Bear Grease - Ep. 410: Ty Evans - Transformative Mulemanship and Free Agency

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

In this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, Clay Newcomb interviews Ty Evans, one of the country’s top mule trainers and clinicians. After a broken femur in the arena benched Ty’s rodeo career, he began studying a different approach to training horses and mules than the "Cowboy Way". One based not on brute force, but on trust and understanding how animals actually think. What he discovered taught him that sometimes the solution to problems isn't doing more of the same, but adopting an entirely new way of seeing the world.   If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. Ty Evans is one of the country's top mule trainers and clinicians, and his journey with this misunderstood animal, the mule, has changed his life. And through working with him, he's learned what true leadership is. Yeah, through training a mule.

I think we're all going to learn something on this one. And hey, it's 2026. I'm ready to be something different, to look at life. in a new way and to become the person I've always known I should be. I think you're going to be surprised by this episode, and I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. There's a quote. He would quote it a lot, but I learned later that it was a Ray Hunt quote.

They know if you know and they know if you don't know. It might sound like a puzzle to some people listening. But what I've come to find is they, the mule or the horse, they are aware of your awareness. They know what you're paying attention to more or less. My name is Clay Newcomb and this is the Bear Greece podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places

and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. On March 3, 2011 in Ogden, Utah, 21-year-old Ty Evans entered the Weber State University Rodeo. And what happened would change his life? Well, they used to send out stock draws about a week in advance. And I remember stock draws came up.

I was so excited to find out what I grew. So pull it up, and I'm going down the list, trying to find my name, and it landed on a horse named Dakota Kid. Now, Dakota Kid, this horse had busted two of my friend's legs the previous fall. This horse had a reputation. It would jump out of the buck and shoot, and basically spin around, and hit the post, slam itself into the post behind it,

which, what's between the post and the horse? Well, that's your leg. And so two of my buddies had broken their legs in this fashion. So when I saw that horse, I was like, oh, man, he was just really, we would say hard to get out on, meaning hard to get out of the bucket shoot on because of that little move. And, well, being a horseman, being a trainer,

I thought, well, I'm going to solve this. and I came up with a plan. I was going to have my buddy hold a pair of shaps. You know, our leggings we wear, hold a pair of shaps out over like ahead of the post a couple of feet. So it kind of tricked the horse. The horse would wrap around there like it usually did. But instead of slamming to the post, it would hit the shaps and fade out of there.

Dakota Kid was a dangerous horse, and Ty was a trainer. He was born in Bluffdale, Utah, into a trainer. His dad trained horses and mules for a living, and Ty literally started breaking and riding them for his dad when he was eight years old. Lifelong exposure to a craft often delivers instinct and insight that can't be taught. These people think about problems from a whole other stratosphere than the casual partaker of the said craft. Ty was like that with equine animals, so he made a plan. I thought this was a great plan. My wife thought I was pretty dumb.

She's like, don't go. Don't get on this horse. And I'll admit to you, I had a feeling I shouldn't go. Like, I remember the feeling, don't go. And at the time, I'm a cowboy, thinking, Ty, you're just a sissy. Like, you're just scared. Go, cowboy up, right? But inside, you can't put that.

You can talk about it, but you can't put it away when you're worried. And I had that feeling, don't go. A powerful human exercise is to do an honest evaluation of what value system drives your actions, but often we're blind to the truth about ourselves. And it takes something powerful to drop the scales off our eyes. Was the tough it out, I'm a cowboy, the right way? Or was that actually the easy answer consistent with his cultural upbringing? Or should he have listened to his wife and his intervie?

tuition. To quote from the book, evidence-based horsemanship, for someone to say, I've been doing this for 50 years, doesn't negate the fact that someone could do something wrong for 50 years. End of quote. Is it possible for someone to use a wrong value system?

