Apples was a large bay mare with a cranky disposition. And why shouldn’t she have been upset? She was a five-year-old horse that had never been made to mind.
I still recall watching from the relative safety of a corral fence as my boss, the skilled hand who was the Ranch’s head wrangler that summer when I was seventeen, nearly got himself killed! Apples was not a dangerous horse because she came from a poor bloodline, lacked common “horse sense”, or because she was somehow more ornery than a dozen other horses in the string.
She was a menace because she was fully five years old before we had paid her any attention. She was the equine equivalent of a teenager. It was too late, too dangerous, and too time-consuming to begin working with the large animal now. Just a few summers before, she would have been small, cute, and teachable.
A couple weeks ago, I watched a horse trainer on a renowned Wyoming ranch quietly training a youngster. Calmly, quietly, and deliberately, that cowboy was preparing that animal to be useful for the time when its’ strength and size will match its’ willingness. That is how it is supposed to work!
Each year here at the Ranch, we put skinny, little junior boys and girls up on big Ranch horses weighing up to a thousand pounds! The horses are stronger, larger, and more trail-savvy than the featherweight buckaroos on their backs, but they mind their manners and obey their riders. Why?
They mind because they learned to obey when they were just young, wobbly-legged foals, and they just kept it up as they grew. This is the goal and method of every good horse-trainer.
We don’t wait until a horse is big, cranky, and dangerous to slap a saddle on his back, and then wait for the fireworks to begin! We start working with a horse the week his momma drops him.
Do you suppose your children are as smart as a horse? Don’t you think they are much more valuable? Does it not stand to reason that if a wrangler can consistently train horses, a godly parent should be able to do the same thing with children possessing eternal souls?
The little rebellions that make a father grin and say, “Well, she just has a mind of her own!” will break his heart when his daughter is sixteen. The little habits, good or bad, that seem insignificant when a child is a year old will have the cumulative power to chart his course for years to come.
You need not be extraordinary to be a good parent, but you must be consistent and start early. There is grace available for a late start, but it is better to seek God’s grace at the very beginning.