The NOËLLE FLOYD Podcast
- Épisodes
- 100
- Parution
- hebdomadaire
- Dernier épisode
- 9 Nov 2026
À propos du podcast
Join Noëlle each week, as she embarks on a journey to explore the vast and diverse world of horses, delving into the many sub-communities and cultures that shape our shared passion. This podcast is about more than just riding styles or training techniques; it's about celebrating the deep connection between humans and horses, and understanding the common threads that tie us together. Whether you're a seasoned rider or just starting out, you'll find inspiration, knowledge, and a sense of belonging in every episode. Subscribe or follow, wherever you get your podcasts with episodes dropping weekly.
Épisodes 100
When Training Isn't the Problem and the Plan Is — A Rider Roundtable with Karen Rohlf, Brendan Wise, and Tik Maynard
When Training Isn't the Problem and the Plan Is You start with a plan. Maybe it's the hunters, jumpers, dressage, eventing. You buy a horse with that picture in mind. Then you get into the work, and something …
Notes de l’épisode
When Training Isn't the Problem and the Plan Is
You start with a plan. Maybe it's the hunters, jumpers, dressage, eventing. You buy a horse with that picture in mind.
Then you get into the work, and something feels off. The horse isn't taking to it the way you expected. Or you start questioning whether the path you chose even suits them.
This conversation gets into those moments.
Tik Maynard, Karen Rohlf, and Brendan Wise talk about what it looks like when a horse pushes you to rethink your direction. Tik brings a lens rooted in how horses learn and how small changes in timing and pressure change the outcome. Karen focuses on how the horse feels in the work and how that affects willingness. Brendan comes from the performance world, where communication has to hold up under pressure.
Together, they talk through the kinds of decisions riders face all the time. Keeping a horse and changing your expectations, or selling and starting again. Sticking with a discipline, or trying something new because the horse in front of you is asking for it.
This is less about finding the right system and more about recognizing when the one you chose isn't lining up with the horse you have.
In This Episode:
- What to look at when your horse isn't progressing the way you expected
- How to decide if it's a training issue or a direction issue
- The thought process behind selling a horse versus changing your plan
- How trying another discipline can reveal what your horse needs
- Why the horse in front of you often tells you more than the plan you started with
Guests:
Tik Maynard – International event rider, clinician, and author of In the Middle Are the Horsemen. Known for blending learning theory with practical horsemanship, Tik brings a thoughtful, analytical approach to how horses learn and how riders can improve timing and communication.
To find out more about TIk - Website | Instagram | Facebook
Karen Rohlf – Author, founder of Dressage Naturally, and a leading voice in horse-centered training. Karen combines classical dressage with an emphasis on the horse's emotional experience, helping riders create willing, motivated partners.
To find out more about Karen - Website | Instagram | Facebook
Brendan Wise – Trainer and clinician known for his focus on feel, communication, and developing horses for high-level performance. His work often challenges traditional reliance on equipment, showing what is possible through refined aids and understanding.
To find out more about Brendan - Website | Instagram | Facebook
Key Takeaway
When a horse isn't lining up with the plan, the answer may be in the direction, not just the training.
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Your horse grabs the fence board. Arches the neck. Pulls back, and you hear that low gulp of air. What is that horse telling you? For years we called horse cribbing a stable vice. Something to stop. Something …
Notes de l’épisode
Your horse grabs the fence board. Arches the neck. Pulls back, and you hear that low gulp of air.
What is that horse telling you?
For years we called horse cribbing a stable vice. Something to stop. Something to strap a collar around.
Dr. Carissa Wickens has spent her career listening to it instead. She is an associate professor of animal sciences at the University of Florida, and horse cribbing has held her curiosity since she walked into a field of ten cribbing horses as a PhD student at Auburn.
What she has found is tender, and a little unsettling.
Cribbing looks like coping. When these horses are allowed to crib, their heart rate and stress hormones tend to drop. Take it away, and many start weaving, pacing the fence line, calling for their friends.
The need stays. Only the outlet moves.
And once the behavior settles in, it seems to live on its own. The ulcer heals. The diet improves. The horse joins a herd. The cribbing remains, because the brain has learned something.
We talk about the study that found cribbers carry their own pattern of dopamine receptors. Why Thoroughbreds, Warmbloods and Quarter Horses turn up so often in the research. Why weaning is when so many young horses begin. How a high-grain, low-forage diet multiplies the risk. And the chicken-and-egg question every owner asks: do ulcers cause cribbing, or does cribbing cause ulcers? Carissa gives the honest answer, which is that the science is still out.
I bring my own lens to this one too. As someone who is neurodivergent, I see a coping behavior the instant I see a horse crib. Carissa brings the research to meet it.
Three words keep coming back. Forage. Friends. Freedom.
Everything else rests on that foundation.
If you have ever stood at the fence frustrated with a cribbing horse, this conversation may let you see that horse with new eyes. As Carissa puts it, when behavior changes, look past the horse. "It's something that's not going right in the horse's world."
Dr. Carissa Wickens is an associate professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Florida, where she leads equine extension and research in horse behavior and welfare. She earned her PhD at Michigan State University, studying cribbing alongside Dr. Cindy McCall at Auburn University.
In this episode you'll learn
Why a cribbing horse's heart rate drops while it cribs.
The dopamine receptor study that found cribbers' brains wired their own way.
What happens the day a crib collar goes on: weaving, pacing, calling for friends.
Why weaning, around five months, is when roughly one young horse in ten begins.
The diet change after weaning that multiplied cribbing risk fourfold.
Why the behavior outlives the ulcer that may have started it.
The questions Carissa asks first in every behavior consult, from diet to sleep to saddle fit.
Chapters
0:00 Cold open: "I can't crib right now, but I need to do something"
0:29 Meet Dr. Carissa Wickens
2:06 How a field of cribbing horses started a career
6:26 What a stereotypy is, and why wild horses don't crib
11:36 Coping, not a vice: dopamine and the cribbing horse's brain
17:58 Born sensitive: genetics, Thoroughbreds and what a crib collar triggers
25:10 Weaning, diet and when horse cribbing begins
31:13 Why cribbing outlives its cause: OCD, crib collars and ulcers
39:59 The gut-brain connection
44:38 Forage first: what horse owners can do
48:33 Rapid fire
Episode Sponsor: Total Feeds
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
The Trail Riding Mistakes Nobody Talks About - Gillian Larson
Last year my horse G slid down the side of a mountain in the Tetons. He came out of it okay. I carried it for a lot longer. Gillian Larson has spent her twenties and now her thirties trail riding the …
Notes de l’épisode
Last year my horse G slid down the side of a mountain in the Tetons.
He came out of it okay. I carried it for a lot longer.
Gillian Larson has spent her twenties and now her thirties trail riding the backcountry from Mexico to Canada, more than once, on the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide, the Arizona Trail and the Colorado Trail. She calls herself a thru-rider. She recently raced across Patagonia in the inaugural Pass of Tears and finished second.
I traveled to Gillian's backyard in California to talk about trail riding at that scale. The mountain horse who reads the trail fifty feet ahead. The horse who pours gasoline on the fire. Two five-year-old Criollos nicknamed the Ferrari and the tractor.
And then I asked her the question I had been carrying since the Tetons.
How do you live with a decision that put your horse at risk?
Her answer is one of the most honest things I have heard about horses.
Gillian says the guilt belongs. It comes with being a good horse owner. You sit with it, you ask what you would do next time, and then you let yourself go back out. Horses forgive our flubs with a generosity that is, in her words, "immense and wild."
We talk about her first ride from Mexico to Canada at 22, when good horses carried a rider who was still learning. Why she went back and rode it again. Why the horse world shows the clean version of every trip and hides the scrambles. And why second place in Patagonia feels like a win to her, because she rode a race she can stand behind.
If you have ever lain awake replaying a call you made with your horse, this one is for you.
The question that stays with me is the one Gillian lives by.
Was I a good teammate to my horse today?
Gillian Larson is a thru-rider who travels long-distance backcountry routes on horseback. She first rode from Mexico to Canada at 22 and has since completed the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, the Arizona Trail, the Colorado Trail and the John Muir Trail, along with her own route from the Grand Canyon through Utah to the Wyoming border.
In this episode you'll learn- How a seasoned mountain horse reads the trail thirty to fifty feet ahead, and how a rookie fixates on the next step.
- The horse who pours gasoline on the fire, and the one who freezes and looks to you.
- Racing the Pass of Tears on two five-year-old Criollos, the Ferrari and the tractor.
- The weigh-in, the waypoints, and the riders who dropped gear and called it kindness to the horse.
- G's slide in the Tetons, and the guilt that followed Noëlle into the Wind Rivers.