Even a longstanding cultural bedrock value system like the cowboy way to make decisions. Is that possible for that to be wrong? well what do you think I did I went of course I went right and I had this plan like I said and I remember getting on that buck and horse sitting down the chute get my feet in the stirrups my legs up under the swells of the saddle the swells the saddle on the front of the saddle and I get my legs up under the swells I lean back tuck my chin down to my chest lift my bronch crane that's what we hold on to lift up the brunk crane put my

free hand up. And I remember that moment, don't do it. I just remember a distinct feeling, don't do this. But then, whatever, of course, cowboy up and you're there, you're going to nod your head. And I nodded my head. And that horse bailed out of that chute. And just as I planned, it wrapped around those shaps perfectly. I'm out of the shoot. I've just accomplished the hardest part of this horse's ride, getting out of the chute. The horse's bucking. The horse's down the arena. I'm making a good ride. We're going jump for jump. I'm lifting on my rain. I'm spuring. I'm leaning back. Everything was good. And I'm thinking myself, oh geez, you big sissy, what were you so worried about? You got this. You got this. Buzzar rings,

eight seconds is up. I've made my bronch ride. I'm thinking, check. I'm good to go. Picket men are coming in. Picket men are our rescue rangers in rodeo. They come up. one comes up fading on the left, one comes up fading on the right. They're almost to me. My horse slams on the brakes. Dakota Kids stops, deadness tracks. Flips over backwards. I remember seeing the horse's mane in my face, and I knew I had been flipped over on many times,

so it wasn't necessarily a dramatic deal. So as a horse is coming over, I'm thinking I got to jump out. I go to jump out to my right just in time. to not get my body smashed. But the swells of the saddle came down, broke my femur in half, snapped my femur. The horse gets up, kicks me in the head. And it was touch and go there for a minute.

I remember being in the ambulance, and one of the paramedics saying, hey, should we go code whatever? I don't know the codes. I can't remember what. But go code whatever, meaning lights and sirens. And the other paramedic goes, yeah, you better. was bleeding out from a broken femur and had a busted and banged up head from getting kicked.

The broke leg took him completely out of rodeo for several years, crushing his dream to potentially ride professionally. But the crisis catalyzed a process of evaluation and tie, which begs the question, was it actually the right thing to do, to ride Dakota kid? Because it did bring him to a place of honest evaluation. Long story short, I was out for a while.

Couldn't rodeo and all that down. And I couldn't ride my mules. I was still riding for living. I was riding Colts for living. I was a newlywed. I'd only been married a couple years. And we just bought our first little house. And I remember just being sick.

Like, you can't ride. You can't work. Man, what are you going to do? So I had all this time on my hands. And I remember really, thinking about what I want to do. And that's about when that documentary came out.

By this time young Ty was, like his father, making a complete living, breaking horses and mules. They were cult starters, the most dangerous kind of training, breaking to ride 100 to 120 animals a year.

And I want to key in on something that could sound endearing to our ear. He was doing it just like his dad. But the spirit-filled judo-chop wisdom of this story pivots on this idea. Doing what your dad did isn't always the best way. The way your dad made decisions may not be the best way. He may have been doing it wrong the whole time.

In January of 2011, a documentary called Buck came out that was about a man named Buck Branaman that many called the Horse Whisperer. Chuck taught what he called natural horsemanship, where you communicate with a horse through sensitivity and leadership, not punishment. This is a clip from that documentary. Do you see the expression on that horse? It moves, but it's crabby. Flagging the tail, it's annoyed.

It's like asking your kid to go take the garbage out. They take the garbage out, but they flip you the bird on the way out of the room. It's without respect. And respect isn't fear. No. It's acceptance. Buck says when you start handling horses, your own personal issues start coming out. And I was so anxious to see the saddle on chief.

I rushed him to it. And now I've built, I feel like I've built this fear and this insecurity in him. But see, I'm an insecure person. So horses, they mirror you. They can't lie. There, good boy. Buck Branaman wasn't the first to do this natural horsemanship. He was a pioneer in it though in modern times and he was one of the first to be highly successful

and gain national and even global notoriety. Ray Hunt, the Dorrance brothers, Pat Pirelli were also forerunners in this style of horse training. This method maybe took a little longer, took more patience, more precision, more attention to nuance and detail. But the real kicker was that it, took on a whole different kind of worldview about the horse. It required a whole new kind of trainer, a new mindset, a new empathy, new kind of strength that was absent in training a horse the cowboy way.

