Thunderbird Equine

09/06/2026

What earns a permanent place in my trailer?

Not necessarily the product with the best packaging or the newest thing I have been sent, but the things I continue reaching for when I am responsible for getting client horses down the road, helping them feel prepared to work, and making it through a long day myself.

Draw It Out Concentrate comes because the last thing I want a client horse thinking about when it is time to work is the soreness and stiffness that can come with hauling.

Professional’s Choice X2Cool Sports Medicine Boots come because the suspensory ligaments may be capable of handling an incredible amount of force, but that does not make them invincible, and support and protection matter when we are asking horses to perform.

And my Westech Outriders come because I am at the point in my life where I want to be in comfortable shoes twenty-four hours a day, except for the hours I apparently insist on riding in boots.

All three have earned their space by being genuinely useful, which is about the highest compliment I can give anything that goes in my trailer.

09/05/2026

The finished clip does not show every time we misunderstood each other, where we settled, or all the days when the improvement was small enough that it would have been easy to believe nothing had changed.

It only shows the moment all of that ordinary work finally became visible.

09/01/2026

I work very young horses for about three minutes every day, and when I say work, I do not mean that I am drilling maneuvers or trying to see how much I can teach a baby before they are old enough to need it, most days I am only asking one small question, maybe catching them, rubbing them somewhere they are unsure about, moving a foot, picking up a hoof, or working through one small piece of leading, and then I leave them alone.

I think there is a difference between preparing a young horse for life and trying to hurry them into a job. Three minutes is short enough that I have to know what I am asking for, it keeps me from turning one question into ten, and it gives the horse a chance to find an answer without the entire interaction becoming bigger than it needed to be.

The individual lesson may not look particularly important, but the familiarity becomes important. Being caught becomes ordinary. Having their feet handled becomes ordinary. Following pressure becomes ordinary. A person asking a clear question and then releasing when they find the answer becomes ordinary.

None of those three-minute lessons are going to look impressive on their own, and I am not sure they are supposed to. I am only trying to make a few more things understandable today than they were yesterday, so that when the farrier comes, or they need veterinary care, or it is eventually time to haul somewhere and begin carrying a saddle, they are not meeting every part of being handled for the first time.

Three minutes does not look like much, but repeated often enough, it starts to become a language.

08/30/2026

I think sometimes we forget how ridiculous the job description for a cowhorse actually is.

We're taking a prey animal whose first instinct is to get away from pressure and asking them to do the exact opposite. We're asking them to read a cow, step toward pressure, stop when it stops, turn when it turns and then willingly go back after it when every evolutionary instinct says that large moving animal probably isn't something you should be chasing. And then somewhere in the middle of all that we're also asking them to walk quietly through a gate without turning it into a six minute discussion.

Honestly, some days I'm pretty impressed when they just act like a functioning member of society. The cowhorse is basically a long-term negotiation between instinct, training and questionable expectations from humans. 😂

08/29/2026

I don't just want a horse that can do the maneuver. I want to understand why he can do it.

At Thunderbird Equine, training is built around clear communication, purposeful repetition, and giving horses the tools to think through pressure rather than simply react to it.

Whether we're starting a young horse, developing a performance horse, or preparing one for the real world, the goal is the same:

Make what is correct easy, make what is incorrect hard, and give the horse a reason to trust the person on his back.

Thunderbird Equine | Colorado
thunderbird-equine.com

08/25/2026

Efficiency

I had a conversation with a mentor recently that started with something along the lines of, "If you're going to charge this much a month, you had better use your time efficiently. I don't want you loping circles for the sake of loping circles."

We started talking about making what is correct easy and what is not correct hard, and how every exercise should have a purpose behind it, but eventually the conversation turned into three questions that I think apply to much more than training horses.

What am I doing?
Why am I doing it?
Is it working?

