# 3 Dreams Do Come True

​I once had a very vivid dream, one that I still remember to this day. I was on a school bus, one of those that has a van front, and a small bus rear. I was driving back-and-forth across the country. Well, I was driving, but my dream was flashing back and forth between me being in the bus and me watching all of this happen from above, as if I was a watching a toy-train. In my dream, I would stop at each coast, get out, look around for a few seconds, then get right back in the bus. The interesting part…every time I would get off the bus, no matter what coast I was on, I would start getting bombed. Yes, actual bombs dropping out if the sky; but, I never got hit. While I was driving, everything would be OK - smooth sailing - but I was definitely anxious. I must have driven back and forth from coast to coast about 10 times. Finally, I got off the bus on the east coast, one last time and the bombing stopped. Just like that... then I woke up.
I had this dream in my early 20s, before the horses; probably 2002. I was living in Dublin, PA in a rental property that my parents owned. I had my dogs, Jack and Kit Kat, and two cats.
Fast forward to 2006... after the John Lyons Certification, Tim Doud and I traveled our separate ways but we stayed in touch. Business on the east coast was not picking up; I had one good day out of four months. In early 2007, Tim knew my plight and asked if I wanted to come out to Wyoming to help him train for a long list of clients that had mules; mollys, johns, babies to be started and some problem mules. Of course I jumped at the offer; anything to keep training. I made a plan to stay for a month or two, gain some experience and then head back to PA and start advertising again. Two months turned into three, then...in June of ‘07, I bought my first farm, in Cody, Wyoming; 12 acres about eight miles down the South Fork on Road 6RT. Cody was a town of 9,000; and the next closest town was 26 miles away. The entire county, Park County, which included Yellowstone National Park, had a population of 25,000 people total; that is the same as the total number of students that attend University of Pennsylvania (Penn) annually. I started advertising everywhere, which included other towns, counties and even states; Nebraska, Montana, Colorado, Idaho and even Utah.

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The first equines I trained in Wyoming were very different than anything I’d ever worked with before. I kinda got thrown in the fire; two molly mules, one was a draft cross and the other a quarter horse cross. The draft cross was very quiet; the QH, not so much. The owners wanted me to get these mules broke to ride in 30 days. I was now certified, so it was going to be easy, right.
Fuck no! It was hard as hell. The QH was terrified of everything; I would get so mad that I couldn’t figure out how to get this thing to do what I was telling it to do. Hell, I just did it with a few horses at John Lyons. Why weren’t these mules listening?
Every day for 30 days I hustled. What I didn’t realize is the amount of time we worked at John Lyons - 8 hours a day - we got so much more done! I worked the mules I had in training for one hour a day. Big difference... I got the draft mule broke to ride, but the QH was not even close; she was saddled and worked in the round pen, but she wasn’t letting me on. I used tarps, ropes, you name it; but she wasn’t budging. Why wasn’t this working? I was finally resigned to the fact that I had to tell my first client that I failed, I didn’t get the job done.
They gave me one more month, but still a total failure. I was devastated and so embarrassed. They hired me to do this job and I couldn’t get it done. Could I actually do this?
I came across many more equines like that QH mule; an untouched seven year old QH gelding that the owners wanted me to get broke in two months. When I say untouched… I had to load him on the trailer by backing up to the round pen and driving him in like cattle. A 17.2h Irish Draught stallion that would charge you, teeth showing, as soon as you opened the gate to his pasture. We got him into the round pen by building a chute from his pasture, which was about 50 yards away. A Molly mule who’s owner would rope her, tie her up and lay her down to saddle and trim her feet - that scenario tore me apart. I had no choice but to learn how to get the job done. If this is what I wanted to do for a living, help equines, then I was going to have to figure this out.
What I eventually learned was that the first QH Molly mule that I trained wasn’t ready to be ridden; she needed more time, and that the seven year old QH gelding was too scared and needed to be a pack horse first before he could be a riding horse, and that the Molly mule that was roped and tied up had so much emotional damage that she was more likely going to be a pasture mule than a productive working mule. It was going to take more desensitization, more exposure, more experience on my part to know how to get these equines to where they needed to be.
That dream I had in my early 20’s... I finally figured out what it meant... the life of a professional is tumultuous, steep learning curves, lots of life experience gained but not without a lot of blood, sweat and tears. It’s never a smooth ride if you want to be good at something and hopefully one day be respected. You will get cut down, and pushed around and if you want it bad enough, you will get off the bus and the bombs will stop and you will have something to show for it. That something is the ability to do your job and hopefully well... From the Ground Up.

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