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Behind every good rider is a solid understanding of horsemanship. No matter what discipline you ride, good horsemanship is fundamental for success.
These horsemanship quotes offer wonderful advice that every equestrian can learn from. No matter your experience level, there is always room to learn and grow. Equestrians should always be looking for ways to strengthen their skills and relationship with their horses.
Some of the greatest names in the industry, from Clinton Anderson to Charlotte Dujardin, have exceptional advice for every rider. These quotes and sayings are game changing, helping you improve both in and out of the saddle. Riders of all disciplines can benefit from these wise words.
Horsemanship Quotes and Sayings
Take the time it takes so it takes less time.
Pat Parelli
If you are only a student of technique, then the options become very limited. On the other hand, when you are a student of the horse, the options are unlimited.
Mark Rashid
Whatever a horse is forced to do, it will do without understanding and beauty. Just like a dancer who gets abused would dance; without grace.
Xenophon
Thinking ahead is the key to good horsemanship. If the horse wants to leave, and we don’t feel that until the first step has already been stepped, then we create resistance when we ask the horse to wait. Everything becomes so much softer when we already feel the movement before it even happens, and are able to respond to it early on.
Jan Leitschuh
It’s always good horsemanship to experience other disciplines firsthand.
George Morris
Horsemanship should be fun. By learning how to control your horse in any situation, your confidence will greatly increase. When you’re confident, you can relax and enjoy your partnership.
Clinton Anderson
If you act like you’ve only got fifteen minutes, it will take all day. Act like you’ve got all day, it will take fifteen minutes.
Monty Roberts
Every transition you ride should be a good one, because this is your foundation.
Charlotte Dujardin
Horse training is not about fixing the horse. It’s about fixing your leadership.
Linda Parelli
Also Read: 10 Interesting Facts About Pat & Linda Parelli
Hands are the hardest thing to learn and the hardest thing to teach. They relate to a person’s temperament – passive, tense, soft, relaxed…A rider should always try to improve his hands.
George Morris
Masterful horsemanship is nothing more than simple things done with excellence.
Pat Parelli
One of the primary ways horses communicate with us is through their behavior. Again, it is my belief horses don’t distinguish between how they feel and how they act. So if they act a certain way, their actions are reflecting the way they feel. A horse’s body then becomes a mirror for their emotions. So the body informs us of what is truly going on internally.
Mark Rashid
Punishment as a training tool should be obsolete. Your horse wants peace with you and he’ll adapt his life to achieve it.
John Lyons
Get creative…or your horse will.
Craig Johnson
You can’t train a horse that is not on your side.
Don Murphy
Enter the ring like you want to be seen, not like you’ve been pushed in.
Gayle Lampe
Horsemanship, good horsemanship, is intuition combined with knowledge and wisdom. Having only one of these three is like a butterfly without wings. It can’t go anywhere, it can’t complete ‘normal’ tasks and when it wants to fly, it can’t get off the ground. It can’t do anything but hopping around on the ground for a while… Knowledge without wisdom is dangerous, very dangerous. Intuition without knowledge is a weak foundation, to say the least. And wisdom? That simply can’t exist without the other two!
Gwenyth Browning Jones Santagate
As a rider, you must slowly and methodically show your horse what is appropriate. You also have to discourage what’s inappropriate, not by making the inappropriate impossible, but by making it difficult so that the horse himself chooses appropriate behavior. You can’t choose it for him; you can only make it difficult for him to make the wrong choices. If, however, you make it impossible for him to make the wrong choices, you’re making war.
Buck Brannaman
There’s never a time when losing patience benefits you in training a horse.
Casey Deary
Learn from each and every horse you ride. Every horse has something to teach you, and sometimes you don’t realize what that lesson is until years later!
Carl Hester
Discipline isn’t a dirty word. Far from it. Discipline is the one thing that separates us from chaos and anarchy. Discipline implies timing. It’s the precursor to good behavior, and it never comes from bad behavior. People who associate discipline with punishment are wrong: with discipline, punishment is unnecessary.
Buck Brannaman
To maximize the talent of your horse, you want a teammate, not a servant.
Kent Farrington
Horsemanship is the one art form which it seems one needs only practice. However, practice without true principles is nothing other than routine, the fruit of which is a strained and unsure execution, a false diamond which dazzles semi-connoisseurs often more impressed by the accomplishments of the horse than the merit of the horseman.
François Robichon de la Gueriniere
If you say nothing to a horse, you mean nothing to a horse. We have to be in a conversation and teaching them.
Robert Dover
It is not the great trainer who can cause his horse to perform. The great trainer can cause a horse to want to perform.
Monty Roberts
Also Read: 10 Interesting Facts & FAQs About Monty Roberts
The application and release of pressure can be the rise or fall of a horse.
Kalley Krickerberg
The horse may not be doing the thing that is the right thing for what the rider is asking him, but as far as the horse is concerned, he is doing the right thing.
Tom Dorrance
If you say nothing to a horse, you mean nothing to a horse. We have to be in a conversation and teaching them.
Robert Dover
The application and release of pressure can be the rise or fall of a horse.
Kalley Krickerberg
The horse may not be doing the thing that is the right thing for what the rider is asking him, but as far as the horse is concerned, he is doing the right thing.
Tom Dorrance
A horse doesn’t care how much you know, until he knows how much you care.
Pat Parelli
The horse is a mirror. It goes deep into the body. When I see your horse I see you too. It shows me everything you are, everything about the horse.
Ray Hunt
I believe the more knowledgeable you are as a horse owner, the better leader you are and the more you’ll enjoy your partnership with your horse.
Clinton Anderson
We hoped you liked our list of horsemanship and horse training quotes. Also, read our other quote lists such as Dressage Quotes and Winston Churchill Quotes About Horses.