Building Trust

Breaking wild mustangs requires building a relationship of trust with the horse. My son Joseph recently adopted a wild mustang and has started to train it. It has been a fascinating process to watch. He spends hours each day patiently working with the horse. The progress he has made is nothing short of remarkable. This picture is from the first day he got him three weeks ago. A human had never touched the horse and as you can see, Joseph could only get about 10 feet from him--he is pretending to rub his head from that far away. Just three weeks later and Joseph is now riding him around our pasture. When I asked Joseph the key to his success, he said, "I just think the horse really trusts me, and he knows I am not going to hurt him.”

Stephen M. R. Covey explains a simple formula in his book The Speed of Trust, "when trust goes up, speed also goes up, and cost goes down." That is just as true when working with people as it is when working with wild mustangs.