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Introduction to Boundaries and Forgiveness
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Ty: You know what helps with boundaries is forgiveness.
Because when you start forgiven yourself and realizing whatever you're doing or whatever you did, is a toxic trait that maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And when you can forgive. You start setting boundaries in that aspect, and the moment you start forgiving yourself for things and allowing yourself to grow, then those boundaries become more clear Like you don't even have to think about 'em. It's like, oh, I forgave myself for this.
I don't wanna put myself back into it. Mm-hmm. . transferring it onto a horse, there is a layer and a level of forgiveness that you have to have for yourself in order for your horse to connect to you.
if you don't forgive and you don't allow yourself to let those things go. it transfers to the horse and you unconsciously take it out on the horse.
Next time you bring the horse up, brush 'em and talk to them and say, Hey, could you please forgive me
Boundaries and forgiveness is key.
Welcome to The Herd is Calling Podcast
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Welcome to the herd is calling podcast. This is where we break free from conventional norms to explore the art, science, and wonder of [00:01:00] the horse human connection. I'm Josh Williams. And together with my wife, Victoria, we're your hosts. Our mission is to inspire. you to improve the lives of horses.
Subscribe to The Herd is calling on Substack for behind the scenes stories and unique content. Now let's get to the episode.
Josh: Welcome to the Herd is Calling podcast.
Meet Our Special Guest: Ty Yazi
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Josh: We've got a really special guest here today. We've got Ty Yazi all the way from Powell Butte, Oregon. .
Victoria: Ty, let me get this right. He owns C Bar C Ranch in Powell Butte. Mm-hmm. , where he raises beef cattle and Navajo Churro sheep and Angora goats. Yes. He's a busy guy.
Ty: Yeah. Mm-hmm. , thank you for having me.
I'm long in the making, so Yeah, it's glad that we can finally actually do it, I raised Red Angus, and Herford. Cows and then Navajo churro sheep and [00:02:00] anor goats for fiber.
Victoria: And you, have horses too? Oh, yes.
Ty: I also, breed a few horses and then I raise to, to raise and kind of put out there in the world, I guess, or I kind of keep it to myself.
But I also, uh, take on behavioral issue horses, and kind of work with them, and I wouldn't even wanna say rehabilitate, but just kind of figure out them. Mm-hmm. and maybe it's the wrong fit of a owner or, miscommunication. So I also do that on the side. Mm-hmm. as well.
Victoria: Yeah. So we were talking earlier, and I just wanna jump right into this.
Ty's Approach to Working with Horses
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Victoria: We were talking about horse training. Yeah. And you made the distinction for me mm-hmm. , that you don't consider what you do. Horse training. You don't consider yourself a horse trainer necessarily. You work with horses. Yes. Can you say more about that?
Ty: Yeah, and I, I often correct people when they say that like, oh, hey, they reach out to me and they're like, and you know, I heard that [00:03:00] you train horses. I don't really train horses. I work horses. I work with them, on more of an intimate, level of connectivity and communication. . A lot of the horses, like I said, that I get, have behavioral issues.
Whether it is maybe their bodies telling them something, they're out in their lower spine, they need chiropractic or, many different things. And then once you get all those components in line, then you can start getting them to, start working with them to actually fundamentally, use them for writing or get them set up to go to their next level.
And that's where training comes in. Like for example, I do endurance. So I ride endurance all season. My horse is, you know, on vacation for the most part for the winter. And then right about now we get them back up and we start training them. They're in training conditioning for that specific purpose. And so, you know, and those, [00:04:00] that's, I think that's kind of where the training aspect for me, I don't really train them.
I work with them to get them to that point where people who do specific things where, say for example you have a raining horse and it has behavioral issues or it's not doing all these things that you wanna work out, I will work with them and work with you on how to, you know, be better at that. How to get the horse more responsive and cooperative.
And then once all those things. good. And you can handle it for yourself. Then you take 'em to a Rainer that specifically does that type of stuff. So, mm.
Victoria: Yeah.
The Importance of Relationship in Horsemanship
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Victoria: So what I hear you saying, Ty, is you're a, a relationship expert, horses. Is that
Ty: for the most part, for lack of better words? Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria: Well, I think that's so important, because you have to have the foundation, you said, you even said the word intimacy.
There's a level of intimacy. There's a level of knowing, [00:05:00] there's a level of relationship that has to happen first before we can learn the skills maybe. Exactly.
Ty: There's a level of connectivity, ah, and relationship. Because if you can't get your horse in a horse trailer or you have a problem say for example, a racehorse, if a racehorse has a problem getting in the box before to get started, and then you send it in there to start running without addressing the foundation of the issues, then you're wasting your money.
Mm-hmm. . And then you are, you know, like if you send 'em to a trainer to start training to become a good racehorse and you don't address the actual issue, then what do you have? Right. And so that, and that'll always, that'll blow up at any given point. Right. So if you can, if you have a relationship and you're connected to that, in the foundational steps.
Then once it's ready to go up again, or to, I guess [00:06:00] to raise itself up, or I don't know how you say it I guess train. Mm-hmm. for a specific purpose, reigning mm-hmm. , then you're more likely to utilize your money in that aspect and you're not wasting the horse's time mm-hmm. . So,
Victoria: yeah. No, that's, I mean, having the basic needs met, like you even thinking about kids in school mm-hmm.
I mean, kids, I mean, if, if they're not having kind of a base set of needs taken care of, they're not organized enough mentally mm-hmm. , emotionally, even spiritually to receive education Yeah. To receive information and kind of move to the next level Yeah. Of whatever it is they're learning
Ty: about.
Definitely. And then, kids, or even us as humans adults, we all have that same foundation that we need in order to thrive when we, really start to raise ourselves to the next level of mm-hmm. education or training or basketball, football, sports.
Victoria: Right. So, [00:07:00] yeah.
Training vs. Working with Horses
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Victoria: And so what you were talking about in terms of training, was more like the way we think of training an athlete or how an athlete trains for something like conditioning, training the body, starting to really work on the skillset that's gonna create achievement in the specific sport.
Exactly. Or event that you're going
Ty: to do. Exactly. And I think we lose that in horsemanship. Particularly for people who just want a trail horse. You're not really gonna train. Cuz I've worked with a lot of people when they brought their horse over. We do a rundown, we do an introduction.
Tell me about your horse. Tell me about you and what do you, what would you like to do? Where, where do you want to go, you know, with this horse. And training is always the word that comes up and I just want 'em to be trained for a good trail horse. Well, for a good trail horse, you don't need a horse trained.
You need that connectivity and that, relationship the fundamentals of like, a good trail horse are the basis of a good horse that you send to training, [00:08:00] right? Hmm. And so I think we often don't really make those connections. then a lot of times we tend to send a horse to a trainer and expected to come back and.
you're ready to put your quarter in to go. Right? I can train a horse to lay down for me, but it doesn't do you guys any good when you get the horse back if you don't know the fundamental foundations of connectivity and communication. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So then you're looking at yourself going I don't have the instructions on what was, where this horse is at.
Mm-hmm. . You start creating these problems again that you go back to the beginning and you're like, well I don't know what to do. Mm-hmm. That's why I say I work with horses specifically in that connectivity and communication.
Josh: Yeah. I love that. That's a huge distinction.
Cuz when I first met Victoria, she was a horse trainer. Mm-hmm. . And she would get established this relationship we're talking about with horses. People would come and get the horse. Yeah. It would be great for a little while. But you know, it didn't last. Yeah. [00:09:00] And it's because they weren't committed to the relationship part.
Human Responsibility in Horsemanship
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Josh: And, and I'm wondering what you think, cuz a couple weeks ago when we were talking about this, there's a lot of responsibility on the person, right? Mm-hmm. , it's like Caesar Mohan says he trains people and rehabilitates dogs, you know? Dunno if you ever heard
Ty: that. Yeah, exactly. That's a perfect way of, that's pretty good, right?
Yeah, yeah,
Josh: yeah. But you had said that like, you refuse to even work with people and horses if they wanna sell the horse later, if they're just trying to get it ready to sell, because that's like a lack of trust and bonding, I think you said. Yeah. And, and then you had said earlier about the intention of the person and their, their why mm-hmm.
beneath the why kind of thing. And I was just wondering if you could share a little bit about that, like the human responsibility
Ty: part. Yeah. So a lot of it is the why, like why are you here? Why? And I've heard you talk about it a few times in some of the stuff that you you guys have videoed. yeah, it's the why, you know?
And it's not even horsemanship in general, it's life in general. Why are you going through this? Like, so then when you go through [00:10:00] the pain or the grief or the sleepless nights and the stress of whatever it is you're doing, and you keep asking yourself why, if it's worth it, then you're gonna show up every single time.
Same thing with horsemanship. Why are you, what, what, what's their purpose? Why are you doing this with your horse? What are you wanting to. . And there have been a few people that said, oh, I'm not, how did I say it, for lack of better words, to not be so, harsh. I guess they're just, they're not getting along with the horse and they wanna sell this horse so they can get a different horse.
Well, you tend to start creating issues when you start thinking that way, which is fine if that's what you wanna do. And if it's a horse that's out of your element. And I have worked with people who love the horse dearly, but the horse needs more than what that person can provide. Hmm. And so then we have that topic, we have that conversation.
And that is different than somebody come and say, you come to me and say, Hey, [00:11:00] I don't like this horse. I'm gonna get a different horse. Could you, work with him so we can get him sold? Mm-hmm. , that's, you gotta find somebody else that's on me. Yeah. Because connectivity and communication and relationship, the number one foundation is trust in all that.
And if you break that trust, if we're working this horse and you connect with this horse and you have an established relationship with this horse just to like ditch it, right? Mm-hmm. , right? Then that horse is no better off when it goes to the new owner. If you look at a.
and you do that to a kid and the kid gets jerked around from foster home to foster home or whatever else. Hmm. Emotionally they're a mess. Mm-hmm. . And so the same thing applies with horses. When you just ditch them and all of a sudden they find themselves in a different area, different scenario, different person.
Then they have to figure out how to adjust to all that. that's where a lot of survival mode comes in. Mm-hmm. . I won't, I've told people that I won't do that because, you know, I [00:12:00] feel like I'm betraying the number one thing is trust between the owner and the horse. Now, if they said, Hey, I have somebody interested and there was a purchase involved and I started working with the new owner, Hmm.