- Why Gillian rode Mexico to Canada a second time, and how it felt to finally carry her share.
- The most undervalued skill a rider can have, according to someone who has ridden thousands of backcountry miles.
Chapters:
0:00 Welcome: the Wind Rivers and why the backcountry grounds us 5:18 What a thru-rider is, and how it differs from long riding 12:05 The Pass of Tears: racing across Patagonia 16:15 The Ferrari and the tractor: two five-year-old Criollos 20:56 What makes a good mountain horse 26:00 Criollos, estancias and making weight 35:06 Money, ethics and defining success 39:43 Guilt, mistakes and the horse you put at risk 50:19 Hyper-fixation: watching a horse after an injury 53:04 Why the horse world hides its mistakes 59:34 Being the partner your horses deserve 1:07:27 Rapid fire
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
I Sold My House to Make a Horse Docu-Series UNBRIDLED | Noëlle Floyd with Yellowstone's Jen Landon
What does it cost to go and find out who you are? For me, it cost a house. I sold mine to travel 25,000 miles across North America with my horses, Lady and G, and I filmed all of it. That road became Unbridled …
Notes de l’épisode
What does it cost to go and find out who you are?
For me, it cost a house.
I sold mine to travel 25,000 miles across North America with my horses, Lady and G, and I filmed all of it. That road became Unbridled, a six-part horse documentary series. Episodes 1 and 2 are on YouTube now.
This time the microphone turned around.
Jen Landon, actor, Yellowstone cast member, horsewoman, and the person who owns Shorty, took the host's chair and asked me the questions I usually ask everyone else.
She asked why I nearly stopped filming. So many times on that trip I looked at the footage and heard the same three sentences. I'm not good enough. This isn't good enough. No one's gonna care.
I kept the cameras rolling anyway. I'm so glad I did.
Jen tells the story of how Unbridled reached her. My husband, Ben, looked at me and made me promise to send it to her. I thought that was gauche. I sent it. She planned to watch two episodes as a favor to a new friend, and she watched the whole season.
She compared it to Chef's Table. Jen calls herself a bad cook, and she still walked away from every episode of that show with something for her own life and her craft as an actor. She says Unbridled did the same for her. The horses are the backdrop for a bigger lesson.
That is my hope for this horse documentary. That someone who has lived their whole life away from horses watches it and sees who I became because of the way Lady and G live as horses, every single day.
We talk about process-based horsemanship and outcome-based horsemanship, and how far that idea reaches past the arena.
"If you focus on the process, then the outcome is more expansive than you could possibly imagine. But if you focus on the outcome, then you're limited to the outcome you can imagine as the person you are in the moment."
Then we go to Texas.
Florida humbled me. I left it feeling small. And then I cut cows with Lyndi Birch and Barbra Schulte, on Jen's own horse, Shorty, who carried me like the all-star he is. Barbra is nurture. Lyndi is nature. Two sides of one coin, and between them I learned what I now call cowgirl confidence. Thinking confident is one thing. Being confident lives in the body.
Jen adds the piece I keep coming back to. Cowgirl confidence has fun in it.
When you sell the house, where do you find home?
Inside ourselves. In our horses. In the people who show up for us.
If you have a big, scary dream, you are more capable than you think. And you will be amazed by the allies, the people and the animals, who arrive to support you on your hero's journey.
Episodes 1 and 2 of Unbridled are on my YouTube channel. Episodes 3 through 6 live on NF+, and you can buy Season 1 on its own, separate from membership. Episode 4 is Texas: Shorty, the cows, Lyndiy and Barbra.
Watch Unbridled Episodes 1: https://youtu.be/XI6lxdaSM7Y
and Episode 2: https://youtu.be/X0xOcksn7TQ
Buy Unbridled all 6 Episodes of Season 1 on NF+: https://noellefloyd.com/pages/noelle-floyd-unbridled
Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/IpBkLxUk8AA
About Jen Jen Landon is an actor and horsewoman known to Yellowstone audiences. She worked cattle on her horse, Shorty, between takes on the Yellowstone set, and Shorty appears in Unbridled Episode 4 in Texas with Lyndy Burch and Barbra Schulte. She is a recent NF+ member who watches lessons before heading to the barn.
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Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
When the Bridle Comes Off, the Truth Comes Out | A Letter to Lady (Unbridled)
I wrote my mare a letter the day she came to me. Out in the field with her, with G grazing nearby, I read it to her out loud for the first time. It is the most honest thing I have said about horsemanship in …
Notes de l’épisode
I wrote my mare a letter the day she came to me. Out in the field with her, with G grazing nearby, I read it to her out loud for the first time. It is the most honest thing I have said about horsemanship in fourteen years.
Fourteen years I spent interviewing the horse world's best — the trainers and riders everyone turns to for answers. Then Lady arrived, more wild than tame, and I stepped in front of the camera to say the one thing the interviewer's chair never let me say: I don't know.
That admission is where Unbridled begins.
This is the solo letter underneath the whole series — the private writing that became the reason I made it. Lady came to me more questioning than compliant, unwilling to perform a smaller version of herself for anyone's comfort. Loving her made it impossible to stay safely behind the microphone. She asked me harder questions than any guest ever had. Not "can you make me do this," but "how can you meet me if you will not meet yourself?"
Somewhere in there my horsemanship began to change, and so did I. I call it rewilding — taking the bridle off my horse and the invisible one off myself at once. Fit in. Obey. Be manageable. Do not become too much. Lady answers every one of those instructions by simply being who she is.
When the bridle comes off, the truth comes out. Without the equipment and the familiar measures of success, what remains? Two bodies. Two nervous systems. Two living beings trying to understand each other across the line between species.
This letter is about worthiness — and how Lady taught me it was never a thing I earn by knowing enough. It lives in the willingness to listen, to repair, to begin again.
If you have ever loved a horse who would not let you hide, this one is for you.
Unbridled is a six-part series following me and my horses across North America, asking whether partnership can go somewhere freer than control. Lady is the reason it exists.
▶️ Watch Unbridled — Catch the SEASON PREMIERE on Youtube MONDAY, OCTOBER 19 AT 4PM ET
and binge the whole season! at NF+ https://noellefloyd.com/pages/noelle-floyd-unbridled
In This Episode:
- Why she almost didn't make Unbridled — the fear that fourteen years of interviews still left her unworthy of her own horse.
- The gap between a horse obeying you and a horse choosing you, and why only one survives the bridle coming off.
- What Lady asks that no technique can answer: how can you meet me if you will not meet yourself?
- Rewilding horsemanship — taking the restraints off the horse and off yourself in the same motion.
- Why "I don't know" became the beginning of her authority instead of the end of it.
- The promises she wrote to a horse she had dreamed about before they ever met.
Chapters :
- 0:00 — Out in the field with Lady (and G)
- 1:00 — Why she writes letters to her horses
- 2:31 — "Dear Lady" — the letter begins
- 3:52 — The mare unlike any she'd met
- 5:10 — When the bridle comes off, the truth comes out
- 8:00 — Rewilding her horsemanship, rewilding herself
- 9:00 — The Fool, the threshold, the heroine's journey
- 11:37 — What Unbridled actually became
- 13:02 — "You did not come here to heal me"
- 14:50 — Worthiness, and the horsewoman she's becoming
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
The Horse Husband: How Evan Went From Terrified to the Barn Every Day ] No Stupid Questions with Evan the Groom
The same patience it takes to earn a horse's trust is the patience Evan the Groom brings to teaching the rest of us. He came to horses the way most people never do — from the outside, with no background …
Notes de l’épisode
The same patience it takes to earn a horse's trust is the patience Evan the Groom brings to teaching the rest of us. He came to horses the way most people never do — from the outside, with no background, terrified of the biggest one in the barn — and turned that beginner's-eye view into an education. Today he does the horse grooming and horse care in his wife's dressage business, and the horse world knows him as the viral comedian who makes the barn make sense to people who have never touched a horse.
This is a No Stupid Questions episode, and it is one of my favorites we have done. Evan explains horses the way he once needed them explained to him — no jargon, no ego, just plain answers to the things beginners are too embarrassed to ask out loud.
He was an engineer turning algae into protein. Then marketing. Then the pandemic took his job, his wife Ashley needed help at the barn, and he picked up a camera. The videos were meant to make his own family laugh — people who knew nothing about horses. Instead they built a following, and somewhere in there Evan became something he never trained to be: an educator.
