you might trigger stack, trigger stacked, trigger stack, and then that’s where you hear people say.
00:30:41
Speaker 4: Wow, the clear blue my mule blew up. No it didn’t.
00:30:45
Speaker 3: It’s been it’s been stacking on the stress. It’s just like it’s just like us getting stressed about something something dumb, or you get mad at your your kids or your wife over something really petty. Well, it wasn’t that little thing that you kid did that blew your top. It was all the stuff all day that you didn’t deal with. So when you go work with the mule, you have to let all that baggage out yourself. You’ve got to get rid of all that stuff that you’re packing in there. You’ve got to set it aside so that you can come in neutral and flat, because that’s exactly how we want our animals to be, and that includes expectations like I’m just working my mule from where it’s at right now today. I’m not thinking about all the things I hope it can do forever. And that kind of gets confusing because we teach begin with the end in mind, but that doesn’t mean I have to focus on the end result.
00:31:43
Speaker 4: I focus on the process.
00:31:45
Speaker 3: If I focus on the process, I know the result will take care of self.
00:31:51
Speaker 1: This idea of being flat of self regulation is a powerful idea. I’d like to challenge you to do a little exercise sometime in the next couple of days. Pick out a stressful moment where emotions and tension have historically been high. Think about like when you order for your family at a fast food drive through that’s stressful for me, or when you walk into a crowded room at work, or maybe when you catch your hard to catch mule in your pasture, or maybe it’s a hard conversation with a family member. But when that happens, take a deep breath, deep, deep breath, hold it for several seconds, then do an elongated exhale. Then consciously drop the tension from your face, your shoulders, your hands, like release the tension in your muscles, and you can almost feel the energy drop to your feet, like water pouring out of a bucket with a hole in it. This I’m not asking you to have some out of body experience. This is a combination of physical and mental discipline. When I do this, I feel like my blood pressure drops mentally. I then step into a space where I’m not concerned with outcomes. I’m not defensive, I’m not aggressive, I’m not being pushed, I’m just flat. You’ll be surprised what you’ll be able to accomplish in that state of mind. To me, it’s about governing your spirit. To work with a mule or a horse, you’ve got to be able to be flat. Sometimes, to work with people, you’ve got to be flat. Proverb says that he who rules his spirit is better than one who takes a city. Secondly, extreme ownership, like Ty was just talking about, it’s something that I see exemplified in Warner, Glenn and Tie for that matter. I found Warner to be fair confident, calm, but energetic and productive. And I found his mules to reflect that exactly.
00:33:55
Speaker 3: A lot of times people will kind of not understand what I do for living, like teaching these clinics and doing these leadership chains and stuff. And I tell folks, it’s kind of like working with a dog. Like you could send your dog to the trainer and it has all these cool tricks and things that can do. But if you don’t know how to ask for those tricks or ask for those you know, those commands or those things, it don’t matter what the dog knows, that doesn’t matter.
00:34:26
Speaker 4: It only matters what you know. So That’s what.
00:34:29
Speaker 3: These clinics do is it helps us build the skills that we need. And the cool thing is is all these same exact skills that we’re working on with mules.
00:34:41
Speaker 4: It’s just life. It’s just so much life.
00:34:44
Speaker 3: And in fact, you have to work on this stuff all day long to be proficient with the mules. In fact, do you have to practice all this stuff so.
00:34:55
Speaker 4: That when you finally get to your mule, you’re good to go the mule.
00:35:00
Speaker 3: There’s no such thing as practice to me, it’s the real thing every single time, when you throw your leg over, when you catch them, when you’re around them, it’s it’s not practice. You don’t practice being around the mule. You’re around them. So if you want practice, you gotta do it all the rest of life and then pre seem to get to thinking.
00:35:20
Speaker 4: There’s actually no such thing as practice. It’s always real life.