In schooling a horse, I think it's incredibly easy to get caught up in doing things because we have always done them that way or because we've fallen victim to the assembly line system. We lope circles because the horse needs miles, we practice a maneuver because we think we should be practicing it, we keep asking for something because eventually the horse has to get it, but sometimes we can spend a tremendous amount of time doing something without ever stopping to ask if what we're doing is actually applicable or if it fits in the foundation we are trying to build.

We don't always need to work harder, we need to work with more intention.

And I've realized that for a long time, when someone asked me, "What are you doing?" I took it as criticism. I heard it as, "What are you doing? You should be doing something else. Why are you doing it that way?"

Recently I've actually come to appreciate the question. "What are you doing?" Is now an opportunity to stop and check in with myself.

What am I doing with this horse?

What am I trying to accomplish?

What am I doing with my time?

What am I doing in this conversation?

What am I doing with the opportunities I've been given?

And maybe most importantly, "Why am I doing it and is it working?"

There is a difference between spending eight hours working and spending eight hours accomplishing something. There is a difference between putting miles on a horse and actually teaching a horse. There is a difference between having a conversation and actually communicating.

Cont. in comments

08/23/2026

08/15/2026

She's not supposed to be good at anything yet.

I've been thinking about this a lot since Clara was born because at two months old, she really isn't supposed to be good at anything yet.

We get so excited about young horses and what they *could* become that I think sometimes we forget to appreciate what they are right now. We want to know what they'll be good at, what they'll look like under saddle, whether they'll make a show horse, a ranch horse, a broodmare, or whatever else we've already imagined for them, and meanwhile they're still trying to figure out how their legs work.

Clara was born here, and I've had the privilege of watching her figure out the world from the very beginning. Right now she's learning all of the little things that probably don't look like much from the outside, she's learning to lead, to stand, to pick up her feet, to be handled, to follow her mother, to investigate new things and to trust that the people around her aren't going to ask more of her than she's ready to give.

I think those things are training too, even if they don't look like training.

She's also getting to be a baby, and I'm becoming more convinced that there is a lot of value in allowing a young horse to simply grow up without constantly asking them to prove what they're going to be.

Clara is Sugar at Sunrise, pending AQHA, by Saddling at Sunrise and out of Roses Sugar Lady, and I have plenty of plans for this filly and plenty of things I'd love to see her do someday, but thankfully none of them need to happen tomorrow.

For now, I'm happy to watch her grow, watch her learn, and let her become whatever kind of horse she's supposed to be before I start worrying too much about what that looks like.

Maybe that's something I need to remind myself of more often too.

We are always so concerned with what something is going to become that sometimes we forget to appreciate what it is while we have it.

She's two months old.

She's not supposed to be good at anything yet.

She's just supposed to be Clara.

08/10/2026

Funny enough, the thing I'll probably remember most from this branding is the Charolais calf.

Not because she was particularly hard to rope, she just stood out. 😂

But really, this day was another line on this filly's resume.

Every branding, every trail ride, every overnight stay, every new place, every time we drag something, every time she has to figure something out, it's all another line on the resume.

When I'm starting a young horse, I'm not necessarily worried about them being perfect at everything right away, I'm much more interested in giving them enough experiences that eventually they become the kind of horse that can handle a little bit of whatever gets thrown at them.

Because one day somebody is going to climb on this mare and call her seasoned, and they aren't going to know about all the ordinary days that got her there.

They won't know about the first time she dragged a calf, or the first branding, or the times we had to stop and think our way through something, they'll just get the finished product.

That's the resume I'm interested in building.

And apparently we're adding another line to **our** resume too. 😉

Thunderbird Equine apparel is now available through the **Services** section of our website!

While you're there, feel free to check out our affiliate partners too, they're the folks helping us keep the horses happy, healthy and shiny around here.

And if you want to hear more of my ramblings, you can sign up for the **1% Newsletter** at **thunderbird-equine.com**. We're going to be sending out weekly devotionals that tie together ranching, horse showing, faith, and all the things in between. Basically, more of these thoughts that don't always fit neatly into an Instagram caption. 😂

One line at a time. 💙