And this new way was producing some incredible horses. Ty was deeply inspired by the documentary and had already been influenced by the natural horsemanship philosophy for the last several years. But what Ty realized while laying there with this broken leg was that very few people were doing this with mules. Would it even work for mules? The horse world had clinicians teaching people how to ride and train horses. The industry was huge.

But mules, very few people were training mules to the degree that they were training horses. Few were making what they call bridal mules or bridal horses, which describes a very high level of training that takes many, many years, and it produces an animal with incredible safety, precision, control, and comfort. For thousands and thousands of years, the mule was considered a beast of burden, and Ty started to think about mules differently, and he learned a new way to train that required shuck in the past. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is a lot.

over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors.

Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there and but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins

in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple. I heart YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. TIE is now in his mid-30s. It's been 15 years since the rodeo wreck, and I'm riding behind him and our friend named McLean Meekam,

a well-known man in the lion hunting and mule world. It's the fifth day of a mountain lion hunt. The last four days we've been riding in some of the roughest country in the west. So I'm in Utah right now with riding behind. behind Ty Evans. It was a pretty round mule. What are we doing, Ty? Having the best day ever.

Trying to stay alive. We're kidding. All right, we just busted some brush. What we're doing is following a lion. So we're about probably two and a half miles from the truck and we're following dogs through a real thick cane. So we're having to bust a bunch of brush while we're riding. Kind of treacherous.

You might get raped off your mule. So you've got to have a lot of control. This is when you need real control of your animal. You need to be able to steer them precisely. And that is exactly what Ty Evans is good at, training them to be precise, to have control with a mule. This is the kind of place you want to be sitting in the saddle of a good mule. that you have complete control over,

one that trust you so that you can trust it. Places like this are why Tai has dedicated his life to train in mules. The backcountry is a good place to die and a trustworthy steed is invaluable. You see, a mule is a cross between a mare horse and a jack donkey. Hybrid vigor creates an animal more sure-footed than a horse with more stamina day in and day out. It has a longer working lifetime.

And mules are easier to keep healthy than a horse. But mules have their drawbacks too. They're harder to find than horses. They're just less of them because they're sterile. They have a very strong self-protection mechanism that the world has interpreted as stubbornness for thousands of years, which can make them more challenging to train than a horse, but it also can make them safer. I've heard it said that you can train a horse to jump off a cliff, but a mule, ain't jumping off no cliff. Horses can also be so compliant, which is a wonderful thing,

that he'll cross a raging river that you and that horse are going to drown in. A mule ain't crossing no river that he's going to die in. Horses are incredible animals that are faster, quicker, and generally easier to bring to a place of compliance and are often better on the ranch and in the rodeo arena. But in the back country, without question, a mule is the animal that I want to be on, and most people that ride equines in the back country agree. And that's why I love mules.

So we just came up over the ridge, and it sounded like a freight train. The dogs had, we think, jumped this lion. We've been trailing in for two days. A pretty unique thing to be following the Klan and Ty. Hunting a line on mules. A rare human experience, I'd say, with two guys that are some of the best in the world at what they do.

Ty, how far do you think we've rode this week on mules? This week, we've probably rode, well, this morning. I was at 68 miles, but I had to trot some mules up. Yeah. So I'm a little bit more. but by the end of the day, we'll be over 70 miles. We'll be over seven miles, five days. And I was actually thinking that might be some of the longest miles,

non-caboying miles I've ever done. Me and a cowboy, when I'm working, ranching stuff, we'll do miles like that. But it ain't miles, it ain't lying miles. You know what they say. Lying miles, don't lie. So I don't know if I've ever done over 70 miles riding this, crazy wicked mountain like this before in five days time.

I want to learn about Ty's backstory and how he transformed into a completely different trainer than the generation before him. Born and raised in Utah. My whole life. I love to you my whole life. I love Utah. It's home. I love everything about Utah.

I love the mountains, the desert, canyons, all of it. Growing up, we were a very outdoors family. for sure. I'm super grateful my dad took us camping and hunting and fishing and riding all the time. Part of that was because it's what he did for a living. He rode a lot of cults for a living. So young horses, young mules. Primarily he started out with horses. But like any trainer trying to make a living, you know, people say, hey, what about a mule? You take a mule for training? And I remember, I still remember the first meal he started working with. And that kind of opened the doors for him becoming the mule guy.