That's totally different because that's, trust is still established. It's just being transferred. Hmm.
Victoria: So transferred is a good
Ty: word there. Yeah. So, yeah. Those are valuable distinctions. and good boundaries. Yeah.
Boundaries and Forgiveness in Horsemanship
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Ty: And just, and boundaries too. Such an important
Victoria: like tiny little piece that's humongous.
Mm-hmm. Uhhuh, . That I think gets left out. Like when you first told me about that, I, it was just like really shifting for
Ty: me. Yeah. Mm-hmm. . And I think that's where a lot of, yeah. I think that's where a lot of us, we don't have those clear boundaries and they transform or they transfer. The riding where we don't have distinct boundaries of what we want or what we need.
And so everything's blurred. And so then you get mad at the horse because the horse is like, oh, well, yada, [00:13:00] yada, yada. You know, I could sit, I can stop and eat because I'm able to, well, there wasn't any clear boundaries of, no, we're not doing that. Or, say for example, you're trotting and then you want to go into a canner and the horse does this little br and you know, and you are okay with it.
If you're okay with it, that's your horse. You do you. But if you have that horse to say, for example, it's a husband horse and you're okay with it, but the husband's not okay with it, there's no boundaries, clear boundaries of, no, we're not doing that. And that's all displayed in, working with the horse.
And we all have to, have those boundaries. We have to have those boundaries in our lives. And that's what I love about horsemanship, because if you apply, if you apply horsemanship into your own life and how you do things, then maybe you won't have a toxic friend in your life because your boundaries, my boundaries are this.
If I'm gonna hold my horse, and this is funny because a lot of times we hold our animals to such high expectations, , [00:14:00] but yeah, we look at ourselves in the mirror and like, uhoh, oh wait, I guess we could do that. And I, and I'm just as guilty, you know, but uh, it's
Victoria: a journey. It's a process. It
Ty: is a process.
Yeah. But we shouldn't, our, our four-legged shouldn't suffer because of our lack of high expectations on ourselves, but what yet we expected on them.
Victoria: Right. Oh, totally. What you were saying about boundaries just reminded me of something. I read in Brene Brown's work, we're always quoting Brene Brown, it's a way to be more compassionate. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Because when you've got a set boundary, you're not gonna be resentful. Yeah. You're not gonna be acting out of exhaustion because you've blurred those boundaries or you put yourself out there too much, or you've done things that don't feel good.
Exactly. And so it's actually a way to be more compassionate. And the research shows that people who have really good boundaries are the people that are the most compassionate and able to be in service to more people, more
Ty: [00:15:00] animals. Definitely. And you know what helps with boundaries is forgiveness.
Because when you start forgiven yourself and realizing that that's not a, whatever you're doing is, or whatever you did, is a toxic trait that maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And when you can forgive. You start setting boundaries in that aspect, or you're around a toxic friend. And you really long time ago, should have wrote a benediction on that friend we talked about earlier.
Okay. And it's okay to tell a friend, we can still be friends, but there's a boundary mm-hmm. . And the moment you start forgiving yourself for things and allowing yourself to grow, then those boundaries become more clear and decisive. Like you don't even have to think about 'em. It's like, oh, I forgave myself for this.
I don't wanna put myself back into it. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . And so definitely transferring it onto a horse, when you go into, say, the pin with a horse to work with, or you get the halter and you're bringing 'em up to groom them so you can settle and go out for a trail rider there is a [00:16:00] layer and a level of forgiveness that you have to have for yourself in order for your horse to connect to you.
Because if you don't forgive and you don't allow yourself to let those things go. Mm-hmm. , it transfers to the horse and you unconsciously take it out on the horse. And I've seen that a lot with, and I'm sure you've seen it with the raining and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. where your horse should have this expectation.
And because you, like, for example, if I weigh 200. And I can easily like diet, work out and weigh 150, but I want a top 10 in endurance. If I'm making my horse carry an extra 50 pounds, then you know, I should at least meet 'em halfway to, a partnership. so a lot of those things are forgiveness.
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna diet more, or I'm gonna be a little more strict on my side because they're showing up every day. Mm-hmm. , I'm getting after them because I know they have more of the potential, they have more potential when I was 150 pounds, maybe not as much potential when I'm carrying an extra 50 mm-hmm.
To try to do the same thing. And forgiveness is in a whole layer of different areas, but yeah, definitely [00:17:00] boundaries and forgiveness is key. Geez. Yeah. and boundaries
Victoria: for yourself too. No, I mean that's, that's the thing. It starts with yourself. Yeah. And, and it just creates this, this lack of doubt, this lack of gray area.
Yeah. When you're working in your life mm-hmm. when you're working with the horses that is just makes everything work better.
Ty: Yeah. Mm-hmm. definitely. , I feel like you're able to articulate more of what you're trying to do. Mm-hmm. and allow yourself the time to do it too.
And not put yourself in this 15 minute, cookie cutter. Well, this. Trainer that I bought the video to. No offense, everybody who does, who's done. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But don't quote like it's a bible because 15 minutes for that person is gonna be 15 minutes for you.
No, no. Different person, different horse, different situation. Yeah. Yeah. And so you have to allow yourself to mentally take notes and grow, what did I do wrong? Or how could I have done it better? more importantly, go up to your horse every day when you go and [00:18:00] step into their space and say, forgive me.
Because that allows you to clear your mind and be in that moment and be present with your horse at that moment instead of like dragging all these things, whatever happened in the office, or what argument you had with your kid or your other half or your hurrying home from the grocery store and somebody flipped you off and the horse is there as a connectivity and a relationship to accept what you bring in.
But at the same time, asking for forgiveness. So when you do ride, because a lot of times, a lot of it's miscommunication, right? But we tend to put our horses in these little boxes of what they should do. Mm-hmm. and when it doesn't work mm-hmm. , sometimes we force them into it. And that's
Victoria: when things get ugly.
Yeah. That's when things can get scary. Exactly.
Ty: Mm-hmm. . And so if we just allow ourselves to take a deep breath and I, and I constant, I know like I'm not sitting here saying I'm the angel of everything. Yeah. I'm just as [00:19:00] guilty as anybody
Victoria: else. Well that's the thing, a lot of times the stuff that we start thinking about, I wrote this journal, this holistic horsemanship journal mm-hmm.
and it's all very introspective prompts. And I often tell people about how to show up for your horse. Yeah. How to be in the right mental space for when you're working with a horse. And I often tell people I wrote the journal that I need to be doing Exactly right. So yeah, I totally
Ty: get that.
And that's the same thing with me.
Ty's Personal Journey with Horses
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Ty: I think one of my first horses that I ever, bought for myself, I fenced 40 acres. So I lived in Winnek, Nevada. in high school, I fenced 40 acres for this horse. Cause I couldn't afford $2,000. I still have her, she's 24 now.
Oh wow. it was kind of a family event. Like my whole family showed up and we all, my dad helped run the wire, the barbed wire and then we started, putting staples on and nailing and and then she was mine, the first horse that I worked and rode that nobody. Could sell out from under me.
Mm. Quick story. So I'm from the Navajo reservation and we, I grew up, my parents would drop us off there at my grandma's house at the [00:20:00] ranch in the summertime. I'd heard sheep, we'd work cows a lot of times we rounded up wild horses and then we'd, get ' em, put a saddle on 'em, get on 'em, and stay on 'em.
or be out there in the middle of nowhere Anyway. Not anyway,
Victoria: that's, that's like a whole nother podcast. Probably, but Yeah. But yeah, you can, you can go there.
Ty: So every summer I'd get a horse and I would start it out and I would ride it all summer. I'd herd sheep with it, I'd do everything.
then by end of summer when my parents would pick me up for school for the fall my uncle would sell the horse cuz it was a good broke horse by the time I was done with it. Mm-hmm. . And so then when I came back and the next summer, I'd have to start all over. I find a horse out there and do the whole process over again.
So this is my first horse that nobody could ever sell. Got it. And she taught me a lot, you know, when I thought I knew. There's one thing different from, like a wild mustang or wild reservation. Po I know we live really close to Warm Springs. Mm-hmm. , so there's a lot of warm springs.
Mm-hmm. horses. They're a lot [00:21:00] different than the hot. blood bread horses. Like she was half Arabian. Okay. Half Appalooza. Okay. And she taught me a lot. Yep. When I was like, oh, we're gonna do this. She's like, uh, nope. We're not gonna, we're gonna do this. And I'm like, uh, you know? Yeah. And that's where I met.
My family used to say, oh, you know, Ty, your grandpa Sam is here. He's a Canadian Indian Sammy s Fahan. And he lived right around the corner from us. I was riding Kayla down their front, down the road at, I was right at the front house. She had this habit of lowering her head and not really fully bucking, but toying with my motions and would crow hop crow, hop, crow, hop, and then throw her head and fling it around and just different things like that.
And he happened to be outside at it one time. He came up to me and he fixed, did a little bit of rigging and fix my bit and everything. he told me I was using the wrong bit. It was a Snapple bit. Mm-hmm. . And he goes, oh, she can, she can pull it sideways. And so she doesn't really have that bit in her mouth no more.
And that's why she raises it up. so there's [00:22:00] no, connectivity in the mouth. And then the minute she lowers it, you know, it kind of spits it out. Mm-hmm. . And so he took me into his, barn. And then he started looking around and then he hooked me up with a good day. Nice. And then from that point on, I used to ride over there.
We used to hang out. I learned a lot about farrier stuff. Really truly training in the horsemanship style. I knew a lot of it, but the more finesse of things I learned from him. Okay. Like I said, he's a Canadian Indian, did a lot of rodeos. The Indian rodeos back in the, I wanna say fifties, sixties and seventies.
When, yeah. When the rodeos were segregated they didn't allow a lot of natives to do the true, rodeos. he's just a fantastic horseman. He said growing up in Canada, there was a lot of Vic Carros that used to go up there. Mm. And he learned a lot of it from them too.
