Outside the Turn

08/19/2026

I absolutely want a beautiful headset—but a headset can be manufactured with a bit, a draw gag, or a martingale. You can position a horse’s nose, pull it behind the vertical, and create the appearance of collection without having impulsion, self-carriage, or control of the feet. A tucked nose does not mean you have the feet—or collection. Period.

True collection is a shortening of the entire horse. The back rounds, the shoulders elevate, the hindquarters lower, and the hind feet step farther underneath the body, making the horse roughly two inches shorter and two inches taller. When the horse is carrying itself correctly, the poll should be the highest point and the nose should remain slightly in front of the vertical.

That is why I focus on the headset last: I want the reins connected to the feet. First, I teach the horse what each rein means to each foot and help the horse learn to carry itself properly and become light in the front end. When I have the feet and ask for a soft feel, I typically get the beautiful headset too—but I’m not going to manufacture it before I have the feet.

**tstarter **tstarting

08/18/2026

**Training Tip Tuesday: People need a release, too.**

I hired a young woman to help me for the month of August because I was short an assistant. She has been an absolute sponge. She grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, and farm kids just seem to hit differently. They know how to work, they aren’t afraid to be curious, and they aren’t afraid to try something they’ve never done before.

What I appreciate most about her, though, is that she genuinely wants to better herself—and she knows there is still plenty she doesn’t know. That kind of humility and curiosity can be hard to find in the horse industry, where too many people become certain they have a “program” before they really understand how or why any of it works. She isn’t just looking for a list of steps; she wants to understand the purpose behind them.

This is her last week here. On Friday, she’ll leave to student teach and finish her college education, and I keep thinking about how much of what she has learned here will apply in her classroom. Good students—whether they have two legs or four—need room to try, get it wrong, adjust, and try again. But the teacher still has to recognize the moment the student is headed in the right direction.

That is what the release does for a horse. It says, “Yes. That was the answer I was looking for.” If we miss that moment, add more pressure, or expect perfection before we acknowledge the try, we make learning harder than it needs to be. And that’s often what gets us bucked off, run away with, or stepped on—because the horse is still trying to find an answer, just not the one we wanted.

So this week, pay attention to the try—not just the finished result. Whether you’re teaching a horse or a person, remember that the release is what helps the lesson make sense.

**tstarter **tstarting

08/18/2026

I didn’t get to ride today, but it wasn’t a wasted day. I took the dogs to the vet, handled some administrative work, and gave Lewie and Fireball an additional day off.

If I choose to enter the Fizz Bomb Classic, I’ll be gone the next five weekends in a row. I try to adjust my riding schedule around the runs my horses will be making, so Lewie and Fireball will be ridden Tuesday through Thursday, make runs Saturday and Sunday, and then come home to reset before we repeat the process the following week—for weeks.

I think it’s important for both horses and people to have time to mentally reset and rest. But resting doesn’t mean we stop setting goals, telling ourselves we’re winners, or picturing ourselves in the winner’s circle.

More than once today, I imagined the perfect run on both Fireball and Lewie. I pictured myself staying quiet, riding with good timing, and clearly showing each mare where I wanted her feet to go. I even pictured myself in the winner’s circle, because every day those mares let me throw a leg over them, I’m already winning.

We all have the opportunity to train our brains toward positivity, and not every part of that training happens in the saddle. When you pictured your future today, what did you see going right?

08/18/2026

These are THE BEST messages! I love getting updates from the folks I coach! This girl is putting in the work.

She’s using my drills to keep her horse’s feet moving and body supple!

Keep it up, Hannah!!!!!

08/17/2026

How to remove the halter from under your bridle. Works with any kind of halter- we just prefer a rope halter.

08/17/2026

08/17/2026

Ms Lewie Lewie (Lewie/ Lew Lew/ Lewis).
By Big Lew out of First Black Rose.

08/17/2026

“You cannot learn while you’re busy trying to prove that you already know.”

Working with horses has a way of keeping us humble. We’re quick to take credit when the horse does well, yet often just as quick to blame the horse when they don’t fit neatly inside the box of our current skill set. The horse may not be the problem—they may simply be showing us the limits of what we currently know how to communicate.

