A Quote by Buck Brannaman

Some guys make their careers off one horse; kind of a trick horse, a wonder horse. I'm not knocking that, but for me I'm trying to get better and study. That means taking out new horses. It's a life study. When I've finished a horse, I turn him out and basically stop riding him, except taking him to the occasional branding so I can enjoy him.
I’m not trying to turn you into cowboys, I’m just trying to get you better coordinated, get your horse used to things, get your horse comfortable. Heck, on the first ride you should be swinging a rope off a horse. You should be doing this not so you can rope a cow, but just to get him (your horse) gentle. You can’t think of everything in life your horse might encounter that might make him afraid so you’d better prepare em for it in other ways.
Horses are consistent and logical. The horse will do what is easiest for him. If you make it easy for him to buck you off, kick you, and run away, that’s just what he’s going to do. And more power to him. But if you make it easy for the horse to be relaxed and calm and accurate — and also have it be a beautiful dance between you and the horse — it won’t be too long before he’ll be hunting for that just as hard as you are. Whatever you make easy for the horse, that’s what he’s going to get good at.
So often at home in the West Village, I'm like, 'Why aren't I allowed a horse?' I would keep a horse in a stable in my apartment, and I would fit him with rubber shoes, and we'd just roll him out. If I needed to go to a meeting somewhere, I'd just get on my horse and go across town.
If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven.
You're trying to figure out a way to meet a horse to where he can understand. And to me, it's not to train a horse, it's to try to get the horse with you where it's one mind and one body. You may spend your whole life chasing that, but it's a good thing to chase.
Think of the horse as your partner.and it's all one great dance. That's not to say it's always going to be easy or you won't have to work through issues. But when a horse is troubled or uncomfortable in our world, rather than show contempt for him, you must demonstrate empathy and work to convince him that you mean him no harm. You have some things that you'd like him to do 'with you', as opposed to 'for you'- and the best way to do that is as partners.
You want them to have fun. If I don't like the way a horse looks, if he has his ears pinned back, I'll send him to the farm, let him go be a horse for a while.
The horse responds to comfort, they respond to peace better than about anything else you could do. All he wants you to do is just leave him alone. So if the horse responds to you and you give him a little peace and comfort that means more to him than anything.
I have walked into several pubs, and guys in there have said to me, 'My God, you are the girl off the dancing horse.' They have got no idea about dressage, and they said, 'I can't work out whether you make the horse do that or the horse does it itself - we just couldn't tell - but it brought tears to our eyes.'
Training a horse is above all feeling and trying, according to what you feel, to help the horse and not to force him.
I often tell people that I truly want the horse to be my feet and legs. I want to be an extension of the horse and him to be an extension of me. That's what I'm always working toward when I'm on a horse.
There is a story in Zen circles about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the man on the horse is going somewhere important. Another man standing alongside the road, shouts, «Where are you going?» and the first man replies, «I don't know! Ask the horse!» This is also our story. We are riding a horse, and we don't know where we are going and we can't stop. The horse is our habit energy pulling us along, and we are powerless.
In America, they say, you can take a horse to the pond, but you can't make him drink. My way is different. I only take the horse to the pond to make him drink. If he doesn't, I'll cut his head off.
If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, "what would I do if I were a horse?"
I have no time for real horses, so I have a plastic horse. Large size. Called Max Von Sydow. For photographs it looks real. If I do a photo shoot and it stands in the background, you think it's a horse. A horse is a horse.
Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you're on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. Of course, there are other strategies. You can change riders. You can get a committee to study the dead horse. You can benchmark how other companies ride dead horses. You can declare that it's cheaper to feed a dead horse. You can harness several dead horses together. But after you've tried all these things, you're still going to have to dismount.
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