Okay. So, yeah. This, horse, Kayla, she taught me a lot. And then I learned a lot from him about how to finesse things and how to structure and how to sit bass riding a little more dressage type [00:23:00] stuff. Mm-hmm. , to allow the horse to connect and to carry and to move out and what that feels like.
even more importantly, like when you drop your hip, what does that feel like to move out? Mm. Or when you posture or when you slide back, and I don't think a lot of us that ride truly. I do this all the time. So when I'm sitting, I'll close my eyes and I'll think like the horse is going and I want him to trot and
lead up. And if you're thinking about the legs and then it goes to this way like this, what does that look like? What does that look like in your hips? And he always told me, ride with your hips, because wherever the hips go, your upper body's gonna go. You see a lot of these people that like fly forward or mm-hmm.
because they're like this. Mm-hmm. . And if you ride with your hip movement, and if that horse moves this way, your hips are automatically gonna go with, and your upper body goes with it may, may like be a half a second off, but you're not going this way.
Well, the horse is going that way. No, you're
Victoria: [00:24:00] right. I mean, dressage is all about balance. Mm-hmm. so, and center of gravity. And that's, that's space in your hips. Yeah. Below, below your navel. And that's where the horse is, where your hips are sitting. That's the horse's center of gravity
Ty: yeah, exactly.
I often close my eyes and think of those things. What does that feel like for me? You know what I'm asking the horse, if I'm envisioning the horse, walking, what is, what are my hips doing? What does that look like for me? If I ask them to tro. What's that look like for me? What is my body doing?
Am I doing this or am I trotting? You know, and you can, you can have a see it right now, if I ask the horse to pick up on the right lead from the trot. Mm-hmm. , you know? Yep. And if you actually switch to go to the left, what is it doing? . Your hips are actually shifting and moving. And then when you watch 'em to slide stop, you roll back.
And so I think if we think more of those things when we get on the horse, it helps us to apply it better. That's what I learned from him. Mm-hmm. . [00:25:00] And and Kayla, my horse, she taught me a lot. What I thought I knew, I had no idea. , because she was like, you're dumb. You don't know what you're talking about,
And then she would correct me and I'm like, oh, okay. Sorry. Again, forgiveness. Right. I'm sorry. And I learned that from her, like forgiveness. Ah, God. There was a lot of times I was so frustrated and I would've just wanted to like, and then I'm like, oh, you know what she's teaching me. Mm-hmm. . And I said, I'm sorry.
And she's like, okay, where do you wanna go? Right. Let's go do it. Wow. Right. You know, and just like, and she was the one, like, things change at the moment. She's like, all right, you wanna go over there? Let's go. And she would go anywhere and everywhere I asked her to do. Hmm. To go. And that's crazy. And I learned the concept and I think through her to actually learn the concept.
Indigenous Horsemanship and Leadership
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Ty: We talked earlier about tribal horsemanship. Mm-hmm. , what does that look like? What does that look like for me as an indigenous person, as a Navajo or even like a Plains Indian or the warm springs you have to think about [00:26:00] like, what did horses, what was their existence and how did it relate to tribal or different tribes?
Mm-hmm. , you look at the better one people. Mm-hmm. , it was the same purpose, through rating or warfare to regain or to gain more territory protection. I often chuckle and it's a really good, valid question when one of the questions was about, when it's windy, what did you, how do you, and it's, I don't mean to be disrespectful.
No,
Victoria: no. This is beautiful because, so the question was what do you do when it's really windy? How do you get your horse to focus and that's something we hear all the time.
Yeah. And then your take on it was just brilliant.
Ty: Yeah. And I get that all the time too with people I work with and with their horses. . And if you think about the function functionality, is that even the word? It's functionality. Mm-hmm. . Yep. Mm-hmm. , I often admit, I often make up words. Just say, you're not David, me too, meet you
When you think about the functionality of the horse, especially when they're in retrospect of indigenous [00:27:00] people they were like, even in Lakota, they said they, they used the dog until they got the horse. And so they call in Lakota, big dog. They could go places further. They could hunt with them.
They could, wage war. They could get family members back from raiding and kidnapping. And so that was the main purpose. And they didn't really worry. They were out there riding all storms. When soldiers came, they got up and they go, oh, sorry, a soldier. I don't mean to disrespect you, that was a perfectly valid question, but you know, when it's blowing, you just go with it.
And so I think a lot of times, we have to be the leader. You're still gonna go work with them, but maybe your expectation isn't what you normally would do. You narrow it down to your expectation of what you can succeed in and just do that and call it good.
So you're given the horse a more positive experience with the wind.
Victoria: Exactly. If some of the things you're talking about in terms of native horsemanship and indigenous [00:28:00] based horsemanship, like a lot of these situations were life or death. Yeah. And a and that is how critical the partnership and the relationship was definitely to, between the horse and the human.
Yeah. Fast forward to where we are today, where the horses are, probably overfed, probably underworked don't have a purpose. Don't really, we don't know what we're doing with that horse. Yeah. We just go out and see what's gonna happen. And then if any of the conditions are a little more challenging, that's just gonna create just so much more friction for us to have to work through because of that lack of clarity.
Yeah.
Ty: And nine times outta 10, it's in your head. Mm-hmm. , it's in the horse owner's head. I've ridden horses and I've saddled up even when it was windy and I rode, I went through cows, I did stuff. trail ride, the horse was fine. Mm-hmm. take the horse back and they get it. And then I get a phone call of, it's really windy.
And I went to go side on my horse and [00:29:00] my horse was like looking around everywhere and, I'm like, okay, take a deep breath. I said, why don't you just lung your horse around and leave it at that? And then let's schedule sometime next week when it's windy. Just be available when it's windy, let's go for a trail ride.
Mm-hmm. , blm soft sand. So if something happens, I will ride your horse. I'll bring a horse that you can ride so then you can see mm-hmm. . So then perspective. And it's amazing when they see their horse performing in that situation, they're like, oh, okay. No big deal. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. , their perspective changes.
Mm-hmm. . And a lot of times that's what it is. And I'm not saying that is for every single horse. Sometimes horses are just naturally skittish because, of selective breeding or Right. Trauma that's happened has happened. Or they're looking to the person as a leader because they themselves as a horse are definitely not a leader.
Mm-hmm. . And so they're like, uh, if my person's leading me to like, not like this wind, then I sure don't like this mean. And it's
Victoria: a self-fulfilling prophe. The second you ask yourself, ah, maybe I don't [00:30:00] like the swim and my horse is probably gonna be a little spooky today. , that's exactly what's gonna happen.
Mm-hmm. . Yeah. But like you said, taking the client out with the horse and the client being able to see the horse be okay. Mm-hmm. , that's a powerful visualization. Yeah. Mm-hmm. that hopefully they can carry.
Ty: Definitely. It's the same with spooking on the trail. So you have a horse that, you know, whether it's eyes are going bad or whether it's conditioned to do this, because you've got a horse from a different person and they were spooked at everything.
So the horse decided to spook at everything. I'm like, there's a rock, there's a log, there's a burnt something over there. Mm-hmm. , there's a rabbit. It's funny because I have people like, well, I don't want my horse to spook at anything and everything. I don't wanna be scared, which is valid, but I don't want my horse to react.
You can't tell me to be scared of something because you know we're gonna be scared of something. Exactly. That's just who we are as humans. Mm-hmm. . And if horses are equivalent to humans in the [00:31:00] mindset, the only thing in my belief, the only thing horses have more than us is their ability to tap into something, whether it's spiritual or supernatural, that they can see beyond.
We can. Yep. But with that being said, a little side tangent, we can go on later. Mm-hmm. , It's not that I don't want my horse to spook, it's how my horse reacts to it. Yep. And it's four feet down. Look at it and ask for permission, ask for guidance. Period. So when your horse goes , like what do we do now?
Victoria: Then you have to have an answer
Ty: though. You have to have the answer. So just don't worry about it. It's a rock. Let's go. Yep. And the more and more you do it, the more and more you go out, you're fine. It's when they flip around and take off the other way. . And I always tell my horse like, trust me, if there is something to run at, I will be the first one.
Take you around and be flipping you to let's go until it happens four feet on the ground. Please and we'll keep going. And the more and more and more [00:32:00] you do it, especially endurance horses, especially Arabs who sometimes mm-hmm. are fed so much stuff that they're kind of basically cracked out of their minds.
Yeah. They're like this. Yeah. Um mm-hmm. . And the more and more you can work with them and the more and more you become a leader that you prove to them, okay, four feet ask. Okay, we keep going. We're good. And the more and more you keep saying, okay, we keep going, we're good. Mm-hmm. , they'll start side winding like this.
Mm-hmm. . And then the more and more you keep doing it, the more focused and down the trail they go. So anyway. No,
Victoria: I think I, I wanna move on to some other things, but this is so great because I was just talking to some students the other day. The difference between desensitization mm-hmm. , which I am not a fan, and I don't even think that's possible.
I think when you desensitize a horse, you're trying to take out of 'em. The thing that like is so fun about working with them is that we get to borrow that a little bit of that sensory experience. Yeah. That they having, like you even talk about it as like [00:33:00] almost like a spiritual, like a, whole nother, deeper level of seeing the world.
And so we don't wanna do that. And a lot of times, it tends to flood the horse. It tends to shut the horse down and then later it's probably gonna just creep back up out of context. Yeah. And in a much more kind of wild way.
Mm-hmm. that is not handleable. So, what I hear you saying is that having the boundaries, having the clarity, having the
Ty: connectivity, the con the connectivity, the relationship Yeah.
Victoria: That is what we're talking about. Exactly. And then that's what creates the ability to move through the spooky situation.
Yeah. Or the windy day
Ty: because then you start, they start asking you cuz they establish you as leader. So they start asking you for guidance. Mm-hmm. , if you look at a herd, like a wild herd out, you. Out there in Timbuktu. Wait
Victoria: right down the road
Ty: actually. Right down the road. . Exactly. You have basically two horses that are on guard at all times, stallion, and for the most part the lead mayor.
Mm-hmm. . Yep. Everybody else is [00:34:00] eating and everybody else that's eating is waiting for validation from the other two. Mm-hmm. that if the other two say, Hey, something's coming with a split second, everybody's on alert now. Yep. So if those two leaders, you replace those two leaders then leadership is shifted, but the whole communication is still the same.