Growth begins when we let go of our ego long enough to admit that something isn’t working and become curious about why. Sometimes the hardest part isn’t knowing that something needs to change. It’s figuring out what to change—and being humble enough to ask for help.

Sometimes we need another set of experienced eyes to help us recognize what we can’t feel from the saddle. That’s a big part of why I love coaching: helping riders take the information their horse is giving them and turn it into a clearer, more confident path forward. That willingness to listen, learn, and adjust is something I work to cultivate in every rider I coach.

The lessons we learn with horses have a way of showing up everywhere else in our lives. They teach us about patience, clarity, accountability, humility, and the willingness to try again. As you reflect on the past week, what did your horse—or life—teach you about yourself?

08/16/2026

Sunday Morning Musings…

There is an interesting double standard in the horse world. When a horse is good—when she wins, stays broke, handles pressure, and manages to perform despite everything the rider throws at her—the rider takes the credit. But when that same horse struggles, becomes anxious, misses a turn, knocks a barrel, or stops understanding, suddenly it is the horse’s fault.

The rider “trained” the good horse, but the difficult horse arrived that way. The rider created the winning runs, but the horse created the mistakes. Success belongs to the human, while every failure gets assigned to the horse.

We see the same thing with c**ts and c**t starters. If a naturally quiet, good-minded c**t tolerates poor timing, excessive pressure, and a trainer who repeatedly misses the release, the trainer takes credit for producing such a calm horse. If another c**t becomes frightened or defensive under those same methods, he gets labeled reactive, disrespectful, dangerous, or stupid.

Sometimes the c**t starter did not create confidence at all. The c**t was simply born with enough sense and tolerance to survive the process. A good-minded c**t can make an ignorant trainer look remarkably talented—right up until that trainer meets a horse who cannot compensate for everything she does not know.

I recently watched someone tie milk jugs to a c**t in the name of “desensitizing” him. That is not carefully building understanding or confidence; it is taking away the horse’s ability to escape and overwhelming him until he stops reacting. If he eventually stands still, the person takes credit for “teaching” him, but if he panics or hurts himself, you can bet he will be called dangerous.

Standing still does not necessarily mean the horse understands or feels safe. Sometimes it means he has learned that nothing he does will make the pressure stop. There is an enormous difference between patiently helping a c**t work through uncertainty and flooding him until he gives up.

Some horses are naturally talented, exceptionally good-minded, and incredibly forgiving. They learn to fill in the gaps, overlook bad timing, and sort through conflicting cues. They become so good at compensating for the trainer that the trainer begins to mistake the horse’s tolerance for her own ability.

That is a dangerous kind of success because it prevents people from recognizing what the horse has been covering up. As long as the horse keeps guessing correctly, everything looks fine. When the pressure increases or the horse can no longer compensate, the person decides the horse has developed a problem.

The horse is never wrong.

A horse can only do one of two things in any moment: what she thinks the person is asking or what she believes she must do to survive that moment. If her response is not what we intended, then somewhere along the way we failed to prepare her, communicate clearly, recognize what she needed, or make the right decision. It is always our fault.

That does not mean horses never have physical problems, anxiety, holes in their training, or damage left by previous people. It means those things are not character flaws, and they do not relieve us of responsibility. Once we take responsibility for a horse, it becomes our job to recognize what she is telling us and help her understand what we are asking.

A horse that knows the barrel pattern is not necessarily broke. A c**t that tolerates being frightened without exploding is not necessarily confident. A horse that survives poor training is not proof that the training was good.

Too many people confuse repetition with understanding, compliance with softness, stillness with confidence, and a horse’s ability to tolerate them with their own ability to train. Then, when the horse can no longer hold everything together, they blame the horse for exposing what was missing all along.

Taking responsibility is not the same as beating ourselves up. It is the only thing that gives us the power to improve our timing, change our approach, communicate more clearly, and create a different result. The moment we declare, “I am not the problem,” we remove the only part of the equation we actually have the ability to change.

When the horse succeeds, give the horse more of the credit. When the horse struggles, take more of the responsibility. That shift alone would make the horse world a much fairer—and safer—place for the horse.

**tstarter **tstarting