It’s not about how much pressure you put on, it’s how good you are at taking it off.

When riding, ask yourself what will my horse get out of it if I get what I want? Many times, human nature is to take and to not give anything back.

There have been so many times over the years where people have said "Man, I thought I was just coming to this deal to get a little handier with my horse" and I'll say "Well, in the beginning, I thought that's all you were coming for too. But it turns out it's about something else."

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.

On a horse there is a perfect position of balance where he doesn't feel like he's pushing you along with him or dragging you along with him. It's like two converging currents in a river, where those currents converge, there is a point where there is no movement, no energy; and that's what you're thinking when you're on the back of a horse.

There's an ancient bond that still exists today between horses and humans, it is even there with people that have never ridden a horse or been around horses. The horse is what settled the entire west. If it weren’t for the horse they’d probably be only a couple hundred miles from where they started. A lot of people don’t realize how much they owe the horse because it’s not so much a part of our culture right now as it used to be.

Anytime you are with a horse, no matter if you are a daily rider or one who just gets a chance to ride to the mailbox, you are interacting with your horse. It is all about the quality of the communication, not the quantity. Doing something right once in a while will far surpass anything done wrong more often.