Ty's dad, Dion Evans, was and is an incredible trainer and mentor for Ty. I want to pull back this idea of Ty being pitted against his dad in training methodology because he was doing something wrong. People like Dion did the best they could with what they knew, and it worked. In a perfect world, a son starts from the position. His father stopped, building upon his father's lifetime of experience, and that is exactly what happened here with Ty and Dion. You know, when I tell you, I started, like, working for my dad when I was eight.

I really mean it. Like, I was working for my dad when I was eight. He started us out with, like, these little ponies. I remember one of a pony named Patches. And that son of a gun could buck, like it could buck. And we'd ride it as long as we could, fall off most of the time, get back on, ride it again. And then pretty soon that turned into, like I said, me working for my dad. And I don't know, maybe for lack of better words, I was the crash dummy.

You know, he'd put us on Colts for the first right. So he would handle him on the ground. him on the ground. He'd have him by the lead rope and he'd get a saddle on him and you know he would do his version of what groundwork would be which would be getting the saddle on without them trying to kill him and and then we would climb on and he would hang on to him and they'd buck around or whatever but back in those days a lot of times it was bucking them out. And my dad worked for so many horses and mules. He was a really good hand.

And in those days, you took whatever type of horse or meal that would come for work. A paycheck was a paycheck, right? And he would take them on. The way my dad would start something back then is you'd get in the round pan. And a lot of times people would, they'd drop them off. I remember one of my dreaded feelings is when somebody would back their horse trailer up to their round pin, open the gate, open the back of the trailer, and let that thing out. Because that meant it wasn't broke to lead.

That meant it was probably pretty wild, probably a little, what we call touchy or wasp ear, a little watchy, meaning they probably didn't like humans much, right? and that would always get me around up. Like, oh, here we go again, you know. So he would do some round pin work, move them around in a round pen. We use a round pin in training then and now, and it's pretty historic because there's no corners. But we'd get them and we would lunge them around in the round pin, and we would get them kind of more or less tired.

And then we'd finally get them caught. A lot of times you could catch them, but a lot of times you had to rope them. And then kind of get a saddle on in it, and it might buck a saddle off. It might kick you. And it was, I guess for lack of otherwise describing it, it was a fight a lot of times to get those saddles. I've been kicked more times trying to saddle a horse or mule than anything else. Back in those days, especially, you know. But we'd get them saddled up.

A lot of times you tie up a hind leg and that kind of restricted their movement. It wouldn't hurt them or anything, but it would restrict their movement. They couldn't, they couldn't like run off and they, and if they tried to buck it was really, really, you'd get on them and then turn that leg loose and then I would go for a bronch ride and hope I stayed on and you learned, you learned to stay on. I got a lot of bronch rides in as a young. You got a picture like a little kid doing this. I'm not a very big guy.

Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve year old tie. You know, out there trying to stay on. And I, looking back, I'm grateful for those moments. The old way, some people called the old way. It was hard. But it taught me grit. I learned how to ride. I learned how to like fight for something, which in that case was my life trying to stay on.

Like you really had to learn stay on. Because it was easier to stay on once than to stay on five times. What I mean is it didn't matter. You got bucked off. Well, guess what? You are getting back on. It's non-negotiable. As long as you were physically healthy.

And that is even negotiable. Like what is physically helpful? Well, nothing's broken. You know the thing. Nothing's broken, long ways from your heart? Okay, get on. It's easier to stay on once than five times. I like that.

Tye's done a good job of describing the old way, the cowboy way of training, which is basically a tough man contest, a battle against fear. And it was the playing field of proven the cowboy way. But he would learn there was a better way. But haven't they always trained horses? the cowboy way? People will ask, so is this how people have been riding and training animals for hundreds of years? The answer is no.

