One of my best childhood friends was named Fred. We went on countless adventures together across the sagebrush expanses and aspen groves we called home. He’d patiently listen to all my youthful woes and worries and hopes and dreams, and always made me feel empowered rather than raining on my parade. I trusted Fred implicitly, and never once did he let me down.

Fred was a stout little palomino with a silver-white mane that caught the summer sun and feet so hard you could cut diamonds with them. He wasn’t so small you’d call him a pony, but you certainly wouldn’t look out into the horse pasture and peg him as some great cow horse. Fred was no Secretariat, he never really figured out how to track a calf, and he was certainly not a fan of a rope swinging around his head. To have any hope of turning him off his predetermined course, he required a curb bit that looked like it might have been used by a Puritan schoolmaster to cleanse his pupils of any impish impulses.

But I’ll be darned if Fred wasn’t the most valuable horse to ever set foot on the Marchant outfit. He was packing me across the rough country of our summer pasture from dawn to dark by the time I was 7. A few years later, Fred had banked enough trust that my parents threw my youngest brother on his back for all-day excursions before he hit his fourth birthday. We kids trusted Fred because we were young and dumb and thought we were invincible. But our parents trusted him because he had earned that trust. It didn’t matter if he got tangled in some barbed wire hidden in the brush, or if his rider got hung up on a low-hanging branch, or a coiled snake started rattling a metre away, or the saddle wasn’t cinched up tight enough and ended up hanging upside-down from his belly while a miniature cowboy scrambled to his feet – that horse would keep his cool and simply excel at his job as the best babysitter in the world.

Being in the cattle business, you know as well as anyone that there are no guarantees. With global trade, politics and the dadgum weather in the shape they’re currently in, there’s an extra dose or two of uncertainty thrown into the pot right now. But if you’ve got a Fred to ride through the storm, odds are you’ll make it to the other side none the worse for wear.

There are precious few equine equivalents to Fred, but I’m willing to bet there’s someone or something that qualifies for the title. Your Fred might be a spouse or a friend or a business partner, a Bible verse or a business model or some other philosophical North Star. Whatever your Fred is, climb aboard and don’t let go. Old Fred’ll take care of you.