Mm-hmm. , they're still always gonna ask you for guidance. And if you can establish that and connect and have a relationship of a family member like that, then they will continually keep asking you. Right. Instead of saying, I don't have a leader and it's every man for themselves or every horse for themselves.
Yeah. Flip around bolt and take off. Bye-bye . Yeah, exactly.
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Victoria: Hmm. Totally. And that goes back to leadership is service, leadership is care. Mm-hmm. leadership is responsibility. Definitely. It's like that is a big responsibility. It's. We, we quote Spider-Man a lot with, uh, aunt May Uhhuh with great power comes great responsibility.
Yeah. If you're asking to have control of this horse, if you're asking for this horse to oblige your request to pack you mm-hmm. to take you somewhere to be your partner, you've gotta take the responsibility. Yeah. That goes along
Ty: with that. Yeah, definitely. And I, I've, I've always heard it as with great power becomes spec specific obligations.
That's awesome. And I may, it may have been from a [00:36:00] movie, so, right. But going back to desensitization mm-hmm. , I feel like basically it's another word for dumbing down. Yes. Yes. And for every Indian out there who has ever been in boarding school style, who and I've heard stories from my parents they try to learn English and they beat you if they hear you speaking, you're native tongue.
And so same thing with, I grew up left-handed mm-hmm. . But I had some teachers who were like, no, you use that. My parents even said, no, you use this hand. Right. Gosh. And it's almost like shaming. Mm-hmm. , it's like shoving it in your face and I always crack at people who like to, the dog peed on the floor, someone to shove it, shove it in their face, and then kick him outside.
I'm like, what does that do? Because one, like, oh, it catches them in the moment. I'm like, no, you didn't catch 'em in the moment, so you're gonna like shove it back in their face. Mm-hmm. . And you're just making 'em scared. And so the next time they're just gonna piddle all the way to the door.
Victoria: it's, the shaming is, it's the shaming, absolutely.
You're
Ty: basically just throwing it in their face every single time. And I guarantee you, nobody, especially a kid [00:37:00] wants something thrown in their face every single time. Nobody wants a nat. You're doing it wrong, you're doing it wrong, you're doing it wrong, you're doing it wrong. And that's what you do when you do desensitization, right.
I'm just gonna keep throwing it at them until they , sell down until they make the right decision. Which sometimes some things it works, but for everything. Mm-hmm. , you basically have dumbed down that horse to the point where it shuts down, right? Mm-hmm. and it stops thinking.
And now you don't have a willing partner. You have someone that's like, oh, I guess I'll do eor. You have an eor, right? I guess I'm gonna go do that now. I guess they want me to do this. And then if you go back to original purpose of indigenous horsemanship of warfare and getting up and going, your horse was like, Hmm, , I guess I need to run up that hill.
Well, when somebody's coming after you and they shoot you, cuz your horse won't go, you're. . And so, you know, that's kind of my take. That's what I've learned growing up from, you know, just on an Navajo reservation working with my [00:38:00] uncles and my dad and then my grandpa, Sam just their take of, and I'm sure every single tribe has their different, you know, knickknacks and stuff, but it's the same concept and how we work with our horse is what matters.
And I think a lot of times we don't, we're so busy in our life mm-hmm. that we tend to blot out. And I do it for myself too. Mm-hmm. Because , you know, especially when I'm calving or I have, a lot of times I get my horses up to start working 'em again. And then I have people come up like, I have this horse.
And I always tell myself I'm not taking any more client horses because I need to work my own horses. And then I'm like, I feel bad for the story and go, no offense cause I love every single one of my clients. But I'll put my horses back out pasture and then all of a sudden working those horses. And sometimes we just need to like consciously say, okay, these three hours mm-hmm.
these two horses and leave it at that. Yeah. And not even have a goal, just Yeah. Connect. Mm-hmm. , brush 'em,
Victoria: love 'em, brush 'em, love them. The connectivity, whatever that looks like in any given moment, [00:39:00] because that can be different. But yeah, the not having any expectations. . I just saw, something from one of Dominique Barbie's books, and he's a French classical dressage mystery.
He's amazing. And he talks about when you go out into a session with your horse and you've got all these expectations, how do you think that feels to the horse? Yeah. Like how do, what kind of pressure, what kind of So best to just do little things that are gonna feel like wins that feel good, and, and the horse will catch that.
The horse will pick up on that. Yeah. But going, I mean, expectation is kind of like just the worst.
Ty: Yeah. And I feel like you have to know your horse too, you know, almost like you have to know people. Mm-hmm. , cuz and there have been horses that don't wanna work too hard, but then the horse goes crazy because they eat it up.
That's their thing. They like, they wanna work. They wanna work mm-hmm. and they want to go. And so then at some point when you connect to them and you have a relationship with them, you know mm-hmm. like doing [00:40:00] these, say for example, we're in condition and go up this hill halfway, and if that horse is looking at that and they're halfway and they still have a lot to go, let 'em go.
Mm-hmm. let them utilize that potential. Mm-hmm. don't try to stifle them. because then they're like, you're cutting off their expectation. Mm-hmm. , and then when you're ready for that expectation, it's not there. Mm-hmm. ,
Victoria: well, the horse knows the horse the best. Mm-hmm. so the horse knows what he can do.
Yeah. When we kind of say, oh no, no, it's cutting off that whole, like the whole point of working with the horse or riding horse up the hills mm-hmm. to let the horse take himself
Ty: up the hill. Yeah. Yeah. I have a friend who she does raining mm-hmm. in CalWork and does really good with competition wise.
And she has a Philly that she bred, raised from her mare that she did competing on. And this horse is bred for cows and she is bred, like, she gets on, she lives in the arena and that horse works for her. Mm-hmm. . And if she cuts it off too soon, that horse starts acting up , [00:41:00] cuz that horse wants to do it.
Mm-hmm. , the horse wants to be there. Mm-hmm. Within reason, you cater that, you nurture that mm-hmm. you Yeah. Nurture's a good word. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , and you start, working with them in that aspect. You don't just cut 'em off and say, okay, we're done. Mm-hmm. because, because I gotta go.
And she, and, and this is where I love about her too, like if she has a two hour timeframe, she's going to do like a 45 or to an hour expectation of a training session. if the horse is sticky or needs some refu, retuning, she has an hour to work with it. Mm-hmm. and to kind of work with it a little bit more and then keep going.
You know, a lot of times we have a two hour expectation and we only had give ourselves an hour or an hour and a half, what's gonna go wrong? Everything's gonna go wrong and then you're sitting there, I gotta go, I gotta go. And then you, you start rushing, your heart rate starts speeding, and then it just becomes two people, or two beings hitting a wall.
Victoria: Two activated nervous systems. Exactly. They can't regulate at the, most basic level. Yeah. But yeah, I [00:42:00] used to do that. I'd have just enough time to get a horse worked between like another lesson or something. Mm-hmm. and, and I just would sometimes get digging into something that I didn't really have time to dig into and that was
Ty: a mess.
And then it becomes a bigger mess when you bring it back
Victoria: up the next time. Oh, totally. Yeah. what it boiled down to is I. didn't take my responsibility, my leadership to heart. I, put that horse in a position where they didn't trust me anymore. Yeah. And that was always really hard.
And talk about forgiveness. You have to be like, okay, sorry.
Ty: Exactly. So next time you get Yeah.
The Role of Forgiveness in Horsemanship
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Ty: Next time you bring the horse up, brush 'em and talk to them and say, Hey, could you please forgive me? Mm-hmm. , I need forgiveness for myself because of this. Mm-hmm. . And then you start clean slate nine times outta 10, the chances are the horse won't.
It's like, okay, cool. Right. What we wanna do today? Hmm. So,
Josh: yeah, you brought up forgiveness when we had our anxiety. Class. Hello? [00:43:00] You, you brought that up. You're like, Hey, you guys should be talking about this.
Ty: Probably .
Josh: And to me it was like, oh, that, that's kind of, to me it was almost like this sticky thing that was kind of hanging out over there that I wasn't super keen to check out at first.
Mm-hmm. . But I knew, like, I just knew you were right. So I looked at it, I looked into some of the stuff, some of the research. It was fascinating. Yeah. It was really fascinating. when you are able to do a forgiveness practice, alpha waves in your brain, spike. Oh, wow. Yeah. the author that I was reading, he said, the scientists in the lab was like this big biofeedback lab.
Mm-hmm. all, all the stuff we have to do to like, understand forgiveness. , you just do so naturally, but, you just got to your horse.
Ty: I'm kind of one of those bossy people. And I'm also a Scorpio and like kinda laugh because if any Navajo out there is watching this, I'm a to Chik and they say that to Chik are very, very bossy and nitpicky in particular, which I kind of can be a lot
[00:44:00] So forgiveness definitely works for me and it helps me go further and I've had to learn that for myself. That's why when they were talking about every, you know what you guys were talking about on the podcast mm-hmm. or was a It was a class. Class. Yeah. . I was like, oh yeah, I've been out there.
I'll, you know, and that's why I jammed in. I said, you know, there, there has to be a layer or a level of forgiveness with all that too. Because if you can't forgive yourself, then you're gonna drag it into your horse. I'm the same way. If I can't forgive myself for not meeting my expectations of what I thought my horse and I should do at that moment, then the horse is gonna feed off of me.
And then it's just gonna be a bigger, A ping pong back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then it's just gonna keep raising and raising and raising RA until something blows. And chances are I'm probably gonna end up on the ground. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
forgiveness allows you to kind of just take a deep breath and say, okay, let's start the over and nine times outta 10, when you do that, the horse is like, oh, thank you. You're [00:45:00] listening, huh? So this really hurts when you do this. So can we just try something else? Or, you know what? And a lot of times going back to taking on problem issue horses a lot of times too, it is that they're lame or that they are out when they need chiropractic work.
And they were just trying to tell the writer, Hey, this hurts. , Hey, I got a pinched nerve. Hey it, you know mm-hmm. . And so we address those issues too. a lot of times too, it'll correct itself, like the behavior's gone. Mm-hmm. , if we just learn to take a deep breath and forgive ourselves and, say, okay, so what are you trying to tell me?
How are, how can we work this? Because this is our goal. This is what I would like to do, this is how I'm gonna do it, where are you at in this? And so, mm-hmm. . Yeah. .