We get into the skill he rates above all others and hears discussed least — observation, watching for the thing that is off today — and how six years of it on the ground is only now showing up in the saddle. His advice for every "horse husband" and non-horse partner out there: just support that. Why he would rather make a video so ridiculous you remember it than one only horse people understand, and how a loogie teaches you the word "hock." The groom's real job when no one is watching: being the horse's constant. And the mare who taught him the most — a year to earn her trust, and then, he says, she gives you everything.
There is also a talking pony named Piper, a children's book about a lost little bird, and — as of last week — his first ride off the lunge line.
If someone in your life doesn't understand the horse thing — or if you're the one at the rail — send them this.
Evan is a groom, content creator, and horse-care specialist in Southern California, where he works alongside his wife, dressage trainer Ashley Donant. He built his following making horses funny and reachable for people who have never touched one.
Total Feeds
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
How Steffen Peters Trains a Horse: Self-Carriage, Groundwork & a New Stallion (Part 2)
A horse has two choices. Learn to accept the bit, or fight it for the rest of its life. That's Steffen Peters, and this is the half where his hands are on the reins. If you heard Part 1, you met the man — six …
Notes de l’épisode
A horse has two choices. Learn to accept the bit, or fight it for the rest of its life.
That's Steffen Peters, and this is the half where his hands are on the reins. If you heard Part 1, you met the man — six Olympics, the dark place, the way back. This one is the horse training — the groundwork up through Grand Prix. Forty years of it, distilled into the way he starts a five-year-old and the way he brought a brand-new stallion into the ring after two weeks together.
Here's the thing that runs through all of it: he doesn't push a horse into the bridle. Ever. He thinks ninety-five percent of horses are ridden with too much contact, and he'll tell you why "more hind legs, more into the hand" was never the answer for him. What he wants is suppleness, self-carriage, lightness — a soft rein you can see, and a horse that carries itself instead of leaning on your hand.
We get into where that starts, and it is earlier than you would think. The groundwork — on a lead rope, in a halter — the horse that stops when you stop without a pull on the rope. He calls it cooperation, not submission, and he means the difference exactly. From there it's the walk work most riders rush past, the half halt that becomes a reflex, the spur as a reminder and never a crutch, and the three aids he says are the only tools you really have.
There's the new stallion — fourteen, extremely smart, the horse that trained his rider to say "don't quit." There's Totilas, and what it takes to watch someone beat you and mean it when you call it good. And there's the compliment two vets paid him without knowing he could hear: at Steffen's barn, they can't make any money — because of the walk breaks, and what they save.
If Part 1 was how he learned to manage himself, this is how he manages the conversation with the horse. Same man. Now the method.
Steffen Peters is a German-born American dressage rider, a six-time Olympian and multiple Olympic medalist, and one of the most decorated dressage athletes in United States history. He returned to competition this year, opening his season aboard a new stallion with wins across the Prix St. Georges, the Intermediaire I, and the Grand Prix.
Chapters:
0:00 Riding Becomes Training 01:39 Flow State With New Stallion 02:19 Suppleness Over Hind Legs 04:37 Stop the Nagging Leg 05:52 Feel Over Looks 08:16 How Much Contact 11:57 Western Lightness Lessons 13:45 Warmup Is Training 17:30 Mindful Aids and Tools 20:38 Reliable Tests and Nerves 22:32 Refining Pressure Release 25:05 Walk Work and Discipline 27:12 Quiet Coaching Shift 27:54 Trainer Judge Clinics 29:06 From Thinking To Reflex 31:02 Flow State In Competition 34:09 Building Presence On Ground 37:46 Mindfulness In Daily Life 41:04 Rapid Fire Questions 47:59 New Stallion Partnership 50:26 Walk Breaks And LongevityWant to go deeper into the training behind a clean, confident flying change?
In his new NOËLLE FLOYD Masterclass, six-time Olympian Steffen Peters breaks down the entire process—from developing the right canter, balance and response to the aids to introducing the change and troubleshooting tension, anticipation, crookedness and changes that are late behind.
Learn more and watch Training the Flying Change with Steffen Peters: https://noellefloyd.com/pages/flying-changes-with-steffen-peters
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
What this Dressage Rider Learned From a Cowboy - Kasey Perry-Glass
You get the thing you chased for five years. And the ride is the worst one you've ever put down. Kasey Perry-Glass reached the Olympic Games on the horse she bought to take her there — Doublé — and came home …
Notes de l’épisode
You get the thing you chased for five years.
And the ride is the worst one you've ever put down.
Kasey Perry-Glass reached the Olympic Games on the horse she bought to take her there — Doublé — and came home into a depression that blindsided her. This is the conversation under the medal photo. What it costs to want something that badly, and what she found on the far side of it.
She married a cowboy. Dana Glass starts colts and takes in the horses other people gave up on — the rearers, the buckers, the bolters, carrying baggage nobody unpacked. Two worlds under one roof: her classical dressage, his groundwork. What one taught the other is most of this hour.
We get into the perfectionism that dressage rewards and then punishes — a score out of 100 that stays out of reach, a sport where the best mark is a C or a D on a good day. Why she stopped posting to social media. The line Martin Black uses, let them cook, and why ending a ride a little early beats grinding it into the ground. Pain versus behavior, and the checklist she taught Dana: clear the ulcers, the hindgut, the teeth, before anyone calls it attitude.
Then the mental game she learned the hard way. Finding her number with Annette Paterakis — the exact pitch of nerves and calm that lets her ride her best. The work with Dr. Jenny Susser. Blacking out in the saddle, ten minutes gone, grinding the same movement. Boundaries. Getting told she was "too nice" for this sport, and what she kept anyway.
Behind the vertical, point of balance, throughness without a single draw rein — she explains the dressage the way she explained it to Dana, the sport he first met through her.
This one is for anyone who has wanted something so badly it made them small, and found their way back to the size they actually are.
Kasey Perry-Glass is a US Olympic dressage rider — team bronze at Rio 2016 (America's first Olympic dressage medal since 2004) and team silver at the 2018 World Equestrian Games — who competes as Kasey Perry. Her longtime partner was the Grand Prix gelding Doublé (Goerklintgaards Dublet), now retired; she currently campaigns Heartbeat W.P. She and her husband, cowboy and colt-starter Dana Glass, run Two Worlds Equestrian, joining Western horsemanship and Grand Prix dressage under one program.
To Learn more about Kasey Perry-Glass: website | instagram | facebook
In This Episode You'll Learn- What it costs to reach an Olympic Games and ride your worst test there, and the depression Kasey came home to
- The perfectionism dressage rewards and then punishes, chasing a score out of 100 in a sport where a great mark is a C
- Let them cook: why ending a ride a little early beats grinding a movement into the ground
- The pain-versus-behavior checklist Kasey taught Dana — ulcers, hindgut, teeth, before anyone calls it attitude
- Finding your number with sports psychologist Annette Paterakis — the exact pitch of nerves and calm that lets you ride your best
- Blacking out in the saddle, ten minutes gone on the same movement, and the mental work that pulled her out
- Behind the vertical made plain: the poll as the highest point, and why a horse's own point of balance can't be copied and pasted
- Throughness without a single draw rein, and how groundwork gave an Olympic rider tools her dressage babies never had
0:00 How Kasey met a cowboy 4:51 What Dana does: colt starting & unpacking a horse's trauma 8:41 Groundwork, the rope halter & being a beginner again 14:34 [ad: Total Feeds] 15:14 The perfectionism dressage rewards and punishes 19:51 Let them cook: ending on a good note 23:17 Pain vs. behavior: what we blame on the horse 29:05 Bringing two worlds together 30:36 Welfare, eliminations & the "blood" rule 33:44 [ad: Noëlle's Substack] 36:07 Judging transparency & educating the viewer 39:21 Behind the vertical, explained 41:44 Point of balance & throughness without draw reins 44:47 Training aids as tools; groundwork informs the saddle 49:34 The Olympics — and the depression after 53:44 Patience in a same-day world 57:22 The mental game: finding your number 1:02:29 Boundaries, thick skin & remaking herself 1:07:19 Tough vs. strong; raising horses and kids 1:12:50 Rapid-fire questions
Episode Sponsor: Connaway & Associates Equine Insurance Services, Inc. The friendly and knowledgeable team at Connaway & Associates brings together more than 30 years of experience to offer a wide range of insurance services, including horse insurance, farm insurance, and liability insurance. Visit www.connaway.net | @connawayassociates | facebook.com/connawayassociatesequine
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Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
The Move Most People Get Backwards With a Cow — and What It Teaches About Horse Training | Martin Black (Pt. 2)
You think the cow is the hard part. She isn't. You are. You get ahead of her to turn her, and she beats you to the herd every time. You spur, you pull, the horse's head comes up, and now nobody is watching the …
Notes de l’épisode
You think the cow is the hard part.
She isn't. You are.
