06/23/2026
Every horse is so different. What works for one might not for another.
If I were to write a book on horse training, the cover would probably fool a lot of people!
On the cover would be all the rules. The Dos and the donts of Softness,Respect,Forward motion, Body control, Pressure and release.
,Consistency, Timing, Confidence, Collection.
People would buy the book, look at the cover, and think they had horse training figured out. The truth is, the cover isn’t the book.The cover is just a table of contents.The real book starts when you open it.Every chapter would be dedicated to all the reasons the rule doesn’t perfectly apply.
Take a chapter called “Forward Motion.” Sounds simple enough. Keep the horse moving forward. But the entire chapter would be about the exceptions. The horse that’s already too forward. The horse that’s anxious. The horse that’s trying but confused. The horse that’s running through pressure instead of understanding it. Suddenly what looked like a simple rule becomes pages and pages of judgment calls.
Then you turn to the chapter on pressure and release. Again, the rule itself is simple. Apply pressure, release when the horse finds the answer. Yet the chapter would be filled with exceptions. How much pressure? How quickly? What if the horse is dull? What if he’s overly sensitive? What if he’s scared? What if he’s simply testing you? The rule never changes, but the application changes constantly.
The same thing happens with every chapter.
Every principle in horse training is easy to understand when it’s written as a title on a page. The challenge is everything that follows.
What separates great horsemen from average horsemen isn’t that they know more chapter titles. Most horsemen agree on the principles. Most can tell you the rules. Most can repeat the same phrases. The difference is that the great ones have spent years studying the pages underneath the title. They’ve learned the exceptions.
They’ve learned when to follow the rule exactly as written and when to bend it. They’ve learned when to speed up and when to slow down. When to hold a horse accountable and when to give him grace. When to ask for more and when to quit for the day. That’s the part nobody can give you in a social media post. That’s the part nobody can fully teach in a weekend clinic. That’s the part that only comes from experience, mistakes, observation, and thousands of hours spent trying to understand the horse standing in front of you.
The chapter titles are easy.The pages underneath them are where horsemanship lives. And the deeper I get into this industry, the more convinced I am that real horsemen aren’t the people who have memorized the cover of the book.They’re the people who understand the exceptions written on the pages inside.
Written by Dusty Harvey