Josh: Beautiful.
The Power of Forgiveness
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Josh: The scientists in the lab said that when people do this and the practice was forgiving other people mm-hmm.
who had done things to you. So it, it was pretty intense for people. Cuz it can bring up a lot depending on the severity of the thing that [00:46:00] was done. But that the people that were able to do this had an unexplainable string of good luck afterwards. Mm-hmm. And every time that you talked about forgiveness, it was like, I have to do this to like, make the thing even possible to happen.
Yeah. I thought that was really neat. And the seeing and being seen part too, it's like by asking for forgiveness, you're acknowledging that you. Missed something or maybe did something wrong, or whatever it is. And just by acknowledging that, it's like you're forming that connection. If I heard
Ty: you right, it's like, yeah, definitely.
Lessons from My Sister
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Ty: And I think, and I think we talked about this the last time I was here and I guess what really got me into this little avenue of thinking was my, sister, she passed away, but in high school, she would get up and I would hear her alarm, my alarm would go off, I hit snooze, my alarm would go off, I hit snooze, my alarm would go off, hit snooze, her alarm would go off, she'd get up, and then she, she'd be in the shower.
And so this one time I [00:47:00] asked her, I'm like, how do you just get up ? Like when your alarm goes off, how do you just get up? You know, she's, and then she looked at me like, she's like, I don't know. I don't even think about it. And I'm like, oh, , . Whoa. And I've always applied that to myself now. And even when I was working in the mining industry in Nevada, and I'd have to get up at like, at one o'clock in the morning to get ready to either drive to the mine or catch the bus to get to the mine.
Mm-hmm. . And I've always, I, that always resonated. And so then I'm like, well, if that's the case when getting up, then maybe that's the case with everything in life.
Horsemanship and Forgiveness
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Ty: Like my horsemanship, it's like if I just ask for forgiveness and let it go and not even think about it, because forgiveness should be, and I think we should all practice this with our.
friendships, relationships partnerships that when you ask for forgiveness, put it in a ball and throw it away. Mm-hmm. , throw it in the fire and burn it up because then at that point you can't [00:48:00] bring it up again. And so you, if we ask our horses to start with gun zero with us all the time, Hmm. Even though a lot of it's our fault, but we can't do it in people's lives.
If you start practicing that, you instantly start not even thinking about it when you go back to, you know, when you talk about horsemanship and you start living it, versus a checklist that you have to try to make mm-hmm. . So, and then on top of that side note, not really horsemanship, when you ask for forgiveness and you put it in a ball and throw it away and burn it, and it doesn't come back, you start to realize every time you have to burn a ball on certain people that like you start to question, Hmm, maybe this person, this individual isn't really good for my life.
Mm-hmm. . So you start creating boundaries again, or in horsemanship with horses when there's issues that keep coming up every single time, you start realizing that every time we forgive and we throw in the fire and burn it up, it happens again. So then you can isolate and say, okay, [00:49:00] what's this one issue here and how do we work?
is it behavioral? Is it, like mental, is it, physical? Is there something wrong that pinched nerve or whatever? Is there a trigger that, you were trained this way by the other person that owned you that didn't know any better and so they just fed into this bad behavior. And so now you think it's, so then once you start getting those, you start have isolating those issues, then you can start really working on 'em and start kind of plugging in and out to the puzzle.
Mm-hmm.
Victoria: so, well, it's a, it's a way of detaching your stories or mm-hmm. sort of narratives around things. Yeah. When you forgive, when you throw that ball Yeah. That junk into the fire and it's gone. It's like you're starting from scratch. And even when you're working with a horse, I think a lot of times when I'm working with a student or for myself, you maybe have to work through something that's a little bit tricky or you get through a little bit of a storm with a horse and then you get out to their side [00:50:00] and then you start again.
Mm-hmm. , it's like you have to start with a completely clean slave. Exactly. And but that requires vulnerability. Mm-hmm. and that vulnerability is the seeing and being courageous enough to stand up and say, Hey, this is not working for me. This is how that makes me feel. Set the boundary. Like, I can't, this isn't gonna work.
Yeah. Moving forward, let's move on. Yeah. You know, so it's all connected,
Ty: definitely. Mm-hmm. .
Josh: that's a masterclass in forgiveness. Yeah. I was just reading about it again cuz it came up again and I was like, okay. I got into it after you brought it up before then I conveniently yeah. Dropped it.
And so I was reading it again and they said the self-forgiveness was like jet fuel. If you're talking about forgiveness, like forgiving others is really powerful. Yeah. But when you forgive yourself, that's like the supersonic version and everything you said was relating to that.
It's just powerful stuff and Definitely. And I've learned it the hard way myself. Cause I know, I know who I am, I know what I'm capable of. I don't like it [00:51:00] when I get that point. And so I have steps in place to like, for forgiveness or take a deep breath or just different things like that.
Ty: I have high expectations for myself, but allow yourself to fail and reevaluate. And then it just, it makes it so much easier. So then when I do enter the horse I'm working with, or my horses, it's almost, it becomes almost a sense of relationship and I guess counseling for me to let go.
Mm. because nine times outta 10, your horse is gonna take it and say, okay. Mm-hmm. , it's okay. Just take a deep breath. And you become part of the herd and you learn that your heart rate up is their heart rate up. Your anxiety is their anxiety. And so when you learn all those things, you learn forgiveness and go, okay, I'm gonna let it go.
Now your heart rate drops and they start to relax. Mm-hmm. . And it's the same thing when you're riding 'em and it's a scary situation. Mm-hmm. , you know, you tend to just, [00:52:00] same procedures, same steps of just relax, take a deep breath, and it becomes calm. Mm-hmm.
Victoria: That's freedom right there.
Intuition and Connectivity
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Josh: We talk a lot about just the power of curiosity and how horses are naturally curious, right? They're always checking everything out. And when we approach with that curiosity, it's like we're coming at 'em in their own cultural level or communicating with them the way that they like to communicate.
Tying curiosity to intuition. Like maybe there's something you literally observe in their body that's visible, as a body worker, I know you can assess mm-hmm. and see things, but then there's a deeper side of intuition, right? Where it's maybe not visible physically.
But you probably saw or felt something. I just wondered, do you have any thoughts on that? Let's talk about deep intuition.
Ty: Intuition When it, is implied by the horse.
I apply it to myself in the things I do. If you study how you do things and you study, you ask yourself, why do I do this? Mm-hmm. . And then you look at [00:53:00] yourself as a community. And I think that's how I was. being Navajo is, that's what we do. Where do we fit? And it's almost in a herd aspect too, of there's leadership, there are warriors, there are mothers, there are grandmothers.
There are, and it's a huge respect in the herd or in the Klan system. Mm-hmm. . I'm an adult and if my grandma were to scold me, I would take it. Mm-hmm. , I wouldn't, you know, look at her any differently. I I was wrong. And she's correcting me. You have that in the herd. And I think when you have that type of environment that you grow up in, the intuition is there because it's put in the community, the expectation of the community.
So you look at horses when they're running or even birds when they're flying. One goes like this, they all sh you know, one horse gets [00:54:00] up and looks, everybody's gonna get up and look. The intuition is connectivity in the herd or in the, in the clan. And so, like I said, we have leaders, we have, you know, the, all the way down to the last person who isn't a leader and is scared to get up and.
but their strength is being a servant. And that's where they thrive. They are just as important as the leaders. They are just as important as the warriors. They're just as important, right? As each individual in the Klan system. That creates this ecosystem of survival. So when you look at it and apply it to horses, you have to look at yourself and say, where do I fit in in this relationship?
Like if you're lunging a horse or you're working a horse, let's say you're trying to connect to a wild horse you have the corral or they're, or even a team, a domestic horse that's running around the pasture that won't come to you. If you can get even the slightest movement of like the ear, [00:55:00] like this, like looking at you back off and then turn around and walk away.
Cause you're like, oh, what, what just happened? And so curiosity. And then when you get to go, when you start working on this curiosity and building on it, it becomes a lesson of when I come in, I want two eyes. I would love two years. I would really love for you to come up to me, but we'll work on that.
Hmm. And the more and more you do it, the more and more you are in tune with that horse and you learn the slightest movements of different things that you're asking. . because remember, you are learning as well as them. They are learning and you're both learning each other. So when you're asking to do something, they're thinking in their mind, what's he asking me to do?
When the leader, when the lead horse or the lead mayor comes into the herd, all she has to do is kind of trot and pin her ears and mm-hmm. , because it's learned, it's, it's environmental, it's, they've grown up with it. They know. Right? if a new horse comes into a herd, [00:56:00] it has to not only figure out where they stand and the structure of the balance, but what is the language, what is the communication that's being said here, you know, for each individual horse.
And it becomes, am I answering it? It becomes, it becomes that with you and your horse. And that's where intuition comes in. When you start applying it to, everything is universal with each horse. Everything applies. Like, you're, a horse is like this, this and running, and you're over here and it's looking over here, and the moment it goes, boom, let it go.
That moment, that ear goes, walk away. Because even though it didn't give you it's full attention, it gave you something. Hmm. It gave you a little bit that you can step on a little basis that you can now, okay. I can step up now a little bit. Hmm. May not be like, oh, both ears and eyes are looking at me. . But it gets to that.
So just figure out where you're at in [00:57:00] the, in the cultural aspect of where you're at in your herd, in your, in your community, in your clan
Victoria: intuition. In, in that regard, if I'm hearing you right, is, is connectivity. Yeah. Back to the connectivity
Ty: exactly. And you could even broaden that whole thing too with intuition is connectivity when you're riding the horse, going back to, when you start really feeling things, you get a knack of something and things start becoming intuitive to, if I drop my hip this way a little bit, things will shift.
And that's connectivity. And that's connectivity. And I don't think we, we apply that. Mm-hmm. , but also we have, and here's where forgiveness comes back into play, is everything that we do in implement, we have to live. Cuz if we live it, then we can execute it within our horses because then we become the example that our horses see.
And the same thing with dogs too. Mm-hmm. , or
Victoria: Yeah. you gotta [00:58:00] model
Ty: it. Exactly. Mm-hmm. kids are the same way. Yeah. And that's how I like in the tribal aspect of things. Were modeled or were raised in, in a model society of what was expected. Mm-hmm. , growing up in the indigenous world wasn't really the Navajo tribal thing, but indigenous wise, like the suicide races were one big thing that was like a rite of passage.