You get ahead of her to turn her, and she beats you to the herd every time. You spur, you pull, the horse's head comes up, and now nobody is watching the cow at all.
Martin Black has read millions of head of cattle, and the horse training lesson underneath all of it is the one almost everybody gets backwards. To cut one cow out, you leave her alone and stir the herd around her. To turn her, you turn away — not toward. The horse rates the cow the way a foal learns to rate its mother in the first thirty minutes of life. It's already in there. Our job is to stay out of the road so the horse can use it.
This is Part 2 of my week with Martin on his ranch in the Great Basin. Part 1 is the ranch, the horses, and reading the moment — start there.
We work the balance point and the flight zone, and why a cow reads your horse's head like a horn and your horse's hip like something softer. Why getting in front of a cow to block her only sends her faster. What Tom Dorrance told Martin decades ago about turning tail, and how that one idea makes a green horse handier by the day. Gene Lewis, his mother's cousin, and jumpers that rate a fence with nobody telling them where to put their feet.
Then the part that reshaped how I keep my own horses. Turnout over stalls. Bare feet when the ground allows. A crick to cross and rocks to pick through, because a horse who has to sort out the terrain grows savvy, and a horse who never has to stays a passenger.
Martin runs horses as a business, not a companion animal, and says his vet bills will stand against anyone's. Colic almost unheard of. Feet the ground keeps honest. It made me ask what I was really protecting when I bubble-wrapped mine.
The horse training here is subtraction, not addition. Cows think more like horses than you'd guess, and empathy runs under all of it.
Martin Black is a lifelong Great Basin horseman and stockman from a multi-generation ranching family, working in the vaquero tradition and the lineage of Tom Dorrance. He spent ten years starting young horses at Calumet Farm in Lexington and now teaches horsemanship and stockmanship through clinics and a ranch school.
If you want to go further with your own horse, NF+ has 70+ masterclasses at noellefloydplus.com or through the app link in the show notes.
In This Episode You'll Learn- The move almost everyone gets backwards: to hold a single cow, you leave her alone and stir the herd around her
- Why getting in front of a cow to block her only sends her faster back to the herd — and what to do the instant she turns
- How a cow reads your horse's head like a horn and your horse's hip like something softer, so a leg-yield moves her where a headbutt would spook her
- What Tom Dorrance told Martin about turning tail to a cow, and how it makes a green horse rounder and handier by the day
- Gene Lewis and colts that rate a fence themselves, with nobody telling them where to put their feet
- Why a collected walk finally had a purpose the day Noelle worked cattle on Lady
- What ten years starting babies at Calumet and a lifetime in the Great Basin say about turnout, bare feet, and letting a horse sort out rough ground
- The barbed-wire story, and what a horse who navigates real terrain has that a bubble-wrapped one lacks
Chapters
0:00 Part 2: cutting a cow by leaving her alone 1:40 Holding cattle without a fence — what it takes 3:40 Sorting without stalking: keeping a cow parasympathetic 5:40 Cows think like horses — Dr. Peters & Temple Grandin 8:30 The old way wasn't the cruel way 10:40 After WWII: how the mechanized age lost the horsemanship 11:20 What a chuck wagon really was (Great Basin history) 14:34 [ad: Total Feeds] 17:49 The balance point & flight zone, explained 21:00 Rating: the foal, the herd, and the safe place 26:40 Headbutt vs. tail-butt: why a leg-yield moves a cow softer 30:40 The move most people get backwards: never turn into the cow 33:43 [ad: Noelle's Substack] 34:47 Predator habits that get in the way 37:30 Tom Dorrance on turning tail 40:50 Gene Lewis: horses that rate the jump themselves 47:00 Managing horses naturally: turnout over stalls 49:00 Barefoot when the ground allows 52:00 Rough terrain makes a savvy horse — the barbed-wire story 55:00 Horses as a business, not a companion animal 59:40 Advice for urban riders: get out of the arena
Episode Sponsor: Total Feeds
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
Why You Should Stop Patting Your Horse | Martin Black on Western Horse Training
We pat our horses to tell them they did well. Martin Black says the horse would rather we kept our hands to ourselves. He has spent a life inside western horse training — starting close to five hundred colts a …
Notes de l’épisode
We pat our horses to tell them they did well.
Martin Black says the horse would rather we kept our hands to ourselves.
He has spent a life inside western horse training — starting close to five hundred colts a year on the same Great Basin country his family has ranched since the 1860s, seventy miles from his nearest neighbor, the road over the mountain closed all winter. And what he showed me this week is that the pat is for us. The reward the horse is after is chemical: the flood of serotonin and dopamine that arrives when pressure lifts and the body comes home to rest. Martin calls it the cocktail. Rouse the horse, bring him down, and he licks his lips — he got his drink, and he will go to that edge with you again because he knows you will take him to the bar after.
This is western horse training as one of its living masters practices it, and almost none of it looks like technique.
Martin reads a colt the way the rest of us read a single sentence — ten things at once. He calls it peripheral thinking. The predator in us locks onto the prey: the outcome, the lead change, the plan for the day. Martin holds the objective and lets the plan bend to whatever the horse hands him. The seed that wants to grow today gets watered today. The one that is not ready waits.
We talk about the hours. I could shadow him in Idaho for years and still not own his timing, because feel does not transfer. You earn it one horse at a time, and no clinic sells it.
We talk about why he trains his cattle the way his family has since the 1860s — the rodear, the old vaquero work that crossed from Spain and reached Texas two centuries late — and why a dressage horse belongs on a cow as much as any ranch gelding does.
And we go into the cowboy neuroscience of it: sympathetic arousal, homeostasis, pressure and its relief as one thing rather than two. Dr. Steve Peters pulled Martin out of a lineup for this. Martin calls himself a bartender. He once waited forty-five minutes on a traumatized cutting mare, feeling her heartbeat through the saddle horn, until she finally licked her lips and found her way home.
Part one of two. In part two, Martin takes it to the ground — reading cattle by the million, and moving one cow out of a herd by leaving her alone.
Martin Black is a Great Basin horseman and colt starter who has started close to five hundred colts a year, working the same remote Idaho country his family has ranched since the 1860s. He carries the lineage of Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt into a plainer, harder question: what does the horse in front of you need?
In This Episode You'll Learn- Why the pat you give after a good round is for you, and what the horse is asking for instead.
- The cocktail — how serotonin and dopamine turn pressure and its release into the reward the horse remembers.
- Peripheral thinking: reading ten things at once, and why the predator in us locks onto only one.
- Why Martin holds the objective and lets the horse choose which seed grows today.
- The forty-five-minute wait on a traumatized cutting mare, and the heartbeat he felt through the saddle horn.
- The hours nobody can hand you — why feel is earned one horse at a time.
Find out more about Martin Black: website | facebook | youtube
Chapters- 0:00 — The pat is for you, not the horse (cold open)
- 0:30 — Seventy miles from the nearest neighbor
- 5:00 — No formula fits all: hold the objective, bend the plan
- 14:38 — Peripheral thinking and the predator's focus
- 19:33 — Moving the feet: sympathetic arousal and self-preservation
- 28:45 — Why loving on your horse is for you
- 31:01 — The invitation: the cocktail, the margarita, the lick of the lips
- 39:29 — Cowboy neuroscience: pressure, relief, homeostasis
- 50:40 — The colt-starting science project
- 51:53 — Can a jumper work a cow? Stockmanship and the rodear
- 57:29 — Holding the herd without a fence — and what empathy means
Total Feeds
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
Monty Roberts, Alexandra Kurland, and the Future of Horse Training
When I was eleven, my mom handed me The Man Who Listens to Horses. Last week, the man who wrote it died. Within days, the horse world also lost Alexandra Kurland — the woman who spent decades convincing us that …
Notes de l’épisode
When I was eleven, my mom handed me The Man Who Listens to Horses.
Last week, the man who wrote it died.
Within days, the horse world also lost Alexandra Kurland — the woman who spent decades convincing us that a clicker and a handful of food belonged in serious horse training.
This is a solo episode. An essay, read aloud, on two pioneers who stood in opposite corners of horse training and still moved the same conversation forward. On join up, and what it asks of a flight animal sent around a round pen. On positive reinforcement, and why handing a horse food never automatically creates consent. On the disputed parts of Monty's story, and why we can hold gratitude and discernment at the same time.
And underneath it all, the question I keep circling: why do we need our teachers to be heroes?
We put trainers on pedestals. The flaws appear — they always do — and reverence flips to contempt overnight. Either way, the person is never allowed to be human. And pedestals are useless to horses. A pedestal has never once made a horse feel safer, calmer, or less confused about what we are asking.
