Doing groundwork with horses is important on many levels. Groundwork helps horses learn how to move from front quarters and hind quarters,

Being prey animals, horses are hard wired for fear. Evolution has favored the horse who uses fear to stay out of the way of predators.

Doing bodywork with our horses helps them to be calm, have less pain, and be less frightened.

Many of the horses we work with have large ‘bubbles’ around their heads. This is the space between the horse’s head and you.

Horses need and thrive on leadership. Our work with horses is as a team, but they either must be led, or they will lead us.

Horses live in the present. No past. No future. This is true of all prey animals.

We learn a great deal about horses from just hanging out with a herd and observing their behaviors.

There are two intentions, the horses and ours. If we are sensitive to a horse, we can read her intention before she moves because we are reading where her mind intends to go.

People talk about some horse trainers as ‘horse whisperers’. They are not whispering, they are listening.

Many trainers think their horses have some type of attention deficit.

Many times horses are approached with the thoughts of what can I get from today's ride; this horse will calm me down, this horse will teach me things about myself, this horse will entertain me, and on and on with thoughts about what we will get.

Horse trainers and their devotees talk a great deal about gaining a horse's respect and about disrespectful behavior when the horse is not doing what the human wants the horse to do.

Like people, horses come with their own personalities. They vary in terms of intelligence, physical abilities, anxieties, capacities, etc. For this reason, perhaps the number one behavior the trainer must have is patience.

It might seem ridiculous to think that the ultimate prey can trust the ultimate predator, but it can happen.

Horses have been called giant biofeedback machines because, being prey animals, they are finely tuned to their environment and all animals in it.

Empathy for horses starts with realizing that this prey animal, and this herd of prey animals, is allowing the ultimate predator to walk among it,

Horses are emotional animals. Every bit of behavior is an emotional communication. Horses respond, command, partner with emotions.

It all comes down to yielding, whether it is a branch of bamboo in a strong wind, a relationship worth salvaging, a de-escalation of violence between people, or a trainer wanting to have a horse that yields to what they are asking.