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
When the horse is standing, before you reach to ask him to go forward or back, or turn right or left; before you ask him, have a picture in your mind of what you are going to ask him to do, and how you expect him to respond before you start.
Tom Dorrance
The thing you are trying to help the horse do is to use his own mind. You are trying to present something and then let him figure out how to get there.
Tom Dorrance
You can’t teach feel, you have to experience it.
Bill Dorrance
As the blind person touches the object before him very softly and lightly with his fingertips in order not to interfere with the work of the sensitive nerve ends by too much pressure, so it is the rider’s first obligation to keep soft and natural those parts of his body with which he feels his horse.
Gustav Steinbrecht
You can ask the horse to do your thing, but you ask him; you offer it to him in a good way. You fix it up and let him find it. You do not make anything happen, no more than you can make a friendship begin.
Ray Hunt
Recognize the smallest change, the slightest try.
Ray Hunt
The horse will become supple when it is cadenced, stiff when it rushes.
Nuno Oliveira
Now when the whole horse is together, he will feel good to you, I am sure. All we are trying to do is to fix these things up to where he can find them, then it’s the horse’s idea. But that is a little easier said than done.
Tom Dorrance
The hands have to be like concrete when the horse resists and like butter when he yields.
Nuno Oliveira