I believe we are living through the biggest shift in the human-horse relationship since machines took horses out of our fields and our wars. The question used to be: can the horse do it? The question becoming ours is: what does it cost the horse to do it? Did the horse understand, or did it simply stop resisting? Does the absence of conflict mean the horse feels safe?
One day, we will be the outdated ones. The next generation will see pressure we could not recognize and pain we rationalized. I hope so. If they never outgrow us, we failed to help them see farther.
Monty Roberts and Alexandra Kurland do not need us to decide which one was right. They need us to carry the torch. And the torch is not join up. The torch is not the clicker. The torch is the responsibility to keep listening.
Thank you, Monty. Thank you, Alexandra. This one is for the lineage — and for my mom, who put that book in my hands.
In This Episode:
- Why join up is pressure and release in learning-theory terms — and why naming that honors Monty more than sainthood ever could
- The question Alexandra Kurland made possible: how do I create a learning environment where the horse becomes an active participant
- What the clicker teaches the human — poor timing, criteria that jump too fast, a missed try; the horse reports every one
- Why food on its own creates neither agency nor consent, and what positive reinforcement still demands of the person holding it
- Becky Moody at the top of dressage: trained with Carl Hester, embracing clicker work — evolution over allegiance
- The pedestal inversion: how reverence flips to contempt when the flaws appear, and why both extremes abandon the horse
- The three sentences responsible learning gets to say: this is what you made possible, this is where I believe you were wrong, this is what I will carry forward
Learn more about Monty Roberts: website | facebook | youtube
Learn more about Alexandra Kurland: website | facebook
Chapters
- 0:00 — The book that started it
- 2:30 — What positive reinforcement changed first
- 6:00 — Two truths about Monty Roberts
- 8:40 — The biggest shift since mechanization
- 13:00 — Pedestals are useless to horses
- 15:20 — The torch and the next generation
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
Your Saddle Fits a Horse That No Longer Exists — Letitia Glenn on Horse Care
You measure with your hand while he stands there. Then he takes a step, and the horse you measured is gone. Saddle fit is horse care. I rode my whole life before anyone said that to me plainly. I met Letitia …
Notes de l’épisode
You measure with your hand while he stands there.
Then he takes a step, and the horse you measured is gone.
Saddle fit is horse care. I rode my whole life before anyone said that to me plainly.
I met Letitia Glenn, founder of Contour Saddlery™, at Road to the Horse. She had seen footage of me riding, and the first thing she thought—which she then said to my face, out loud—was that I did not know what I did not know about saddles. She was right. I brought her to Florida on the hottest day of that summer, rode in one of her saddles, and felt my mare Lady's scapula move with a freedom it never had on the whole road trip.
Letitia came to horses at 47, with a two-year-old Paso Fino stallion named Echo, and has spent the last quarter century asking one question: Why do so many saddles fit a standing horse, yet interfere with the horse once it begins to move?
She found part of the answer backpacking. Fifty-five pounds, eight miles, the Rocky Mountains. Picture the corner of a book pressed into your spine. You will contort away from it. Horses do the same. Pressure behind the scapula changes posture, alters movement through the entire body, and creates compensation patterns that no amount of riding can truly fix.
So we explore what she looks for: the upward head nod at the walk on a loose rein, the Four Bs, the belly tickle test, and the hollow behind the scapula that reveals chronic restriction. We also discuss why the interface (the space between the saddle and the moving back) matters just as much as the saddle itself, and how the Contour Saddlery™ Saddle System and the VersaFit™ Saddle Pad System were developed to help accommodate the horse's changing shape in motion by restoring shoulder freedom and improving pressure distribution.
We also get into the part of horse care that never appears on a bill of sale. Saddle fitters are often paid by the brand they recommend. Trainers sometimes receive commissions on the tack their students buy. An expensive saddle isn't proof of a better fit—it may simply reflect a larger marketing budget.
Lady gave me a scar on my stomach the first year I had her, reaching back for me while I tightened the cinch. I used to call that her temperament.
Now I wonder if she was trying to tell me something.
I wanted the horse world to hear this conversation because Lady had been telling me the same story for years—I just wasn't ready to listen.
Learn more about Letitia Glenn, Contour Saddlery™, and the VersaFit™ Saddle Pad System, and request a free saddle fit evaluation: website | instagram | youtube
At Contour Saddlery™, we believe saddle fit should be based on the horse in motion—not standing still.
Our complete Contour Saddlery™ Saddle System and the VersaFit™ Saddle Pad System work together to create a dynamic fitting solution that supports shoulder freedom, accommodates your horse's changing shape, and helps improve comfort, movement, and performance. Whether you're looking to optimize your current saddle or invest in a complete saddle system, our goal is simple: Every Horse. Every Saddle. Every Ride.™
Learn how to improve the fit and function of your saddle:
Experience the difference a truly horse-first saddle can make. Visit Naturalhorsemansaddles.com to learn more.
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
Chapters:
0:00 "Saddles are torture devices"
2:13 She doesn't know what she doesn't know
6:41 Lady's shoulder, and what freedom felt like
10:07 The fourth component nobody talks about
12:23 The upward head nod at the walk
16:08 The four Bs: bone, bulge, behind the bulge
17:17 The belly tickle test
22:20 The hollow behind the scapula
26:09 A steward at the end of the arena
32:00 Lady's scar and the cinch
33:41 The Black Stallion, age 47, and Echo
39:04 Dr. Stephen Peters: 27 saddlings a day
43:31 The Therm-a-Rest pad and the living interface
46:15 Where the shim goes, English and Western
50:41 A birdhouse roof on a beach ball
56:47 The free saddle fit evaluation
1:02:40 A body that changes
1:08:20 Rapid fire
Horse Training and the Nervous System: What's Really Happening in Your Horse's Brain | Dr. Stephen Peters (Pt. 2)
We say we want a willing horse. Then we climb on, and we start cramming. And when the horse gets tight, or slow, or stuck, we do the one thing that guarantees it gets worse — we add pressure. This is Part 2 of …
Notes de l’épisode
We say we want a willing horse.
Then we climb on, and we start cramming.
And when the horse gets tight, or slow, or stuck, we do the one thing that guarantees it gets worse — we add pressure.
This is Part 2 of my conversation with Dr. Stephen Peters, and this time he brought a horse's brain. Cut in half, in his hands, on the table between us. He points to the cingulate. He points to the little kidney-bean pituitary. And he shows me, physically, the difference between a horse who can talk itself back down and a horse who has no way back.
That difference has a name. It's a chemical called GABA.
An empowered horse can produce it — can send the "stand down" signal before the cortisol ever floods the system. A horse in learned helplessness can't reach it. Same event, two completely different animals, and most of what separates them is what we wired in, and the state we wired it in.
We get into the cocktail — dopamine, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, oxytocin, serotonin — and why drilling the same exercise seven times flattens every one of them. Why release is not the same thing as relief, and only the horse gets to tell you which one it was. Why recovery, the part everyone skips, is where the learning actually locks in. And why an hour on the clock is a human invention your horse never agreed to.
Then it opens out — touch, exercise, diet, the five domains, allo-grooming, the prairie voles who fall apart in isolation and settle the second the herd rushes back in.
And we close on Charles Darwin. Not the line everyone quotes. The one almost nobody does — the one where he says it's the cooperative communities, the ones that bond and help each other, that represent the highest level of evolution.
Horses have the chemistry for that built in. Dr. Peters' whole argument is simple: let's use it.
Start with Part 1 if you haven't — this picks up right where we left off.
Dr. Stephen Peters is a neuroscientist who directed a clinic for brain health and memory, and co-author of Evidence-Based Horsemanship (with Martin Black). His most recent books are Horse Brain Science and A Horse's Life (with Mark Rashid and Chrissy McDonald), which pairs 19 real case studies with the neurological detective work behind each one.
