Cowboys are a superstitious lot, and Jordan Larson is no exception.

The Whitesboro, Texas, trainer neither wears yellow in the arena nor puts his hat on a bed. He also considers it unlucky to talk to anyone when he has the highest score and won’t do so until the competition is over and he is declared the winner.

But when he told his wife, Taylor, the he wanted to win the National Reining Horse Association Futurity before he was 30, Jordan feared he might have jinxed himself for voicing his goal out loud.

“I thought earlier in the year I had the chance to win the futurity because I had what I thought was one of the best horses I’ve ever had, but I ended up losing him,” the 29-year-old said.

With Jordan’s best horse out of the picture and his 30th birthday coming up on March 21, it didn’t look good for the reiner—that was until he received a phone call from a friend, California trainer Billy Williams, about a talented 3-year-old Paint.