09/29/2026
Well, it was a long day for Rufus.
I always guarantee a minimum of one hour of training each day for every horse or mule in our program. Today, Rufus got about eight hours of training in one way or another. We started at 7:30 this morning and didn’t finish until around 4:00.
Now, he wasn’t worked nonstop for eight straight hours. There were breaks throughout the day, but we spent the entire day working through one major issue: his brakes simply didn’t work.
We started in the round pen, and Rufus just did not want to stop. So we changed our approach and added some weight behind him. As you’ll see in the video, even that didn’t convince him at first. But we stayed with him, worked through it, and eventually he began to understand exactly what “whoa” means.
Mules are not horses. They think differently, react differently, and in my opinion, they have to be trained differently. That’s one reason I normally don’t take many mules into training, although I will occasionally. They can definitely be more challenging than a horse.
One thing about me: I will not end a training session on a bad note. I don’t care if it takes an hour or, like today, eight hours. I want to finish with the animal understanding something better than when we started.
And that’s exactly what happened today.
We started the morning rough, but we ended the day with a very successful trail ride, and Rufus was stopping on verbal command.
It was a long, rough day, but I feel very good about the progress we made. I honestly believe the rest of his 30-day program is going to move much quicker now that we’ve gotten through this hurdle.
You can take my videos and pick them apart any way you want. Rufus is here in training with us, and we’re going to train him the best and safest way we know how. He has absolutely not been easy, but that’s going to make it that much more rewarding when we’re finished.
Today was a good day for Rufus.
