What does it mean when people say their horse needs finished?
As you are probably noticing, the term ‘finished’ is pretty vague in the horse world. It’s kinda like the term ‘green broke’. It used to be that a green broke horse was a horse that could do all basics– walk trot canter back turn lead follow. It was a broke horse that didn’t have ‘miles’ on it. It hadn’t been ridden usually more than a couple months, or four months at most. A finished horse was ready to be used in whatever it was trained for. So a finished cutting horse would be ready to cut cows in a way that would either be show worthy, or ranch worthy. A green broke cutting horse would be ready to really look at cows, and probably had cut a few cows, but wasn’t really practiced enough to be a help in the cutting arena. In other words, it was like a green tomato– it looks like one, but it isn’t quite ready for use yet. 🙂 Unfortunately, now those two terms are nearly dangerous. Green has become any horse that ever had a saddle and rider on, even if it was one time in the back of an