You can find all the books by Dr. Stephen Peters here: https://www.horsebrainscience.info/books
- Horse Brain Science: The Neuroscience of Ethical Horsemanship
- Horse Brain Science: A Foundation for Equine Neuroscience
- The Book of Neuropoetry
- Evidence Based Horsemanship
- A Horse's Life: The Neuroscience of Equine Welfare
You can find out more about Dr. Stephen Peters on his website - Horse Brain Science
And on Substack
Episode Sponsored by: Total Feeds
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
0:00 Why we get in the way of our own horses 2:00 A horse brain, cut in half: corpus callosum & the cingulate 5:00 The stress circuit — HPA axis, cortisol, and GABA 8:00 Empowered vs. helpless: who can reach the brake 9:06 Wiring confidence vs. wiring fear 11:15 Lady's three stations: rebuilding a horse's love of learning 13:40 The neurochemical cocktail — and why drilling drains it 16:00 Sending the horse away: oxytocin, prediction, and the payoff 18:00 Release is not relief 19:25 A word from Total Feeds 23:00 Recovery, hippocampal replay & why silence matters 27:38 Short sessions, switching horses & the neurodivergent brain 28:57 Spaced vs. massed learning; every nervous system is a snowflake 32:11 The petals on the flower: touch, exercise, diet & the five domains 40:45 Allo-grooming, oxytocin & the prairie voles 44:13 Darwin's Descent of Man: cooperation as the highest evolution 46:43 Dr. Peters' books, Substack & wrap
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
Your Horse Isn't Being Bad — Dr. Stephen Peters on Horse Behavior, the Nervous System & Learned Helplessness Part 1 sponsored by Total Feeds
Every rider has said it. He's being stubborn. She's testing me. He knows better. Here's the harder, truer thing underneath: the horse isn't being anything. The horse is a nervous system, doing the one job every …
Notes de l’épisode
Every rider has said it. He's being stubborn. She's testing me. He knows better.
Here's the harder, truer thing underneath: the horse isn't being anything. The horse is a nervous system, doing the one job every nervous system has — trying to stay safe.
Dr. Stephen Peters spends this conversation taking me under the behavior, into the brain that produced it. He's a neuropsychologist, co-author of Evidence-Based Horsemanship, and the person I call when I want to actually understand my horses instead of just managing them. This time we sat down as two diagnosed neurodivergent people talking about horse behavior from the inside — which is its own kind of honesty.
He explains why the horse that shoves past you off the trailer isn't defiant. It's running a pathway you built, three good grazes at a time. He calls it myelination, and once you hear how it works, you stop blaming the horse and start watching what you're teaching when you think you're not teaching anything.
We go into the thing so many of us get exactly backwards. You hit a wall, so you add pressure. More leg, more spur, more insistence. And Peters says it plainly: almost always the answer was to let the nervous system reset, not to push harder. Push harder and you don't get through the noise — you become the noise.
Then we get to the part I asked him to slow down on. Learned helplessness. The old experiment neither of us can listen to without flinching, and what it tells us about the quiet, compliant, "well-behaved" horse who has simply learned that nothing he does matters. That's not a trained horse. That's a horse who stopped voting.
And near the end, something bigger opens up. Peters describes the freeze — the shutdown that isn't a choice, the body flooding itself with its own opioids so it can survive what it can't escape. He says the thing I most needed someone with his credentials to say out loud: that response is the nervous system deciding, not the animal, and not the person it happens to. If you've ever been asked why you didn't fight back, this part is for you as much as your horse.
What you'll hear, underneath all of it, is a kinder and more accurate way to be with a horse. Not softer for its own sake — more correct. Work with the nervous system and you get performance and behavior far past anything pressure buys you. The willing partner everyone wants isn't obedient. He's involved.
Dr. Stephen Peters is a board-certified neuropsychologist and co-author of Evidence-Based Horsemanship with Martin Black. He studies the equine brain and nervous system and is launching a new podcast, The Skeptical Horseman, with Jillian Kreinbring, M.S., dedicated to separating good research from pseudoscience in the horse world.
This is Part 1 of our conversation. In Part 2, Steve puts a real horse brain on the table, cut in half, and shows me exactly what agency does to it.
If someone you ride with keeps calling their horse the problem — send them this one first.
You can find out more about Dr. Stephen Peters here: Horse Brain Science
Chapters:
- 0:00 — "They have good days and bad days": meeting the horse's nervous system where it is
- 0:26 — Who Dr. Stephen Peters is, and why brain-first is a different conversation
- 2:19 — Critical thinking, bias, and the "baloney sandwich" problem in horse science
- 4:50 — Two neurodivergent people on masking — and the horse equivalent
- 8:00 — The predictive brain: why "predictable = readable = safe"
- 9:42 — Myelination, oligodendrocytes, and paving the horse's highways
- 11:59 — The trailer example: habit vs. the labels we assign it (defiant, disrespectful)
- 15:24 — Clever Hans: the horse who was reading, not counting
- 17:11 — Nervous systems, sympathetic arousal, and why more pressure adds noise
- 21:03 — Down-regulation, pendulation, and training the nervous system itself
- 23:30 — [Sponsor: Total Equine by Total Feeds]
- 26:45 — Dopamine, "special forces" horses, and solution-seeking vs. robotic horses
- 32:41 — Learned helplessness: the Seligman experiment and what it does to the brain
- 37:27 — The five domains, agency, and why every creature needs its behavior to matter
- 38:55 — The freeze response, the periaqueductal gray, and the opioid flood
- 43:35 — When words fail the nervous system: compliance is not consent, or courage
- 46:53 — Dissociation, wearable tech, hyperscanning, and Peters' Substack work
- 50:37 — "We're stopping here": the cliffhanger into Part 2 and the real horse brain
This Episode is Sponsored by:
Total Feeds
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe wherever you listen, leave us a review — it genuinely helps more people find these conversations — and please share this episode with someone who needs to hear it ..........thank you!!!
Joe Stockdale on Riding Confidence, Grief & the Show Jumping Career He Inherited
Everybody wants the clear round. The win. The photo at the top of the podium. Here's the part the sport keeps offstage — the doubt, the grief, the voice at the in-gate asking if you even belong here. Joe …
Notes de l’épisode
Everybody wants the clear round. The win. The photo at the top of the podium.
Here's the part the sport keeps offstage — the doubt, the grief, the voice at the in-gate asking if you even belong here.
Joe Stockdale knows that voice well. He calls it imposter syndrome, and he feels it at the very top of show jumping, which is its own kind of honesty for a 26-year-old already riding at five-star.
In 2018 he lost his dad, Tim Stockdale, to cancer. Almost overnight Joe inherited a business, a famous name, a string of owners, and a mare his father picked out before he died. A young rider usually eases into all of that across years. Joe got a phone call and a yard to run.
This one goes straight at the thing under the results — what grief does to ambition, where riding confidence comes from, and why Joe would rather be home doing the work than chasing a spotlight.
He takes me inside the year everything turned. Less than five years after losing his dad, he's standing at the World Championships in Herning on the mare his father found, winning team bronze for Great Britain. He says it plainly: stories like that barely happen to anyone.
We talk about the people who caught him. William and Pippa Funnell, his dad's closest friends, who started watching every one of his rounds on video and calling with notes they took on their own. Joe is blunt about it — that web of mentors is the reason he's still standing here.
And we get to the line I keep turning over. Joe wants the pressure: last to go in a Nations Cup, the whole thing resting on him, the chance to be the hero. Then he goes home and rides like a horseman over a competitor, because the horse gets to have an off day, and his job is to listen.
When Joe was young, he told his dad he wished he could be as good as him. His dad's answer: you're going to be way better than me. Trust me.
He carries that. You can hear it.
If you've ever stood at the edge of something you wanted, certain everyone could see right through you — this one is for you. Riding confidence, the real kind, sounds a lot like Joe describes it here: hours of work off-camera, so you're ready the day someone finally watches.
Joe Stockdale is a British show jumper based at the family yard his parents made with their own hands. He rides for Great Britain at five-star level and trains alongside his mentors William and Pippa Funnell. His late father, Tim Stockdale, was a well-regarded British show jumper who selected the mare Joe later took to the World Championships.
If someone you love is carrying a name, a loss, or a doubt they keep to themselves — send them this one.
You can find out more about Joe Stockdale here: website | instagram | youtube
This episode is sponsored by - Connaway & Associates Equine Insurance Services, Inc. The friendly and knowledgeable team at Connaway & Associates brings together more than 30 years of experience to offer a wide range of insurance services, including horse insurance, farm insurance, and liability insurance. Visit www.connaway.net | @connawayassociates | facebook.com/connawayassociatesequine
Chapters
- 2:42 — Losing a parent young: the grief he and Noelle share
- 6:55 — A famous name, two paths, and the weight of a legacy
- 22:00 — Inheriting a yard, a system, and his dad's owners
- 24:34 — William & Pippa Funnell: the mentors who answered the phone
- 30:10 — From loss to bronze: the World Championships in Herning
- 41:29 — Home vs the spotlight: wanting the pressure
- 46:54 — The Olympic medal on the bingo card
- 56:18 — Patience: letting the horse have an off day
- 57:18 — Why John Whitaker is the greatest horseman
- 1:01:52 — Mares, stallions, geldings
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
How to Read Horse Behavior — Elsa Sinclair on the 5 Types of Leadership
There is a question almost every one of us carries to the barn and never says out loud. Not how do I get him to do this. But: does he actually trust me — or is he just complying? This is Part 2 of my …
Notes de l’épisode
There is a question almost every one of us carries to the barn and never says out loud.