Not necessarily for the Navajo, but mm-hmm. as an Indian, as a Native American who grew up partly outside the reservation. I didn't really know a lot of natives and when I was younger, and so that was one thing. I'm like, yeah, natives are doing that. And I'm a native and so, that's what I'm gonna do.
So I went, every time I go, went back to my grandma's place, I'd get a horse and I would start practicing. I'd run down. I grew up when I, so I grew up riding horses ever since I was in diapers.
There are pictures of me with my brothers, and then when I was like four or five or six, they would drop me off. I'd hurt [00:59:00] sheep all day with my brothers since I was on the horse. So I remember when I was, I remember when I was younger, I was so terrified when the horse would go down the hill that I would get off and walk down the hill.
Mm-hmm. . But I loved horses. But that was a fear of mine, it wasn't until. again, purpose. It wasn't until like, growing up more like being native and not being around any natives and then hearing about reading a book about the suicide races. I'm like, yeah, that's what I'm gonna do. . So I started like hyping myself up and becoming brave.
Rite of Passage: The Suicide Race
---
Ty: Can you explain what the omack, stampede and the suicide race? Yeah. Cause I think a lot of people don't know. And I grew up in that area, so I went to the stampede every year. I saw the suicide race every year. It was, it was very important Yeah. To
go to that. Right. It was basically like a rite of passage.
Mm-hmm. . And they raced. So they race, it's, I think it's like a total of like three mile. Could be wrong. We can probably, I think you're, yeah.
Right. But anyway, so it's a quarter mile and on top. So you start on top and [01:00:00] you run toward the edge like it's a sprint. Yeah. And it's a straight steep slide all the way down.
Victoria: And it's straight down.
And then into the river. And
Ty: into the river. Mm-hmm. . And then you have to cross the river whim usually. Yeah. And then you get to the other side and then you race. Back to the fairgrounds of the rodeo stands.
Josh: There's, it's a really steep hill.
Ty: Yeah. And there's, and these people, like, they run down like you are, they're flying off.
Flying off. And I used to watch it all the time, like, yeah, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna do that. And then I grew up and I'm like, yeah, I'm not gonna do that no more. I could totally do it. I still would love to do it, but I'm like, no, , I appreciate my bat . Yikes. I've made this far, knock on wood with no broken legs or arms or anything.
Victoria: But say more about the importance in terms of rite of passage, because it can be a little controversial, especially people who haven't grown up around it or mm-hmm. , don't understand sort of the native lens. Would you just explain the importance of rite of [01:01:00] passage and what that means culturally?
Ty: each individual culture you have the aboriginals from Australia mm-hmm. , they have their own, like the walkabout and stuff like that, right? Mm-hmm. , so they have their own, you know, coming of age write a passage and a lot of it is, and to prove your bravery mm-hmm.
it's not necessarily meaning you're gonna go to war with somebody, but you're gonna do this instead of like going to war with somebody else. Or you're gonna become, you know, you're going from adolescent boyhood in manhood to prove who you are as a warrior. And that's a lot of what it is. It's more cultural.
more than anything. Yes, it is very controversial.
Victoria: In some circles. I mean, yeah, I think, uh, it's, yeah, that's a whole nother conversation and ra I don't even think is worth going down. Yeah. But
Cultural Significance of Horses
---
Ty: but that goes back to the functionality of the horse, you know, especially in culture. Yes. Because it in certain simulations, not only in the rite of passage, but in livelihood back way back when through indigenous cultures throughout the US or even North [01:02:00] America, I guess, you would have to do these things.
Exactly. You know, if soldiers were chasing you, you'd have to go, if you are being raided or, opposing Travis trying to take, women or horses and horses went back and forth in the Plains Indians. so a lot of those things even though this was a rite of passage back then, it was a purpose and a fundamental purpose of surviving.
Victoria: Back to little tie. Oh yes. You started to get, so I said, I'm like, I'm gonna do this. You're gonna do it. And I hiked up and I hiked up . It's funny because this is where I learned about becoming the leader, going back to the wind blowing and what should I do? My horse, because I've been riding this horse, knew that I was scared to go downhill.
Ty: So I would get off and we'd. . So I'm like, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. And so I'd start running and the horse would, you know, Canor and then we'd get to the edge and it would stop and it would start walking down .
And so I was like, well, mm-hmm. So then I, we would canner and then I would [01:03:00] hop off and then I would run down the hill with my horse following. And a few times the horse was like, you know, like, you know, you tried to drag it somewhere, . And then after like two or three times the horse started realizing, oh, is this what we're doing?
So then it started like when as I got hopped off and I'd run down the hill, the horse would actually run or chop down the hill with me. And so then we started building from there. Building from there. That's the concept I got from, oh, I have to be the leader. Mm-hmm. and what I do, my horse is imprinted or implying that the horse is saying no.
Cuz every single time we got to this point, you got off and walked, so therefore I'm gonna walk. Mm-hmm. it doesn't know any better until you start to say, okay, so I'm growing up a little bit and I want to do a little bit, I want Toro down here, I want to canter down. And so after that I started practicing and we would, the horse would start running downhill and.
Victoria: That is that's exciting. I , cause I grew up in that area where that race happened and I don't think I did it to the extent that you did it, [01:04:00] but there was a couple like smallish hills where behind the property where my grandparents lived and Oh yeah. There was some definite like practicing
like in, in my mind. Cause it was so cool. It was such an amazing thing to see those guys. And as
Ty: a kid you just, you just wanna mold yourself to
Victoria: you just wanna be those, those heroic people that you
Ty: see. Definitely. And I, and so I grew up in southern Utah. My dad worked with the Monday industry, so we traveled a lot.
But I was always back at the Four Corners Monument Valley at my, grandma's place. And a lot of it is canyon lands and Mesa's. And so we would ride trail and sometimes when it would wash out then, or when it would rain, parts of the trail would wash out. And so there's like a trail then it goes like a two foot draw mm-hmm.
and then would slowly start going back up to the next trail. I would, especially when I was in high school, I had Kayla Kayla and I would go and we would jump down two feet to the next drop and we'd continue on. Wow. that's kind of the prime [01:05:00] example of the leader and how you ride your horse is gonna mold to how you're riding
Victoria: and the functionality you had to get down the berm to get to the next trail, right?
Yeah. So, I mean, that was the intention anyway. Yeah. So
Ty: and so just did it. Yeah. And I remember this one time, some ang go goats got loose and they were up in the mesa, along the edge, and they had been missing for almost a month. So my uncle came up and asked me if I can get 'em back.
So I'm like, okay, Kayla and I, we ran that poor Kayla was such a sport we ran, and the moment those goats saw, they headed to the edge and they're, and I was like, Nope, you're not getting away from me. No. And we went from drop to drop to drop to drop, and she was right along with me looking back at it. Now I'm stupid.
Mm-hmm. and crazy. Sure. Because they totally broke the horse's leg. Mm-hmm. . But but when you're young and dumb, you don't know any better and you're just kinda like, yeah, this is fun and thank God I didn't, so that's kind of, but it [01:06:00] speaks
Victoria: to the partnership that you created. Yeah, exactly.
Mm-hmm. . And she, but the horse would do that
Ty: for you. And she would go anywhere and everywhere I asked her to go. Mm-hmm. , so, mm-hmm. , I think that we should. Strive to be that for our horse and have that partnership. Mm-hmm. . And that's what indigenous partnership is, at least how I grew up and how it was taught to me was it was a relationship and it was a connectivity you were basically one with your horse.
Mm-hmm. . And so a lot of times intuitive you didn't necessarily have to think it to turn mm-hmm. , that horse is automatically going with you or coming up underneath you. If you're about ready to fall, that horse is gonna collect underneath you. A lot of people say they train your horse to always be up underneath you, but when you're connected with your horse, your horse is always gonna wanna be underneath you too.
Mm-hmm. , so. Wow.
Victoria: Yeah. Cuz that's what feels the best. Yeah. To the horse
Ty: too. Exactly. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Mm-hmm. .
Josh: Yeah. I can see where getting to that is so foreign to so many [01:07:00] people cuz like we didn't grow up with the clan structure, tribal system. We didn't have just a lot of those systems that you talk about.
the colonial powers, the imperial, whatever you want to call it. That was not in any of that. It's not really in like the capitalism structure. Mm-hmm. that's here now. It's all like individualism. It's go it alone, it's overpower the horse.
It's make them do what you want. Like self-forgiveness is like, I mean, for me, I was just like, what? Like what is, that's why I had to look it up. , do you have any advice ? Like how do you, or the other point was the the rights of passage, that's really missing and we see that Cause we have three teenagers, I was pretty crazy when I was 16 around that age.
Mm-hmm. and looking back, it was almost like I was just looking for that. So I was creating my own stuff, doing really dumb, crazy stuff. Yeah. That I'm lucky didn't end worse than it did. But had I had maybe a. Something to do , , to prove myself ritual to [01:08:00] a ritual. Mm-hmm. , because you see a lot of kids are just looking for that and they'll create something, but it's usually pretty disjointed and doesn't have the support of the elders or the parents.
And it gets people into trouble. So it's just like very unhealthy and toxic then.
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Ty: yeah. And for me it was going back to my grandparents's [01:09:00] on the reservation and it was staying there and herding sheep and working cows and, and then kind of our ride of passage as a youth is we would round up horses.
So it's kind of our downtime. We would go through and round up wild horses and put 'em in the corral and settle 'em up and way we went. It's purpose. you can have that, then have an idea of where you're going. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Purpose.
Victoria: the connectivity piece is knowing where you belong in a structure, in a relationship structure. The clan system. Mm-hmm. , I mean, in a family. Mm-hmm. In an organization, in a relationship with your horse and relationship with your friend, like knowing where you belong mm-hmm. , and then being able to just do that.
that's what we're all trying to get to. Mm-hmm. , that's purpose, right? Yeah. If I know where I belong, then I know what my purpose is. Yeah.
Ty: the great way I can, I can explain that too, is through endurance, there are a lot of with all the respect, there are a lot of older ladies that do it.