In that answer, what I mean is I call it industrial age horsemanship. So at the turn of the century, the industrial age, everything's faster, right? And it's kind of like what we deal with now with our technology, like a microwave. We want things so fast. when culture started changing with the horsemanship. It went from taking time to do stuff. And having the time to do stuff. Like, think of these guys that, you know,

back then there's a lot of ranches, and there were guys that were full-time buckaroos. They were full-time horsemen. And they were cattle with those horses, but primarily they were full-time horsemen. So they spent a lot of time with their horses. And those old buckers, those old cowboys, those vicaros,

all those cultures, they would, they're with these horses all the time. Like making, one of my passions is making bridle wheels. And that is a long process. Well, even now, but especially around the turn of the century, you go telling somebody you're going to be taking six, seven, eight years to get them finished out in a bridle. They go, what? That's, you know, because they're not.

because that puts them between 8 to 10 years old before they're straight up in a bridle finished out. And you tell a lot of people that they're like, yeah, right, no way. They want it now. They want them wearing a bridle now. Anyways, turn a century, do it faster, do it faster. And so that's where I think a lot of the Bronx stomping came in.

Now, don't get me wrong, historically on the ranches, do they go for a lot of bronch rides? I guarantee it. Like, look at the old Charlie Russell paintings. You know, he's not making that stuff up. He was there witnessing it. There was some rough stuff. Like, I'm not saying that it wasn't rough.

It was for sure rough. But I think later on, people wanting it so fast, go, go, go, go, go, push it. You know? And then you also got to think about Hollywood. All the westerns. It depends. But it's not really fun to watch a horse just ride around real nice. They kind of like a little drunkard.

So I think a lot of people grew up watching that, including me. Like, I didn't, I thought, well, yeah, they're going to buck in. And to be honest, Clay, I kind of liked it. It was fun. So, started Colts with my dad and all that was a blast. I loved it. It was hard.

It was tough, but I loved it. Let me talk about when things starting to change? Yeah. So I think I was about 14 years old. and I remember my dad got hurt really bad. My dad has the highest pitch whistle you would ever hear in your life. He would stick both pinkies in his mouth and just do that crazy high whistle. Well, he was on a mule one day, did that loud whistle so he sets the reins down and when he whistles that meal takes off, lights it up, bucks him off.

And he busted up a bunch of stuff. He hurt his hip really bad. but he was beat up. Beat up to the point that he was pretty well ready to be, to call it. So got to that point where he was ready to kind of be done and quit training for the public. Anyways, at that point, I kind of took over and took it on myself, and that was my gig. That's what I did. 14.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'd get home from school, and I'd ride meals and horse. horses. And I did that all through middle school. And then in high school, of course, you can get work release, you know, and that was my job. And I loved it. About that time, about the time I was a senior in high school and kind of getting out of high school, my dad had a good buddy that give him some Brad Cameron VHS tapes. That's how long ago it was, VHS tapes, right? And, And I wore those tapes out watching them.

And Brad Cameron was a bridleman, meaning he made bridle meals. I didn't really know what a bridle meal was. I didn't really understand. I'd seen some bridle horses and people do that, but I didn't ever think you could make a bridle mule. Well, here he is. That guy's doing the thing. I wore those tapes out. I watched them over and over again.

I loved them. that opened my eyes to a lot of, well, particularly it opened my eyes to this thing called groundwork. I mean, my version of groundwork up to that point, working with my dad and stuff, was, well, we'd sack it out a little bit. Like, literally, like with a feed sack or something, we'd rub it all over or get a tarp or something and get them used to a tarp or things like that. But to get the saddle on, okay, check. Now we've done our groundwork. Well, Brad was doing all kinds of stuff, like moving him this way and that way,

and he had sent the meal around in a circle on that lead rope on a loose rain, meaning no tension in that rain. He's not pulling that meal around. It was going freely. And he was moving these feet in all kinds of ways that I didn't understand. He's using terminologies that I'd never heard before, moving the hinds, moving the fronts. I didn't know what this stuff meant.

Well, I do now. It means what we're going to move the hind feet one way or the other. We're going to move the front feet one way. That's what it means. And so I started playing around with that stuff. And by golly, it made things a lot easier. At that point, when I was, I guess, toward the end of high school in graduating, like, if I had 10 horses or meals, I was starting,

out of 10, probably eight of them would look. Now that's bad statistics for a trainer. That's bad news. Well, it's because how I was doing it. I was just, I was just, I thought I was a cowboy. I thought I was just doing cowboy stuff, just riding them and I was just bucking them out, and that's just what I did.