Not how do I get him to do this.
But: does he actually trust me — or is he just complying?
This is Part 2 of my conversation with Elsa Sinclair, and it's the half where I kept having to stop and close my eyes. Because Elsa reads horse behavior in a way most of us were never taught to. She breaks leadership into five kinds — dominant, persistent, assertive, passive, supportive — and then says the thing that reorganized my brain: that leadership is simply any action that results in harmony. That dominance and abuse are not the same thing.
She takes us back inside the year she spent with a wild mustang named Myrnah — three to six hours a day, five days a week. The morning she got on at three months, did it badly, and wasn't allowed back on for another three. Not because anything went wrong. Because her timing was off by a hair, and the horse simply told the truth about it.
Then comes the line I haven't stopped repeating: "I'm not going to try to be the best horse trainer in the room. I'm going to try to be the most accurate."
This is freedom based training as a craft — not a philosophy you admire from a distance, but a practice you can take to the barn tomorrow. Elsa shows how to actually see a horse's thought before you reward it — the ear that flicks, the eye that moves, the breath — and gives a homework exercise you can start in the morning. We get into why hyperfocus on the goal keeps you tripping over the next step. Why confidence, quietly, trumps every strategy. And Atlas — the horse she bought off a slaughter truck, the one who broke everything she thought she knew.
If you've ever felt like you're learning too slowly with your horse, this episode reframes that ache as the whole point.
Elsa Sinclair is a lifelong horsewoman, horse behavior researcher, and filmmaker. Her year with the mustang Myrnah became a documentary, Taming Wild, and a book by the same name. She now teaches freedom based training to students across Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
If you have a horse who's been trying to tell you something — this one is for you. And if you know someone still fighting the horse they love, send it to them.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN
- Elsa's full leadership spectrum — dominant, persistent, assertive, passive, and supportive — and why she defines leadership as any action that results in harmony
- The difference between dominance and abuse, and how a single raised hand tells her which one a horse has lived through
- Why she got on Myrnah bareback and bridleless at three months — and the timing mistake that cost her the next three
- The distinction between feel and timing, and why she'd rather be the most accurate trainer in the room than the best one
- How to read a horse's thoughts through its senses instead of projecting the thought you wish were there
- Why confidence can trump every technique, and how to build it from the bottom up if you don't have it yet
- The case for the slowest training method on Earth, and how slowing down actually deepens what you learn
To find out more about Elsa Sinclair: website | instagram | facebook | patreon
CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS
[00:00] Leadership options most training never breaks down [00:23] The leadership spectrum: dominant, persistent, and assertive [04:36] Building it bottom-up: passive and supportive leadership [07:30] Riding bridleless: the year with Myrnah, and getting on at three months [10:00] Feel versus timing, and rewarding the thought, not the action [12:47] Why she'd rather be the most accurate trainer than the best [15:33] Untraining yourself: the sensory system over mechanical habit [21:44] "Playing in Puddles": letting go of the goal of riding [36:00] The horse who decided humans always make bad decisions [40:20] Confidence wins: when it trumps every technique [45:36] The two horses who shaped her: the generous one and the mold-breaker [54:00] The beauty of slowness, and learning to enjoy the snail's pace [56:24] Rapid fire: the one book, the most undervalued skill, mares vs stallions
This Episode is Sponsored by:
Total Feeds
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
What If Your Horse Could Say No? Elsa Sinclair on Freedom Based Training Part 1
Most of us learned to ride before we ever learned to ask. We learned the halter, the rope, the pressure, the release. We learned how to make a horse do the thing. And somewhere in there, quietly, a lot of us …
Notes de l’épisode
Most of us learned to ride before we ever learned to ask.
We learned the halter, the rope, the pressure, the release. We learned how to make a horse do the thing. And somewhere in there, quietly, a lot of us started to feel that something about it wasn't quite right — and didn't have the words, or the permission, to say so.
Elsa Sinclair had that feeling at twelve.
She's the creator of Freedom Based Training and the documentary Taming Wild, and this conversation is the story of where it came from — which is really the story of a question she couldn't put down.
It started with a student, who asked her: do you think horses actually like being ridden? And then, before Elsa could finish answering — do you think they ever had a choice?
She didn't have an answer. So she went looking for one.
What follows is one of the most honest origin stories I've had on this show. A lonely girl on a spirited Appaloosa named Demi. Years of clinics and books and methods that never felt like the thing she was reaching for. An offer from a near-stranger she couldn't refuse. And finally a year in a field with a wild mustang named Myrnah — no halter, no rope, no treats, no way to make her do anything — just the freedom to walk away, and the hope that she'd choose to stay.
Elsa says something in here I keep coming back to. That she never set out to be spiritual or soft about it. She wanted something "logical and practical and understandable" — a way of being with horses built on peace instead of domination, that still actually worked.
We talk about why she refuses to promise her horse a calm, composed version of herself. About trust as the willingness to suspend judgment. And about the idea that rearranged how I see every herd I've ever stood in: that in a healthy herd, awareness replaces dominance — because dominance only shows up when nobody was paying attention in the first place.
This is the beginning of Freedom Based Training, told by the woman who built it.
Elsa Sinclair is a lifelong horsewoman, behavior researcher, and filmmaker. Her year with Myrnah became the award-winning documentary Taming Wild and a book of the same name, and she now teaches Freedom Based Training to students around the world.
If you've ever wondered whether your horse would choose you — this is Part One. Stay for Part Two, where she shows us exactly how it's done.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL LEARN
- The single question from a student that made Elsa stop and ask whether horses actually choose to be ridden
- Why she trains with no halter, rope, or treats — and what the horse's freedom to walk away forces you to get right
- The reason she refuses to promise her horse a calm, composed version of herself, and what she does instead
- How she defines trust as "the willingness to suspend judgment," plus the 80/20 rule for how often you're allowed to get it wrong
- What Ari, the aloof stallion who needed no one, taught her about reaching a horse who isn't interested in you
- Why she calls it the slowest training method on Earth, and the honest reason it isn't for everyone
- The herd-dynamics reframe that replaces dominance with awareness
To find out more about Elsa Sinclair: website | instagram | facebook | patreon
CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS
[00:00] A surreal reunion and the wish list that started the road trip [00:44] Elsa's origin story: Demi and "good buckers make good jumpers" [05:51] The birth of Freedom Based Training: peace over domination [09:02] The question that changed everything — do horses choose to be ridden? [11:34] The offer she couldn't refuse, and a documentary called Taming Wild [14:24] Training without tools: timing, curiosity, and day one with Myrnah [18:35] Companionship as currency: matching, mirroring, and sensory association [21:31] The promise she won't make: congruence over composure [28:22] Showing up on a bad day, and what trust actually is [34:32] Ari, the aloof stallion, and the 80/20 rule [40:49] Why the slowest training method on Earth isn't for everyone [47:00] Herd dynamics: replacing dominance with awareness
Episode Sponsored by Total Feeds
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your support!
Horse Health: The Virus Almost Every Horse Already Carries — What to Know Before the Next Outbreak with Dr. Bruno Karam
Right now, somewhere in the horse world, a horse is shedding a virus it's carried since it was a foal. Its owner doesn't know. The horse looks fine. That's EHV-1. Equine herpesvirus. And Dr. Bruno Karam, equine …
Notes de l’épisode
Right now, somewhere in the horse world, a horse is shedding a virus it's carried since it was a foal. Its owner doesn't know. The horse looks fine.
That's EHV-1. Equine herpesvirus. And Dr. Bruno Karam, equine internal medicine specialist, wants you to understand it before the next outbreak — not during it.
We recorded this conversation in the wake of last year's EHV-1 cluster at the National Finals Rodeo. Horses stumbling. Famous horses hospitalized. People asking whether the event should have run at all. And a lot of horse owners left with unanswered questions about a virus they'd heard about but didn't fully understand.
This episode answers those questions.
EHV-1 isn't new. The neurological form — EHM — isn't new either. What's changed is the density of horse movement. Western circuits don't park in one city for two weeks. They move. And they move on timelines shorter than the incubation period. By the time a horse shows symptoms, it's already three states away from where it got infected.
Bruno breaks down how the virus behaves in the body — biphasic fevers, white blood cell hitchhiking, the vasculitis cascade that leads to spinal cord involvement. He explains why your vaccinated horse can still shed. Why a healthy horse with no symptoms can spread it. And why giving Banamine the moment your horse feels warm is the single most counterproductive thing you can do in an outbreak.