I sit there like, especially if you're [01:10:00] going 50 miles and you're riding with somebody, you hear a lot of stories and a lot of 'em talk about their love for horses and how they, some of them didn't even grow up. They, they just loved horses, but they were never around horses. And the moment they were old enough to buy their own horses and to do their own thing with horses, they, they did it.
Some of 'em grew up with horses and that was their thing. That was their love. And that ever since they were little girls and purpose, I mean, that's what fed them. That's what fueled them. And so when you can do that, then you truly are living your best life. Mm-hmm. . for me, it was the same thing with growing up on the reservation and I wanted to be round horses.
That's all I wanted. Mm-hmm. . So, and then when I lived on the, off the reservation, my, with my parents we worked, my dad worked in the mine industry. So when one mine closed down, we went to the next mine. And a lot of times they were in cities and so we lived in, you know, a house, the close yard that we couldn't have livestock.
In the moment I was old enough to do that. I went out and did it myself. Mm-hmm. and I got my horse and I started [01:11:00] living what my purpose was, what I knew was my purpose. Hmm.
Victoria: Yes. More
Ty: of that please. Yeah.
Josh: We, we talked a little bit about the program idea you had in mind. yeah.
And when I lived in Hawaii, I knew a guy, he had started a big nonprofit called the Maui Hero Project. Mm-hmm. . he based it off of Hawaiian mythology And they created, basically like adventures, but mm-hmm. , his whole thing was how do we recreate these rights of passage for native Hawaiians?
Cuz they had also lost that Yeah. Through colonialization it really worked.
How do you recreate that system? Yeah. That's lost,
Victoria: or they're just as
Ty: harder to
Josh: access and really hard to access. Yeah. I mean, horse horses are hard to access for a lot of people. A lot of people that are into horses, they have more higher level of means.
so how do you. You some ideas. I just wonder,
Ty: we talked about that last time I was out here.
Creating Youth Programs
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Ty: Basically touching back on it briefly though, is how that came about for me was, I'm gonna kind of throw my [01:12:00] people, our people, the indigenous people under the bus a little bit.
And if you look at horses and how they're being handled on the reservation now, there's a huge disconnect in horsemanship in family when it comes to horses. There is a need. Like people hold onto horses because they know it's a part of them. They know it's in their dna mm-hmm. , but they don't know how to use it.
Right. They don't know how to do anything with it. They don't know how to care for them. so you, tend to have all these feral horses that are overgrazing and then you're not really doing anything with them, so then just create a big disaster or they starve or mm-hmm. . it's always been in my mind that we do something with the youth that helps bring some of that culture back in.
Cuz you know in your, down in your heart that these horses are part of you. So how do we bring the youth in. and how do we use the horses to connect and then reestablish [01:13:00] and hopefully re spark that, that cultural aspect of what they should be doing. And then they give something for the horses to do and build from there.
I would love to try to figure out how to work with, I know Warm Springs is just up the road here. Mm-hmm. , having a handful of youth that come out, say for the summer and we work horses and we start with halter breaking, you know, yearlings and then building from there.
And then people who know a little bit more will start, training horses kind of creating a program that one not only is and steel's work ethic, but also bring that horse back into their culture and what that means. Mm-hmm. , because it wasn't too long ago that horses were my people's everything.
You look at Chief Joseph and what he did trying to escape to Canada, with women and children and old people. Yeah. That wasn't even that long ago. No. that that happened. And so we have lost a [01:14:00] lot of it, unfortunately, to, for lack of better words, culturalization.
That's even a word. I made that word up too. Case .
Victoria: I know what you mean. Yeah. So ,
Ty: civili or colonization? Colonization, yes. So a lot of these things have died. Because survival takes in and then you just kind of, how do I survive? And things that were meant to nourish our souls were cut from us.
Buffalo. The horses, what? The Navajos, the Navajo chro sheep, the first sheep in America. By way of the Spaniards, I should say. The first domesticated sheep in, in America by way of the Spaniards. And that was what we had, and we acquired 'em through rating and stuff. So is
Josh: that like back 16 or even 14 hundreds?
How far back does that
Ty: go? 14, 15, 16 hundreds. Oh, cow. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. All the way up into the 18 hundreds. Mm-hmm. . So, horse, the buffalo, the sheep, the salmon. Mm-hmm. , that we're all part of us and who we are that make us who we are. That adds into the [01:15:00] community that we are a part of.
We're all severed. , they had to try to make us into these little boxes. Mm-hmm. , which is why I always have, I always say too, I have a hard time with cookie cutter box churning because not one person, not one horse is the same. And you can't just cookie cutter stamp things mm-hmm. But trying to figure out how to do this , with the youth to bring back and to create even a positive influence in their lives.
Right. That, that accomplishment feeling. That they can take and then they can go say, I want to go to college. I wanna do this. And horses, especially taking care of them and working with them, have a lot of those check marks of, I'm gonna go to college, I'm gonna be responsible. Right.
What does that all that look like? I'm gonna pay my bills. I'm gonna get up. Like in the Navajo culture, when they say, when I say, these are my sheet, but these are my lifestyle, these are my cows, my grandma used to always tell me, they don't belong to you until you freeze for them in the wintertime, [01:16:00] until you sweat for them in the summertime until you are thirsty so they can drink.
Mm-hmm. , you feed them before you eat yourself. You don't sit down and eat at the dinner table if they're not fed yet. And it's that. philosophy is my sister. I don't know. I just don't think about it. I just get up and go, . when you're working with horses and you can bring the, the youth into it, it creates that same check pattern, I guess, of, of accomplishments.
Or you look at a task and say, okay, you do these things and you start executing it. And I think we can build a stronger society in general and help, bring horses back to indigenous people in a way that they would be utilized
Victoria: to. It's a holistic way of looking at it.
The horses need something, and no, that's just beautiful.
Josh: It seems like there's this huge need in both populations. Yeah. You know, the native and the Mustangs, like Yeah. It's [01:17:00] almost like this post-Colonial Wars, it's just this wasteland now.
Mm-hmm. and everybody's lost. All the marrow was destroyed. but , they're still there
Ty: though. Yeah, they're still there. So how do you get up and start picking the pieces and connecting 'em and putting 'em. Are the best way you can.
That's why we're talking about, I would love to do that, figure out how to do a program like that and then incorporate whether we do it here where you're closer to the reservation or we work with, the warm springs and then we created a program and we ban 'em to my place in pal or just some, yeah.
Something like that would,
Josh: you go to your place, you're surrounded by horses, you have CHRO sheep at your place, right? Yeah. And you're breeding. And so we go into your house, you have a loom in a room, you have Navajo rugs and that your, that your mom made.
Ty: And we work out. So we need to work outs.
They can come, they learn mm-hmm. , animal husbandry and how to tend things and what does it take. And when we work outs or we giving them, what vaccines are we giving them, giving birth and just different things like that. [01:18:00] We can create an environment that, they can either pick up and go, you know, work at a different ranch or, apply it to maybe somebody wants to be a vet.
Mm-hmm. , they just dunno how to Get there.
Victoria: So yeah, those first steps are so important for big dreams. Yeah. We got some more talking to do . Definitely.
Josh: Maybe just to round that one out we're interested too in, in those kind of programs mm-hmm.
but just as white people, not wanting to, the white savior is a thing where you come in like, oh, I want to help, I wanna do this, I wanna do that. But that's not really appropriate. Maybe for anybody watching too like that wanted to help, do you have any insight?
How do you bridge action? How do you make it happen and what can people do to help?
Ty: I'm probably in the same boat as you YouTube, because people will look at me like, you're an outsider. You're not from this tribe.
Mm-hmm. Hmm. , you should probably go back to your tribe. And, and so it's that same interesting mentality Okay. Of, like you were saying white savior . Yeah.
Josh: Yeah, I've heard that in like, activism
Ty: circles. Like, yeah. I just think that you just, you, you can't listen to that. Because if something's a passion, that's, that's [01:19:00] noise.
And I don't listen to noise cuz I have my goals, I have what I'm gonna do and that's it. it's just about putting it out there. And I believe that if it's something I strongly want to do and I know I'm called to do it, the right people are gonna be there ready to step. and ready to start putting itself together in a puzzle form to make this work
Because I mean, you look at it, and this is why I hate when people, especially, we're bad for that as indigenous people, like the white savior and just kind of like, not trusting, but I feel like there's a lot of, throughout even reservations, like trying to put 'em on reservations and stuff, there are a lot of people that were white that tried to save native people and tried to bring kids in.
And you know, there's stories about all the time, like the trail of tears and stuff. There were white people that grabbed kids to try to save 'em and keep 'em from dying. what I wish people would just look at as a humanity thing. Mm. Acknowledge that there is culture there. Respect that the culture is there, but in the greater aspect, trying to preserve humanity and those kids is culture. You know, where if it's something, like if you were to come in and say, [01:20:00] bill, we're gonna do a ceremony, you know, and bring ceremonies back to the people. I'm like, then that might be a little like , but, you know, but trying to do something for humanity itself and adolescence maybe we do too, where we bring some white kids Yeah.
And mm-hmm. , they're all there and so they learn to coexist with each other and work with each other. , the sky is the limit in these things. And there are a lot of, a lot of different check boxes that people are gonna be unnerved about. But great things happen when you start doing it. And when you start doing stuff, you're not always gonna please anybody.
That's where boundaries come in and you just gotta like, no, like I said, if I'm gonna do something, I know what I'm gonna do. And if something's noise, I just tune it out. I don't listen to the noise. Hmm. Because people are gonna talk no matter what. Hmm. Right. So I think it's just getting yourself around the right people.
So maybe there's somebody on the Warm Springs reservation that builds this passion too, we can get some of their elders, you know, to kind of bless it and do kind of keep [01:21:00] it closer to their traditional aspect of things through the Warm Springs. Because even then they're dealing with three different Confederated, it's the confer. Yeah. Confederated, yeah. Tribes and the warm springs too. So, I mean, you're looking at different cultures for the most part too, in that aspect. Yeah. So I would just say culture's coming together to maintain a culture. Hmm.
Victoria: Well, and that goes back to what you were saying.