00:35:23
Speaker 3: It’s always real life for me, something that I like to work on a lot. And my coach I mentioned Louis Field. He was a great coach to me. He taught me so much. One of my favorite things he taught me was visualization, like picture it, see it, see it in your mind’s eye, and so if I’m going to go go ride my mule this afternoon work on some things. Well, I’m sitting back thinking and visualizing, not necessarily all the maneuvers and the training, and I’m going to do this and this and this, and it’s not like that. I’m picturing what I want that interaction to be like. I want to feel it. I want to feel what that ride is going to be like. If we’re going to go ride in the mountains of Utah and follow some hound dogs on lion hunt, I want to what is that going to feel like? What’s my meal going to be like? I would visualize it having a lot of energy, a lot of gold, because it’s going to need the energy to cover these mountains. I’m gonna envision what’s going to be like being around dogs, and what’s it going to be like riding to those trees, and what’s it smell like, what’s the what do the pine trees smell like? All this stuff I think about it, and you know what, that stuff comes to pass. I’m so glad that my coach Liuifield taught me how to visualize, and he was very much a proponent of it. He has us think about it all the time, and it worked. It worked for riding brons back then in rodeo, and it works for ride mules, and it works for relationships you know, like and it’s not just thinking about what you want the mule to be. What are you going to be to the mule? And that’s the same thing with an application to life. How do I want my mule to perceive me? And if I’m coming to meet you, how do I want you to perceive me? How do I want you to feel around me? That’s important to me. And there’s a similarity to how you make people feel, how you’re going to make a mule feel, how you’re going to make a dog feel. It’s all the same. It’s all the same in life, and that’s important to me. I work hard of that and I try to share that with my students. Anybody I’ll get a chance with is to think about that.
00:37:52
Speaker 1: That’s pretty deep water, tie, And I don’t think that he’s being mystical, but I find this to be very practical. There’s definitely components of biblical faith inside of this functional discipline of what he’s calling visualization. I think it could be described as having an active faith about how something is going to go. I’ve view true biblical faith as more practical than I’ve seen it portrayed in society, and frankly, as i’ve seen it portrayed in much of the Christian Church. The statement I’ve just made is like an iceberg, and that’s the ten percent of that iceberg that’s sticking above the water. There’s ninety percent below it that that didn’t really fit for me to share in this silly podcast, And this format is far too personal. It’s stuff that’s not meant to be broadcast across the airwaves. It’s the stuff you’ve got to fight for that’s really got to be real inside of you. But I will add one layer to this idea of visualization as well, showing a little bit more of the iceberg, and that’s to add to that visualization declarative prayer. I think humans have a very unique thing inside of us where we can reach out to the Creator. The words we say with our mouth are powerful, as well as the thoughts that we think. Whether you believe in God or not, you will generally become what you think and say about yourself. So think and say accurate things. Don’t be deceived about your capabilities or be humble and say noble and powerful things. Think these things not from a place of ambition, but from a desire to be a whole, functional human. In closing, and on a very practical note, if you’re interested in mules, I’d suggest going to one of the big mule sells across the country. But don’t go there to buy a mule. Go there to talk to the people there about mules, because they’re there, and you’d learn a ton very quickly just by talking to some folks. There are mule cells all over the country, but there are some big ones in Aight, Oklahoma in the spring and fall. The Chrome and the Canyon mule sell and Bryce Canyon, Utah is a really good one. The Salmon Selects Sale and sam And Idaho is a big one. The Reese Brothers mule Sale in Lebanon, Tennessee is huge. The Jake Clark Sale in Ralston, Wyoming, the Horses and Hounds mule Sale in New Mexico, the Boone County Draft Horse and mule Sale in Sedalia, Missouri. I mean, there are hundreds of horse and mule sells, but these are some of the big ones, and there are countless others that I’ve left out, so please forgive me, mule folks. But there’s a pretty big learning curve when you get into equines and it just takes some dedication. But I could have never done it without the help of just people talking to me. Thank you, guys so much for listening to Bear Grease. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this episode. Thank you for listening to Brent and this country life podcast and for Lake in the Backwoods University. And please go follow my friend Ty Evans at ts mules on Instagram and check out his podcast. And keep the wild places wild because that’s where the bears live.
Read the full article here