You feel and listen to the horse. The experience of the results of his response helps you understand for the next time.
Tom Dorrance
Ride your horse with your whole body, not just with your arms and legs.
Ray Hunt
Once the horse gets to responding, then you try to get the response you are asking for with less. You try to cut down what you are applying and get more response with less pressure, until it almost gets to be just a thought.
Tom Dorrance
One has to have an immobile hand with mobile fingers.
Nuno Oliveira
Feel the whole Horse: When I observe people and horses, it often seems to me that when the horse is trying to avoid something, or maybe is not doing what the rider asks of him, it is because the horse’s sense of self preservation is immediately taking effect. This may seem as though the horse does not want to cooperate. But the rider needs to recognize the whole horse; the horse has basic need for self preservation.
Tom Dorrance
The rider needs to recognize the horse’s need for self-preservation in mind, body, and the third factor spirit…….he needs to realize how the person’s approach can assure the horse that he can have his self-preservation and still respond to what the person is asking him to do.
Tom Dorrance
Where you end up your ride on a horse is so important. It’s a little bit like when you were young and you were datingthat last two minutes of the date can be a real deal breaker. With these horses it’s the same thing… You got to quit on a good note.
Buck Brannaman
Listen to the horse. Try to find out what the horse is trying to tell you. All we are trying to do is fix things up to where he can find them; then it’s the horse’s idea.
Tom Dorrance
A lot of people, they want it all to be fuzzy and warm and cosmic, but it’s no different with a horse than with a kid…You can’t always be the kid’s best friend. First you have to be the parent.
Buck Brannaman
Don’t have the tendency to want to hurry and not let the horse find it. You fix and wait for them to find it; then it’s their idea when they move their feet.
Tom Dorrance
