Tudo Abrangente Horsemanship

10/18/2026

This so relates to rein contact in riding.

10/17/2026

Influencing the thoracic sling begins with understanding and working with the horse’s nature and seeing the whole horse, and I think this is one of the distinctions between horsemen and horse people.

We can talk about the thoracic sling and its functions, understand the biomechanics, do all the correct exercises, ride the right way, and do all the right bodywork. But unless we can truly reach the horse, especially when he's troubled, I don't believe we ever fully experience the purity that comes with a horse truly letting down and opening himself up.

And I don’t mean simply a state of relaxation or the absence of resistance. I’m talking about something much deeper than that. A state of mutual respect, humility, honesty, and truly seeing one another. There is so much a horse tells us through his body, in the nuances and subtleties of how he moves, carries himself, and responds to us. Sometimes a horse can be doing exactly what we’ve asked, yet something about him tells us he isn’t quite there. Other times he may be struggling, but we can feel that he’s genuinely with us, trying to find his way through it. There is a difference between a horse who is simply going through the motions and one who is truly participating.

This is where working with the horse’s nature becomes so important to me. Horses are not always quiet, agreeable, or comfortable, and good horsemanship isn’t necessarily pretty. Sometimes what the horse is expressing is difficult, and sometimes we find ourselves in conflict. But I believe much of the relationship is developed in those moments, when we are capable of recognizing what the horse is telling us and working toward a genuine resolution. Not by avoiding conflict or simply insisting on obedience, but through an honest exchange in which both horse and human come away with a better understanding of one another.

One can try to get the thoracic sling engaged through various exercises, and while I certainly believe those exercises have their place, I always seem to come back to the same conclusion. Return to the foundation and work with the horse’s mind first. Because if the horse’s mind isn’t in it, he isn’t really there.

What we have instead is obedience without presence, without brio, without the horse showing up as who he really is.

I think we can become so focused on what the horse’s body is doing that we lose sight of what he’s expressing through it. We can teach him to perform an exercise, hold a posture, or respond to an aid, and everything may appear correct from the outside. But there is a difference between a horse who has learned how to give us the right answer and one who is truly participating in what we’re doing.

And I think that can give us a false sense of security and even a false sense of relationship. We mistake obedience for understanding, compliance for willingness, and the absence of conflict for trust. Meanwhile, we may have never really gotten to know the horse underneath all of that training.

I think it’s possible to have the best intentions, to genuinely care about the horse and believe we’re doing right by him, and still become so focused on getting the responses we want that we lose sight of the horse himself. I want the horse to have an opinion. I want him to be able to express himself, and I want to understand what he’s telling me. That doesn’t mean allowing him to do whatever he wants, nor does it mean avoiding the responsibility of guiding him through difficult things. It means being willing to have an honest conversation, even when that conversation involves conflict.

And I think the same has to be true for us. An authentic relationship doesn’t require either of us to be perfect, and I don’t believe we can give ourselves fully to a relationship if we’re constantly trying to remain agreeable, quiet, or nice. We are human, and sometimes we have bad days. Sometimes we get frustrated, misjudge something, or ask more than we should have. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold ourselves accountable, but I don’t think we need to be riddled with guilt over every mistake either. There has to be room for honesty on both sides, including the moments when we get it wrong.

I’ve often wondered whether, in our efforts to be kind and fair to horses, we sometimes become so concerned with never creating discomfort or conflict that we stop being fully present ourselves. We hold back, second-guess our instincts, and become more concerned with doing everything right than with what is actually happening between us and the horse. And I think the horse can feel that uncertainty just as much as he can feel our frustration. Neither of us is really giving ourselves over to the relationship when we’re constantly trying to maintain an appearance of harmony.

To me, there is something much more meaningful in a relationship that has been tested, where mistakes have been made, disagreements have happened, and we’ve found our way through them. Not because conflict itself makes a relationship stronger, but because the honesty, understanding, and resolution that can come from it allow us to know one another more fully.

At the end of the day, I judge my work through the horses themselves. Not just by how they respond or how much they’ve improved physically, but by how they relate to me. Even after difficult moments, when a horse comes over to see me, or whinnies when he sees me the next day, that means something to me. It tells me something about what exists between us beyond the work itself. I am constantly questioning myself, reflecting on what I could have done differently, and trying to become better at what I do. I don’t always get it right, and I don’t expect that I ever will. But when a horse continues to seek me out, to engage with me, and to willingly meet me again after we’ve worked through something difficult, I take that as a meaningful reflection of our relationship. It doesn’t mean I was right in everything I did, but it gives me confidence that, despite my imperfections, something important is coming through. And to me, that is the part that matters most.