Well, I started doing this, you know, I called it Brad Cameron's stuff back then. And that eight out of ten bucking went down a lot to like one out of it. of 10. Now, you tell me, how's that work? And I didn't know. I thought I was just moving around. Maybe I was getting them tired. You know, whatever. I didn't understand the psychology of it in that mule or that horse. I didn't understand how their minds were changing. What I really didn't realize back then is how I was changing. It was changing to me. Like, I started to see the meal different.

This is worth stopping to consider what Ty just said. He went from eight out of ten mules bucking to one and ten, but he recognized that it was actually him that was changing as he started to see the mule completely differently, producing a new set of considerations. The mule was no longer an adversary to be conquered by force, but a potential partner that just needed convincing to give its loyalty, which it actually wanted to give. In 2012, this book called Evidence-Based Horsemanship came out and redefined the way people viewed horses. It pointed out how people had anthropomorphized horses, thinking that a stubborn horse with bad behavior made choices like a rebellious child,

or that a horse didn't like people. But the authors, one of them a neuroscientist, described the psychology of the horse as desiring security and leadership. They're herd animals. They're always looking for a leader. and if a leader doesn't arise, they have to become the leader, and therein lies the conflict of the cowboy way where leadership is taken by force. But Ty would learn that he could create the circumstances where a mule would give itself because of his true leadership. And this was revolutionary.

Brad Cameron used all kinds of terminologies. There's a quote, he would quote it a lot, but I learned later that, It was a Ray Hunt quote. They know if you know and they know if you don't know. It might sound like a puzzle to some people listening. But what I've come to find is they. The mule or the horse, they are aware of your awareness. They know what you're paying attention to more or less.

They can see it. They can sense it. So in my high school days, I wasn't aware at all. It was just me like totally physically manipulating and manhandling these horses and mules. I was getting along just with my brute force and strength. And the more I started to learn about the mind of the mule, the mind of the horse, and my own mind and how I acted and, you know, how I carried myself around an animal, the less troubles I would have.

The trouble started fading away. And it was getting easier. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for.

I have a great turkey hunting track record. if you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com.

I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good. turkey noises and getting action what ty learned was that a mule spoke a completely different language than a human and when he started communicating correctly with them they were ready partners i'd like to read a quote from evidence-based horsemanship the horse brain is about the size of a large grapefruit and

proportionally one six hundred and fiftyth of their body weight the human brain is one fiftyth of our body weight they have a large Large cerebellum for balance and smooth movement. Most of the brain area is dedicated to motor and sensory functions. Horses do not have a huge frontal lobe like humans. They are unable to make fun of someone in return to share a joke with their pasture mates. Although they have personalities based on how they behave, it would be anthropomorphic to assign human personality traits to these animals.

The temptation to want to believe that horses process things in the animals, the same way as humans may make us feel better, but it is inaccurate, leads to false assumptions, and is often at the expense of the horse's welfare and well-being. End of quote. The cowboy way of breaking mules assumes that compliance must be taken by sheer force like a military dictator. That does produce compliance,

but not the same kind of compliance as when it's freely given. You see, a prey animal's love language is security. Their primary motivation in life is safety and not to get eaten. Natural horsemanship uses pressure and pressure meaning like when you're trying to make an animal turn to the left. And after this pressure, when they do it, there is an instant release of that pressure as a reward for compliance, which these neuroscientists learn dumps a huge hit of dopamine. The mule loves a dopamine hit like Brent Reeves loves an honest tree and walker. Ty learned that a mule will do anything to get a pressure release.

It may sound like jujitsu, but just hang in there. And it takes less and less pressure once the mule learns that you're speaking its language of release and security. It's all about communication. I think there are life lessons in here. Sometimes the solution to your problems might be getting, a completely different outlook, not more of the same that isn't working. And good luck, Brent, finding an honest train walker. Brad, I learned, had a mentor himself named Buck Branneman.

