When you see a horse that’s troubled, you sort of feel sorry for them, yet that doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t still ask the horse to behave and find a way to fit in and respond to you as well.

Once you have seen quality horsemanship and are exposed to the things you can do to help a horse be gentle and dependable, then why wouldn't you do those things? No matter what your horse's age, you are going to try to offer him the best that you can. If you adjust what you are doing, he will adjust too; horses have an amazing capacity to make changes. There is always hope.

And for 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.

If I had a horse buck with me now, I’m a little disappointed. It’s not the end of the world, but I’m a little disappointed if I couldn’t keep the horse out of trouble, whereas it used to be a source of pride, and now it’s sort of source of shame if I let the horse get lost.

They say nerves heal real slowly. Lots of things about us heal real slowly.

Like Tom Dorrance said, ‘It boiled down to one thing: observe, remember, and compare.’ Do something, observe what you did, remember what you did, compare it to what you were doing before, and adjust.

I don't want the horse to get trained, because training the horse is absolutely finite. But if you get the horse to where he operates as if to be your legs, an extension of you, you've far-exceeded that whole training notion.