There is a quality that comes through in a horse when he is genuinely with you that I don’t believe can be manufactured through exercises alone. His expression changes, his movement changes, and there is a willingness and a certain pride in the way he carries himself. He isn’t simply performing what he has been taught. He is participating, and his individuality is still very much present in the work.

I don’t believe this means we should disregard biomechanics or that the mind alone will develop the body correctly. The physical work is important, and understanding how to help a horse organize himself is part of our responsibility. But I think we need to be careful not to confuse our ability to influence the horse’s body with our ability to truly reach the horse.

The quality of the physical work depends so much on the quality of the relationship underneath it. And I think that relationship develops through learning to recognize the horse in all those little moments that are so easy to overlook. Through understanding his nature, paying attention to what he expresses through his body, and becoming sensitive enough to recognize the difference between what he is doing and how he is doing it.

Perhaps that is one of the biggest differences between knowing how to train a horse and becoming a horseman. We can spend a lifetime learning how to influence the horse’s body, but unless we are equally committed to understanding the horse who lives within it, I think we will always be missing something essential.

10/11/2026

Tudo Abrangente Horsemanship is relocating near Bridger MT.
I still plan on coming back to the north west to teach and conduct clinics. The monthly clinics will probably be held every other month, but the other clinics should be scheduled as usual. I will still be around the area until late fall so I’ll be seeing most of you before I leave. Oregon has been really good to me, thank you all! A very special thanks to April and all those at Paradise Ranch. Working out of your facility has been amazing, you all have made it such a pleasure to be there for these past years.

10/07/2026

Introducing a horse to cow work and building its confidence. Cow clinic coming up October 22 and 23. Contact Linda Riley: Candor Horsemanship for more information.

10/01/2026

09/30/2026

A great moment from my cow working clinic this past May. I will be conducting another cow working clinic this coming October 22 and 23rd. This clinic will be held at Paradise Ranch Horse Boarding. Please contact Linda Riley: Candor Horsemanship for registration and more information. Afternoon spots still available. Auditors welcome.

09/21/2026

One of the biggest issues I see with riders is that they are afraid to move. We have hounded “steady hands” into people so much that steadiness has become rigidity.

A steady hand is not a hand that doesn’t move. It is a hand that can follow the movement of the horse without creating unnecessary noise. The horse is moving underneath us constantly—his head and neck move, his back moves, his balance changes—and our hands have to be able to move with that.

And I think we also need to understand that the amount of movement we see in the rider’s hands is going to change depending on the development of both the horse and the rider.

This isn’t just about beginner riders having less refined hands. A green or poorly balanced horse may need considerably more help from the rider as he learns to organize himself. If his balance is moving around, your body has to be dynamic enough to move with it and help him find his way back toward center. Your hands are part of that. Sometimes they need to make larger adjustments because the horse himself is making larger adjustments.

The goal is not to eliminate that movement, but to make it purposeful and to keep returning toward center. As the horse becomes stronger, more organized and more capable of carrying his own balance, those corrections become smaller. The rider becomes more refined because the horse becomes more refined.

Eventually, what we see from the outside looks like an incredibly steady pair of hands. But the hands haven’t stopped moving. They are still following the horse constantly. The difference is that the horse’s balance has become steadier, so the movement required to stay with him has become smaller and less visible.

That is very different from teaching someone to hold their hands still.

If we try to manufacture the finished picture before the horse has the balance to create it, the rider often ends up fixing their hands in place and asking the horse to conform to them. Instead of the hand helping the horse find balance, it becomes another thing he has to negotiate around.

Quietness should be the result of greater balance and refinement, not rigidity. The goal isn’t to make the hands look still. It is to make them responsive enough that, as the horse becomes more balanced, there is simply less and less that needs to be seen.

09/04/2026

This is a really thoughtful and very truthful article Miriam.

Here’s a hot take: I think science is great. Science is important. I think we should study it, learn from it and allow it to challenge what we think we know.

But I also think we have to be careful about the place we give it.

Science is not the end all be all. It is not everything there is to know. It is a snapshot of what we understand at a particular period in time, based on the questions we have thought to ask and the things we have figured out how to measure.

