Whole Heart, Whole Horse Quotes

“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, Whole Heart, Whole Horse: Building Trust Between Horse and Rider

“It’s the same with horse behavior. The behavior a horse offers up is just information until we put a value on it. The horse, on the other hand, has no stake in its behavior or how we perceive it. It is simply supplying us with feedback. The woman’s horse that needed to get to the other end of the arena before he could go to work was simply supplying us with information. Bill’s acting up on the trail was supplying us with information. A horse that wrings its tail, shakes his head, or paws at the ground is offering information. How we perceive that information—the value we put on it—will create our response. Of course, the good news in all this is that in the end, the choice is entirely up to us. We can either look at the behavior with a quiet mind and see it for what it is without judgment, or we can see it as something else. Either way, we will end up responding accordingly, and either way, it will dictate the level of success we will ultimately have.”
― Mark Rashid, Whole Heart, Whole Horse: Building Trust Between Horse and Rider

“It’s funny, too, because whenever we purposely teach a horse something we want them to do or know and are successful in doing so, we pat ourselves on the back and think we’ve done a good job. Yet, when we inadvertently teach a horse behavior we didn’t want (and more times than not, unwanted behavior has indeed been taught inadvertently), we blame the horse for learning it and then refer to them as being disrespectful. I don’t know . . . but it seems to me we can’t really have it both ways.”
― Mark Rashid, Whole Heart, Whole Horse: Building Trust Between Horse and Rider

“I just wanted to say how sorry I am,” I told him as he sat in his chair in the tack room, smoking his ever-present cigarette and cutting some thin strips of leather he would ultimately use for repair work of one kind or another. “I shouldn’t have done what I did, and I won’t make that mistake again. I’m sorry.” He sat for a few seconds, and without even looking up at me he said, “Did you learn anything today?” “Yes sir,” I said after several seconds of thought. In fact, I was going to expound by telling him I should have only worked with the colt in the halter and not moved ahead with the bit, and I should have only worked the ten minutes that he told me to in the first place. I was going to tell him I shouldn’t have pushed the colt the way I had and several other thoughts that were flooding my young mind. But as it turned out, I didn’t have to say any of it. Because before I could open my mouth to speak, he briefly looked up at me. “Good,” he said quietly as he slowly nodded his head. “Because if you learned something, then it wasn’t a mistake.”
― Mark Rashid, Whole Heart, Whole Horse: Building Trust Between Horse and Rider