And so when I learned that Brad learned a lot from Buck, then I started paying attention to him. And that was a little later on about the time where Buck Bramman had a document documentary come out on his life. It's called Buck. And it was about Buck teaching clinics and his life. But I remember more or less seeing Buck's job. And I knew about clinics from Brad, but Buck was making a career out of this, teaching people and helping people. And studying Brad and Buck, I had so much change in myself. And you know, when you find something good, and you can see the good and You can see like the joy coming into your life. You just want to share it with others.

And when I saw that documentary that he was doing that, I said, I told my wife, we were newlyweds at the time. We had only been married for a couple years at that time. I said, I want that job. That's the job I want. Getting bucked off and having that wreck breaking my leg, what it did is that, I'm a go-getter. I'm 90 miles an hour all the time. Drives my wife crazy. But that wreck slowed me down.

It forced me to slow down. And I believe it was God saying slow down, tie, get on the right track. Because I think I was going off track. But that wreck slowed me down and reoriented my life. I had all time to think about it. I had all kinds of time to watch videos. I watched so many training videos sitting on the couch with a busted leg, and I just would learn and I would read.

And I said, I'm going to make a go with this. I'm going to, I really want to do this. And so I didn't get back on a buck and horse for a couple years. And when I did go back to rodeo on, and I went back, I rodeo for summer. I went to 14 rodeos that summer of coming back finally. It took me two years to my leg to heal up and to get muscle back. but when I came back, it didn't have the same drive. I remember sitting on the back of a buck and chute in Santa Quinn, Utah,

looking up at Mount Ebo, beautiful mountains. I think to myself, as I'm sitting there, man, I'd rather be up there with my mule. I'd rather be riding. I'd rather be camping, anything. And so that was my last rodeo. That was in 2014. And up to that point, I'd actually started to do it. a couple of clinics, like at home.

I couldn't ride mules after that wreck for a period of time, but later that summer and that fall, I got to riding again, and I got to training again. We started doing lessons, and we started doing like little clinics at home, and our first clinic was in, I believe it was May of 2012. The way I work with Meals now is a lot different than I did back then. Not in the sense, I mean, you can only do so much with the mule. Like when I'm talking about the actual training pieces, you can go forward and back and side to side.

Hopefully not up and down. So in that sense, it didn't change. Like we still accomplish the goal. And the goal for me is to make a nice, dependable, reliable partner that we can go out and go for a good ride. I can go work cows, I can rope, I can go on pack trips, we can go hunting, a reliable partner. But it's how I get to that point. It's how I get there that's different now. Back then, in those old days, it was a lot of force. And I'll admit to you, I forced a lot of mules and horses. And I have a lot of regret. There's a lot of them that I wish I could have a second chance at.

However, I do realize that some of those mules and horses were kind of, I guess for lack of better words, the sacrifice for today's mules. They had to deal with old Thai so that these mules today can reap the benefits of new tie. You know, the new tie evidence. And today I spend a lot of time using the new tie events. of what we call free agency, teaching free agency, and letting these mules have a choice. So I'll set up a scenario where I want it to be easy for the mule to do whatever I want to do.

There's a principle we teach. Make the right thing easy, wrong thing difficult. Well, you got to be careful with that because some people can take the wrong thing difficult part all the way to the bank. They just want to make wrong thing difficult, wrong thing difficult. difficult or aren't difficult. My focus is making the right thing easier. I've got to stop right there and ponder the applications of this principle outside of training mules. As a father, I often find

myself focused on making the wrong things hard, but putting little focus on the reward of the right thing. As I look back the way I've fathered, I see that I've used conflict inaccurately. I've applied too much pressure in the wrong places, trying to get an external response that really doesn't teach my child anything or it doesn't actually change them. But as a more broad application, after hearing Ty's story and learning about natural horsemanship, I realize the solution to some problems isn't achieved by doing what you're already doing just harder. I hope that makes sense. But maybe it's the adoption of a completely new paradigm that will show you a solution you had no idea existed.