Our understanding changes. New information challenges old information. There are variables we haven’t accounted for, questions we haven’t thought to ask yet, and things we simply don’t have the ability to measure.

Science can give us what we believe to be certainty, and certainty gives us comfort. Not because science itself is necessarily certain or predictable, but because a scientific explanation gives us something that feels concrete to hold onto. We can name it, measure it, categorize it and explain it.

There is comfort in that.

It is much less comfortable to stand in front of a horse and admit that we don’t entirely know. To feel something we don’t yet have language for. To recognize that what we know may not explain what is happening with this horse, in this moment.

But I think that discomfort is an important part of horsemanship. Because the danger isn’t science. The danger is our desire for certainty.

When we become too certain in what we think we know, we stop being curious. We stop asking questions. And eventually, we can stop listening to the horse.

Science is one way of making sense of the world around us. A very valuable one. But it is not everything.

And when it comes to horses, there is one limitation we can never get around:

We are not horses.

All of the science in the world will never allow us to see exactly what a horse sees, hear exactly what a horse hears, smell or taste exactly what a horse does, or feel the world through their body the way they do.

We can study those things. We can try to measure them. We can learn an incredible amount about their sensory systems, their nervous system, their movement, their behavior and the way they communicate.

But we are still interpreting the horse through a human body, a human mind, and a human experience.

I think there has to be some humility in that.

We can study all of the science. We can study biomechanics, learning theory, behavior, anatomy, physiology, the nervous system and horse communication. We can learn all of the terminology and understand all of the concepts. But until you can feel the horse, and feel yourself, and understand why something feels good to the horse and good to you, it is all still just concepts and theory.

At some point it has to become horsemanship.

You have to be able to feel when the horse’s body changes beneath you. Feel when something becomes easier. Feel when resistance is actually imbalance. Feel when you are creating tension instead of resolving it. Feel when your own body is interfering. Feel the difference between getting a response and actually helping the horse find something.

And then you have to understand why.

That doesn’t mean abandoning science in favor of intuition.

Science can help us make sense of what we feel. It can challenge what we thought we felt. It can show us where our assumptions may be wrong. It can give us language for things horsemen have observed and felt for a very long time, and it can show us things we may never have discovered on our own.

But feel is where that knowledge becomes usable.

You can know every muscle in the horse’s body and still not know what it feels like when a horse truly lifts beneath you.

You can understand the nervous system and still miss the moment the horse begins to leave you.

You can study communication and still have no feel for timing.

You can know a tremendous amount about horses and still struggle to be with the horse standing in front of you.

And I think this is where we have to be careful.

Because when I see people diminish the horse into its parts, I fear we have lost a sense of who they are as a whole.

The horse is more than whatever part of them we happen to be studying.

They are not simply biomechanics. They are not simply a nervous system. They are not simply behavior. They are not a collection of measurable responses.

They are a living individual experiencing the world in a way we can study, but never completely experience ourselves.

And somewhere in all of our knowing, I think we can forget about the soul of who that horse is.

Not in some romantic sense that ignores the fact that they are horses. Of course they are horses. Understanding the nature of the horse is incredibly important.

But this is also *this* horse.

This horse has a history. Preferences. Sensitivities. Expression. Ways of protecting himself. Ways of becoming curious. Ways of engaging with us. Ways of telling us yes, no, not yet, I don’t understand, that helped, that didn’t.

And if we become so busy explaining and intellectualizing the horse that we stop listening to them, then what good is all of our knowledge?

This is why I don’t think science and feel belong on opposite sides of an argument.

We need both.

Study the science.

Learn the biomechanics. Learn anatomy. Learn about the nervous system and behavior and communication. Let it challenge you. Let it expose the places where tradition or intuition may have led us wrong.

But then go back to the horse.

Put your hands on them.

Ride them.

Watch them.

Feel what changes when you change.

Feel the horse, and feel yourself.

Notice when something feels good to both of you and become curious about why.

Because ultimately, that is where everything we think we know has to hold up.

Horsemanship cannot exist only in our heads.

At some point knowledge has to travel through our hands, our bodies and our awareness and become feel.

Science can tell us an extraordinary amount about horses. I hope we never stop studying them and questioning what we think we know.

But all the science in the world will still never make us a horse.

And I think remembering that is important.

I think maybe the greatest danger isn’t that we don’t know enough. Maybe it’s becoming so certain in what we think we know that we stop listening to the horse and ourselves.