02/17/2026
In the early 1900s, on a cattle ranch in Oregon, two brothers learned to work with horses the old way.
The way of the Great Basin buckaroos—rooted in the vaquero traditions that stretched back to Spanish California.
The way of feel, patience, and respect.
Their names were Bill Dorrance and Tom Dorrance.
And though they never sought fame, they would transform the relationship between horses and humans forever.
Bill Dorrance was born on January 19, 1906.
His younger brother Tom followed on May 11, 1910.
They grew up on their family's Oregon ranch, learning horsemanship from their father, Church Dorrance, and their older brothers Fred and Jim.
In a family of great horsemen, Tom was considered the best.
But both brothers shared a philosophy that set them apart from the dominant methods of their time.
Most cowboys believed in "breaking" horses—using force, fear, and dominance to bend the animal's will.
Bigger bits. Bigger spurs. Bigger sticks.
The Dorrance brothers believed in something else entirely.
Tom Dorrance didn't believe in breaking horses.
He believed in listening.
He watched how horses moved, how they thought, how they communicated with each other.
He learned to read the slightest shift in a horse's body language—the position of an ear, the look in an eye, the tension in a muscle.
He developed what he called "feel"—the ability to sense what a horse needed and respond with the lightest possible touch.
"The thing you are trying to help the horse do is to use his own mind," Tom said. "You are trying to present something and then let him figure out how to get there."
It wasn't about forcing the horse to obey.
It was about creating an environment where the horse wanted to cooperate.
Where trust replaced fear.
Where partnership replaced domination.
Tom often asked: "What happened, before what happened happened?"
He taught people to look deeper—to understand the root cause of a horse's behavior rather than just reacting to the symptom.
Bill Dorrance carried the same wisdom.
He spent the last 50 years of his life at his Mt. Toro Ranch in Salinas, California, riding and roping until two weeks before his death.
He was renowned not just as a horseman but as a rawhide braider and master roper.
Bill wrote a book called True Horsemanship Through Feel, co-authored with Leslie Desmond.
In it, he explained: "Feel is the language of horses."
The book became a classic—lavishly illustrated, packed with detailed wisdom that had previously only been available by word of mouth.
Bill poured his heart, mind, and soul into sharing what he knew.
Both brothers believed that horsemanship wasn't about ribbons or accolades.
It was about the relationship between horse and human.
But Tom and Bill were "home people."
They worked on their ranches. They helped neighbors and friends. They avoided publicity.
Tom especially shunned media attention and clinics.
If their philosophy was going to reach beyond a handful of buckaroos in the Great Basin, it needed someone willing to take it to the world.
That person was Ray Hunt.
Ray Hunt was born on August 31, 1929, in Idaho.
He grew up on a ranch between Mountain Home and Bruneau, where his father raised workhorses and worked as a teamster during the 1930s.
As a young man, Ray worked on ranches in Nevada, then moved to California, starting young horses on various ranches.
And he had a problem.
A horse named Hondo.
Hondo was talented—but he bucked. Violently.
Ray was struggling, frustrated, on the verge of giving up.
Around 1960, at the Elko County Fair in Nevada, Ray met Bill Dorrance.
Bill mentioned his younger brother Tom was "pretty good with horses."
Tom agreed to visit Ray's place in California that fall.
When Tom arrived, Ray led Hondo into the barn, saddled him, and led him to a corral.
The moment Ray stepped back, Hondo exploded.
Bucking. Squealing. Out of control.
Tom watched quietly.
Then he said something that changed Ray's life:
"That's the last thing in the world that horse wants to do."
Ray thought Tom must be looking the other way.
Then Tom added: "Ray, your kids will be riding him."
Ray didn't understand. But he believed Tom.
For seven years, Ray tried to understand what Tom was teaching him.
It was maddening. Tom didn't give step-by-step instructions. He offered sparse observations and let people figure things out for themselves.
"If people figure a thing out for themselves," Tom said, "maybe it'll stick with them a while."
Then one morning, after seven years of trying, Ray woke up and thought: "Aw, to heck with it. I'll just ride my horse for today."
He saddled his horse and started off.
When he looked in a direction, the horse went there.
When he looked back, the horse went back.
"My God," Ray realized. "Tom said to 'fix it up and let him find it,' but I was so busy doing that I stayed in the horse's way."
The revelation was powerful: A person can sometimes work too hard at something.
The horse was so sensitive that when Ray turned his head, the horse could feel it through the saddle.
"You always try to do less and less with a horse," Ray discovered, "and first thing you know, when you think it, it'll happen."
Hondo became the hackamore working cow horse champion at the 1961 Cow Palace event.
Ray Hunt spent the next 45 years teaching what Tom Dorrance had taught him.
While Tom avoided publicity, Ray gave clinics across the country—and eventually around the world.
He started each clinic with the same statement:
"I'm here for the horse, to help him get a better deal."
He taught cowboys, ranchers, rodeo riders, and everyday horse owners that trust and respect could achieve more than force ever could.
"Make the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy," he liked to say.
He taught people to think like a horse.
To understand that the horse is "a living, feeling, decision-making animal."
By the mid-1970s, Ray Hunt was giving clinics far and wide, spreading the philosophy that might otherwise have remained known only to a handful of buckaroos.
The movement they started became known as natural horsemanship.
Though the term can mean many things, at its core it's about working with what's natural for the horse within his own boundaries.
"It isn't natural for a horse to be around people," the Dorrance brothers noted, "and it's not natural for a person to be sitting on him either."
But if you work with the horse's nature rather than against it—if you communicate in the horse's language—you can achieve true partnership.
Their influence spread like ripples in water.
Buck Brannaman, who studied under Ray Hunt, became one of the most famous natural horsemen in the world—and the inspiration for the novel and film The Horse Whisperer.
Pat Parelli credits Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt as mentors and built an empire teaching natural horsemanship.
Martin Black, a world-famous horseman and clinician, often cites his experiences with Tom and his regrets at not studying more carefully under Tom's tutelage.
Countless other trainers—known and unknown—carry the philosophy forward.
At Tom Dorrance's memorial service in 2003, Bill's son Steve explained why Ray Hunt was so crucial:
"Dad and Uncle Tom could never have taken this level of horsemanship to the world because they were 'home people.' If it wasn't for Ray Hunt taking this horsemanship to the world, it would have died two weeks before when Uncle Tom passed away on June 11, 2003."
Bill Dorrance rode until two weeks before he died on July 20, 1999, at age 93.
Tom Dorrance passed away on June 11, 2003, at age 93.
Ray Hunt died on March 12, 2009, at age 79, after battling COPD.
But their legacy lives on.
Today, when you see a trainer working with a horse using patience instead of force—
When you see a rider communicating with the lightest touch—
When you see a horse and human moving together in harmony, as if reading each other's minds—
You're seeing the legacy of the Dorrance brothers and Ray Hunt.
Their books remain classics:
Tom's True Unity: Willing Communication Between Horse and Human
Bill's True Horsemanship Through Feel
Ray's Think Harmony With Horses
Their students and their students' students teach around the world.
Their philosophy has transformed how millions of people think about horses.
They never sought Hollywood lights or fame.
They were quiet, modest men who simply wanted to help horses get a better deal.
"Everything I learned, I learned from the horse," Tom Dorrance said.
But that wasn't quite true.
What Tom, Bill, and Ray learned from horses, they gave back to the world—multiplied a thousandfold.
They showed us that you don't need force to lead.
That the quietest approach can create the deepest connection.
That partnership is more powerful than domination.
That listening is stronger than demanding.
