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30 Best Horsemanship Quotes & Sayings

30 Best Horsemanship Quotes & Sayings

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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
Quotes and captions for natural horsemanship lovers
Fotokostic / Shutterstock.com

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
Girl practing horsemanship with her horse quotes
kyslynskahal / Shutterstock.com

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.