Collaboration and working with the horse. Mm-hmm. not training the horse. Yeah. I mean, that's what we're talking about we're all just working together to create this thing. Mm-hmm. , when you're working with your horse, it's a relationship. Yeah. When you are talking about working with youth, it's a relationship.
Mm-hmm. , and from that the potential can be infinite. Yeah, definitely. the concept is like, you can't control what other people are gonna think and say. I mean, I've been trying to be like, that's not my business. Yeah. I'm just gonna do what I feel called to do mm-hmm.
and try to stay curious and listen and be [01:22:00] learning all the time. I think especially in sort of the and I'm a fan of woke culture, now that it's being used against itself, like Yeah. And that's like, it kind of makes it so people don't wanna help.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. , because it's like, I don't wanna offend anybody. I don't want to do the wrong thing. I don't wanna be Yeah. You know, get in trouble Yeah. For doing something wrong and then it's, then everybody just sits on their hands. Yeah. And
Ty: that's why I said, I want to be offended, right.
So I know where the boundaries are. Thank you. I want someone to. , you know, say, Hey, you know what, da da, da, yada. I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know . But here's the other thing is though, is what applies to you may not apply to her. Mm-hmm. , what applies to me and how I perceive things may not apply to somebody.
Some other indigenous person. Mm-hmm. , like I say, Indian all the time. Mm-hmm. . there's a lot of people like we will correct, you know, a white person say so Indian comes from the, like, they literally give you like the historical, like Columbus. Columbus. Ain't nobody got time for that . No, totally.
So, you know, be [01:23:00] offended. That's how you learn or offend people, and that's how you learn where the boundaries are. And all you gotta do is say, I'm sorry. Right. That's, that's where forgive kids. Oh my God. Yeah. Mm-hmm. . Like for example, they could say to me like, oh, you're Navajo, but you learn horsemanship from the Canadian Indian who actually really learned horsemanship from the vaqueuros that came up.
I feel like that's what we are as a melting pot, is we're all different things. But the beautiful thing about that is, is we take each other's culture. we're respectful, you're not gonna go Oh, I got these eagle feathers and I get up and I pray and I'm like, the Indians.
And you know, you're not gonna do that. And so that's like, that's a problem. That, that may be a problem, . But you know, you're, you're respectful in that aspect of you learn different things and you learn how I do things and why I do it. And now you learn the cultural aspect of it. Mm-hmm. . And you can take that home and apply it to your horse.
You're not gonna go around and say, oh yeah I'm training horses the Indian way for a hundred bucks. You know? Right. You know, and that's where it [01:24:00] gets Yeah. Sticky. And that's where a lot of us indigenous people have a problem with exploiting it basically. Right. So, but you going in and saying, I'm want to help, you're gonna offend people cause they're gonna get offended.
You can't, you can't. There's no, if ands buts about it, I'm gonna be, I'm probably gonna offend people, but you keep going according to what you believe that you can help. And the right people are gonna come in there and, and those people, especially warm springs, people that feel a need and feel call to this, but they don't know how to start it, collaborate it.
Mm-hmm. will be drawn and they will be the ones, my, my dad used to always tell me, you stand clean on your own two feet and let other people around you fight your battles as long as you keep going forward like an arrow. and doing the things with integrity. People around you will fight your battles. When people say stuff like this, oh, I heard this, I heard that people around will fight the battle for you.
So you are called to do this and keep moving forward and the people around you will protect you. And that's what it comes with. Keep going [01:25:00] toward what you want to do and the right people will form and the naysayers, they'll fight the naysayers. Cuz there's always gonna be naysayers no matter what.
That's just how life goes. But when you get a bunch of people together so let's, let's get it figured out. Let's do it. . All right. Very good. I love that. We get together, we start talking about things and
Josh: mm-hmm. , you're blowing my mind. Are
Ty: this is
Victoria: cool. So circling back to the Navajo Nation.
Mm-hmm. , I found this woman, her name is Kelsey John. She's an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, and she's also a professor at Arizona State. she studies equine human relationships with a focus on how these relationships can be used to indigenize education and
Ty: research. Indigenize.
Josh: Mm-hmm. , that's a new word. I like that.
Ty: Yeah. Yeah. Pretty good one. Right? That might even be if she has established like a workbook, that might be a really good workbook. For our program. For our program. There you go. We [01:26:00] could probably reach out to her and she's, I'd love to see her, some of her classes in her
Victoria: there's a couple things on YouTube, then I did a deep dive, kind of Googled her and found some of her. She had written some articles and stuff. Perfect. And she's young, her name's Kelsey.
Ty: John Kelsey. John. J o h n j.
Victoria: Yep. Okay. J o h n. And she says that horses were her first friends and teachers and that the Navajo worldview is that horses are healers and that horses heal by connecting us to land, to language, to tradition and culture and to each other.
this seems like it is going right to the heart of what you're talking about. Exactly. This program for youth. I think you already spoke to this, but can you speak a little bit more about the specific ways that horses connect you personally to the land and to your culture?
Ty: Yeah, so going back about like where horses come from, for me that was kind of the essence of my upbringing too. there were times where my uncle [01:27:00] would tell me, go sit in the corral and just watch him. I would sit there for hours and just watch him. And you could see. It's almost like a dance, like a connectivity or a conversation.
Through body language. And that's where the intuition comes in. When you start to really plug in and just sit and watch them, you learn which horse is a lot more forceful. You learn which horse is a lot more submissive. So then you take those horses that are a lot more submissive or like are needing validation from someone else or from another animal or another horse to tell them where to be, how to be in everything like that.
That's gonna tell you that that horse is very insecure. And if you're insecure and you guys are both together, you guys are not gonna go anywhere. You're gonna be sitting there going after you. No, I insist after you. No, I insist after you . You know? And so you have to approach it. You have to have them yourself, to be that one's leader and to step forward on that.
Victoria: Just really quick, I just wanna, I want you to see more about that, but I have this quote from Kelsey, John. Mm-hmm. , she called her work with her Navajo Mustang, A [01:28:00] dance of intuition, relation, intention and respect without force.
Ty: Exactly. And so, yeah. And when you look at one. Is more forceful and more, you know, all it has to do is it's so when you throw hay in there, just an example, I think we all, all us' horse people see this, you throw hay in there, the bossy one gets up there and all it does is goes, his ears pinned back and goes mm-hmm like that.
And then the horse like, oh, gotta go. So simple as that. So if you can do body language and the connectivity with that simple, like, get outta here. This is mine. If you have that connectivity and that intuition with your horse and you're riding them, imagine the slightest movement of what you do to move 'em out and do stuff to slide stop.
You know? And so that's kind of what my uncle told me. He is like, go out there and just sit with them, learn 'em. Hmm hmm. Understand them. Listen to what they're saying to each other. it's almost like sitting [01:29:00] there watching a talk show. or a podcast . And so, and they're talking about a few things, but they're talking about it in body language.
And so when you start to really, truly understand, listen, it's like a dance. And you start to understand them and, and the more you do that you start to know, like conversation when to pick up and chime in or when to listen or you know how to take it this way or how to take it that way or, . So that's always been what horsemanship has been for me growing up too.
So I'm That's
Victoria: amazing. I'm really interested in hearing what she has to say. We, we'll do, we'll work on that, cuz I agree. That'd be a great starting point.
Josh: How can people find you and you're pretty active on social media and stuff, or, I dunno if you guys have a website.
Ty: So I have my Facebook, it's, uh, t y Ty Yazi, Y A Z Z I e Okay. On Facebook. And then I have Instagram, it's I believe t y y 81. Okay.
Josh: [01:30:00] I'll link those in the show notes.
Ty: Notes. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. And
Victoria: if those of you listening go follow Ty because he post really beautiful things, always inspirational, a lot of times.
Really funny. Spiritual, just beautiful imagery from the ranch. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Amazing wisdom from your elders. You're always quoting stuff from your dad and your mom, your grandma. So it's just, I love following you. . I always smile whether it's something that's actually really sad that you post or something really beautiful or something really funny.
Yeah. It's always really good stuff. So follow Ty because it's just good stuff. . Well, thank you. Yes. Yeah. so to round us out,
Top Qualities Horses Teach Us
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Josh: the top three qualities that you think horses can teach Humanity.
Victoria: Oh yeah. The top three things you think horses can teach us Humans.
Ty: Number one thing is we don't know everything.
Victoria: Wow.
Ty: Dang [01:31:00] it. . Do you think you do, but you have no idea? That's
Victoria: a really good one. ?
Ty: Number two, I would say
humility. And the last one, grace. Okay. If you're doing it right, if you're doing it right, one is you don't know everything, they will always put you in your place. Two. Humility. And the last one. And when you do all three of those things, you can enter into your horse's presence and you'll be open, ready to receive.
I feel like a lot of times we walk into our horse's presence with these expectations. Hmm. Never allowing ourselves to receive what they have to say about us. So you understand that you're not God's gift to anything. when you have humility, you'll realize that.
And when you know that you're not God's gift to everything, especially your horse, then you understand you ask for grace so that you can receive whatever the [01:32:00] horse is asking, whatever the horse has to tell you. Because nine times outta 10, especially going back to what indigenous horsemanship means, those horses were the ones that saw the soldiers and heard the soldiers way before we heard 'em.
Mm-hmm. . So if you're not in tune and they were telling you, Hey, there's, their ears are saying over there, and you don't look to see what they're looking at because you know everything you've already lost. So I. Yeah, those three. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. This is really
Josh: cool. Yeah. Thank you, Ty,
that's powerful
Ty: stuff. Yeah. Well, thank you for having me.
Josh: Yeah. Well, first of many hopefully. Yeah.
Ty: It's
Victoria: always fun. We're gonna just, whether
Ty: it's podcasts and microphones or just Yeah. Riding horses or lunch or dinner or whatever we Yeah. We sit and talk forever. Yep. ,
Victoria: no shortage of things to explore.
Exactly. Right. All right. I think that's
Ty: it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Ty. Really appreciate you. You're welcome. Okay. Yeah. All right.
[01:33:00] I hope you enjoyed the show today. We'd love for you to join our free sub stack community for the herd is calling connect with us, engage in thoughtful discussions and access exclusive content. Click the link nearby to subscribe. It's so easy and totally free. We appreciate listening. And as always, may the horse be with you.