Here's some specifics of this Make the Right Thing Easy philosophy. So if I want to get something done, all I have to do is let it be the mule's choice to do that and set up that scenario to where that thing that I want to do, whether it's go across that water, load up in a horse trailer, walk up on a mountain lion,

make that easy to do. I want it to be easy to do. where before, in the old days, I might just kick and pull and force them to get there. Either way, we're going to end up there. It's just how I do it. And I might be able to force that horse or force that mule to do something one time, but the chances of me forcing it to do it a couple times, probably slim. So it's easier to set up a situation to where they want to do it.

And then when they do it and you give them the reward, which the reward really is just relief or a release, meaning you leave them alone. You stop asking them, you just let them dwell and relax. That's the best reward. And so when they do that, they get a big dopamine hit and it feels good to them. And so when they finally accomplish the task you're trying to get done, they're like, hey, I like this. a good experience. And so then they want to do it again. Just like anybody else, you have a good

experience and you enjoy it, you want to do it again. Probably one of the best things about my journey. I'm really grateful for it is how I've changed. I've realized that a mule's a meal, horse is a horse, and a human's a human. And it's all about how we think. And if I want to get along with these animals, I need to understand how they're thinking. But in order for me to understand them, I need to understand myself. Like if I don't recognize when my adrenaline is high, how am I going to recognize when theirs is high? If I don't recognize when I have some fear or doubt or even excitement or maybe overly, overly brave, you know, or overly, I don't know, cocky, you know, or too forward. Like, if I don't recognize the life in my own body that I'm

putting out, it's really going to be hard for me to control the animals. If I can't control my emotions, how can I expect to control theirs? Like, one of the principles that we teach in our clinics, we teach leadership in our clinics. And one of the principles of leadership in our clinics is to, there's two parts. We begin with the end in mind. So what is the, what is the, it that you want your mule, your horse to be like? Well, like, what's the end in mind for you? Is it, I want to make a really good cow meal. I want to be able to rope. I want to be able to trail ride. I want to be able to hunt. On a pack, I want a barrel race. Oh, it doesn't matter what it is. Maybe you just want a pasture pet. Cool. But what is that end? What do you want

them to be like? And then the second part is you have to be what you want them to become. And that's my favorite part, is be what you want them to become. So how can I expect my mule to be confident if I'm not confident? So if I come to an obstacle and we ride some rough country here in Utah, we ride some tough stuff. And if I come to this obstacle, and it might be a crazy, rocky slope, it might be some ravines or some deep canyons, whatever it might be. If I go, oh, boy, I don't know about that, my meal's going to fill that. They're going to feel that, and it'll take a really confident meal to overcome my lack of confidence. But if I come up to the obstacle, I'm like, okay, yeah, we got this.

We can do this. That is contagious to the animal. If I want my mule to be relaxed, calm, whatever words you want to use, I have to be all those first. That's what a good leader does. I can't tell you to calm down, and I'm freaking out. that doesn't make any sense. Everybody calm down. No, I need to be calm.

I need to be that example. And being an example to an equine or a horse is not exactly the way human-to-human work, but it's very similar. A mule mirrors your confidence, energy, and insecurities, and the followers of a leader also mirror a leader's confidence, energy, and insecurities. The primary function of leadership. And listen to this, man, take this to the bank.

The primary function of leadership is to be the pattern and the example of exactly what you want those who follow you to be. That's it. This is the key to true leadership, period. Leadership is a parent, as a business owner, as a member of a basketball team, as a productive member of your community or as a mule trainer. The natural, physical, and spiritual world responds and rewards authenticity and rejects falsity. Ty's journey of transformation and the way he trained mules also highlights something that can be hard for human beings, and that is to realize that you're doing something

wrong and completely change. Today, Ty and his wife, Sky, are successful mule clinicians. traveling all over the country, teaching people how to communicate, ride, train their mules. You can find him all over the internet as T.S. Mules. You can check him out on Instagram, Facebook, and the T.S. Mules podcast. Ty has a podcast. These are some really great people, and I've learned a ton from Tie's story, and I hope that you guys will follow along.

and we've got some more coming from Ty next week. Thank you so much for listening to Bear Greece and Brints this country life and Lakes Backwoods University. It's 2026, we're excited about the new year, and keep the wild places wild because that's where the Bears did. First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens

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