The practical guidance in here is specific. Take temperatures twice a day. Know what's normal for your horse before you need to know what's abnormal. Don't share thermometers. And if your horse is questionable at a show — be okay with not showing.
He also talks about something that doesn't get said enough: we don't yet have data on why some horses get sick and others don't. We're still retroactively analyzing the outbreaks. The science is moving, and what we do today may not be what we do in ten years. That's not a reason to panic. It's a reason to pay attention.
Dr. Bruno Karam is an equine internal medicine specialist. He trained at Texas A&M under Dr. Michelle Coleman and has worked some of the most complex infectious disease cases in the field. He ended up on the news last year because of EHV-1. He came on this podcast to give you the version of the conversation that the news couldn't.
If your barn shares thermometers, send this to your barn manager.
Subscribe to the NOËLLE FLOYD Podcast — formerly Dear Horse World — wherever you listen.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN
- Why nearly every horse already carries EHV-1 latently — and what triggers shedding with no visible symptoms
- The exact biological pathway from respiratory infection to spinal cord damage that causes EHM
- Why the western show circuit's travel structure created exponential exposure chains in 2025
- What the EHV vaccine actually does and doesn't do, and why it still matters for herd immunity
- How to take and interpret your horse's temperature using their individual baseline, not just 101.5°F
- Why giving Banamine at the first elevated temp can mask early outbreak warning signs
- The most overlooked transmission vector at shows: human hands moving between horses
To find out more about Dr. Bruno Karam DVM - Pilchuck Veterinary Hospital - Equine
This episode is sponsored by Pegasus Training & Rehabilitation Center
Here at Pegasus, our mission is to run a first class horse training, rehabilitation, and conditioning facility; provide horses of all disciplines with full and complete care of the highest quality; partner with our clients to ensure that we not only meet, but exceed, their individual goals and needs; and maintain our facility and equipment with the highest level of care.
To find out more about Pegasus - website | instagram | facebook
Interested in more from Noelle?
Noelle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS
[00:00] Introduction to Dr. Bruno Karam, Equine Internal Medicine Specialist
[00:38] What an Equine Internist Does and Why It's Unique
[02:00] Memorable Cases — From Yellow Fat Disease to Aspiration Pneumonia
[09:34] What Is EHV-1 — Horse COVID Explained
[11:10] How EHV-1 Spreads and What Recrudescence Means
[13:11] Why Some Horses Go Neurological and Others Don't
[16:00] Shedding Explained — Subclinical Carriers and Transmission
[18:06] Vaccines for EHV — What They Do and Don't Protect Against
21:00] Vaccine Risk, Hesitancy, and How to Think About Risk Assessment
[24:28] The 2025 Outbreak — What Really Happened in Texas Before NFR
37:38] What Horse Owners Can Do — Monitoring and Biosecurity at Shows
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
The Rider Ego vs. The Horseman Standard: Turnout, Horse Karma, and Clear Boundaries Daniel Bluman Part 2
It is easy to get wrapped up in the competitive environment when prize money and recognition wait at the gate. Our natural human instinct causes us to objectify horses as high-speed pieces of equipment or treat …
Notes de l’épisode
It is easy to get wrapped up in the competitive environment when prize money and recognition wait at the gate. Our natural human instinct causes us to objectify horses as high-speed pieces of equipment or treat them like sentimental human pets, yet both approaches cause immense confusion for the animal.
When challenges arise, a rider focuses strictly on overriding the obstacle in front of them, whereas a horseman steps back to evaluate the wider picture and protect the partnership.
Daniel Bluman breaks down the psychological differences between these choices, sharing the real-world management practices that establish what he calls horse karma. He discusses why daily turnout and social connection create a healthier brain for an athletic horse, allowing them to remain sound and happy for years.
What is Horse Karma?: Daniel shares a childhood story from Colombia that shaped his belief that treating every horse with empathy always pays it forward.
Clarity is Humanity: Loving a horse means giving clear, decisive training directions instead of treats, carrots, and confusing human sentimentality.
Becoming Indispensable: Learning how the animal functions biologically makes a person scarce and highly valued, securing a sustainable livelihood.
Managing Social Validation: Daniel urges us to handle the craving for online recognition and instead celebrate the unseen daily lifestyle.
Daniel Bluman is an Olympic athlete and co-founder of Bluman Equestrian. He is an entrepreneur and a producer of horses who believes patience is a massive competitive advantage. His philosophy rests on the conviction that horses are our teachers, and our primary mission is to provide them with respect and dignity.
Explore the mission at:
This episode is brought to you by:
Connaway & Associates Equine Insurance Services, Inc. The friendly and knowledgeable team at Connaway & Associates brings together more than 30 years of experience to offer a wide range of insurance services, including horse insurance, farm insurance, and liability insurance. Visit www.connaway.net | @connawayassociates | facebook.com/connawayassociatesequine
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
Chapters and Time Stamps:
0:00 Horses are not equipment
4:00 Stop canceling riders you don't understand
5:10 Why clarity is kindness
8:32 The problem with humanizing horses
9:33 Why Daniel turns his horses out together
11:26 What stall life does to a horse's eyesight
12:54 When science catches up to horsemanship
14:00 Why the same ring every day limits your horse
17:00 The disappearing horseman
21:40 Horsemen always earn more than riders
25:35 Show jumping's social license problem
28:00 Managing the social media validation trap
35:50 Rapid fire questions
How Equine Bodywork for Horse Owners Transforms Your Horse Partnership with Jim Masterson
What if everything you've been calling a behavior problem is actually your horse asking for help? On this episode of Dear Horse World, Noëlle sits down with Jim Masterson — founder of the Masterson Method and a …
Notes de l’épisode
What if everything you've been calling a behavior problem is actually your horse asking for help? On this episode of Dear Horse World, Noëlle sits down with Jim Masterson — founder of the Masterson Method and a leading voice in equine bodywork for horse owners — to explore exactly that question. Jim has worked hands-on with an estimated 700 horses a year at peak, trained over 10,000 students worldwide, and built a method shaped entirely by what horses told him. This conversation will change how you see your horse.
Jim and Noëlle unpack how the horse nervous system moves between sympathetic arousal (guarding, bracing) and parasympathetic release (dropping the head, yawning, shifting weight). You'll understand why an agenda — even a caring one — can block that release, and how approaching your horse with quiet, clear intention changes what becomes possible. Natural horsemanship principles run through everything: you're not working on the horse. You're working with it.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN
- Why the poll-atlas junction is the single most important tension point in your horse's body, and how releasing it can shift movement, behavior, and comfort throughout the entire horse — not just the neck.
- How to identify when your horse's "behavior problems" — head-shyness, resistance to bridling, difficulty with one canter lead, sudden bucking — are expressions of physical tension, not disobedience.
- Jim's five levels of touch (air gap, egg yolk, grape, lemon, and hard lime) and how to stay beneath your horse's bracing response so tension can actually release instead of getting blocked.
- How to start the bladder meridian technique today — free, with no equipment — by following the blinks, yawns, and lick-and-chew responses your horse is already giving you.
- How your horse's nervous system moves between sympathetic guarding and parasympathetic release, and what visible signs tell you a real tension release has happened.
- Why approaching body work without a "fix it" agenda is essential — and how your own intention and presence either opens your horse up or causes them to shut down and block out the work entirely.
- Why regular body work is one of the only things you can do with your horse that is all give and no take — and how even one bladder meridian session can begin to transform your horse's trust in you.
Jim Masterson is the creator of the Masterson Method Integrated Equine Performance Bodywork, author of Beyond Horse Massage, and former body worker for the US Endurance Team. He has certified over 650 practitioners in 20 countries and taught more than 10,000 students since 2006.
Start your equine bodywork for horse owners journey at MastersonMethod.com.
Watch the free bladder meridian video on YouTube, and share this equestrian podcast with every horse owner in your life who has a horse they don't fully understand yet.
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
Chapters:
00:00:00 When Behavior Is Pain: The Lens That Changes Everything
00:01:33 Jim Masterson on 10,000 Students and a Method Born From Horses
00:04:32 From Groom to Bodywork Pioneer: How It All Started
00:07:09 Discovering the Bladder Meridian and What Horses Were Showing Him
00:14:23 Congo, Baboons, and Learning to Read Animal Cues
00:20:09 The Three Key Tension Junctions Every Horse Owner Should Know
00:29:09 How Tension Travels Through the Body: Compensation and Connection
00:39:36 Why Releasing Tension Changes Your Horse's Performance and Well-Being
00:44:25 Body Work as the Fastest Path to Real Horse-Human Connection
00:51:45 Subtle Signs of Discomfort and How to Spot Them Before They Become Problems
00:56:03 Levels of Touch and What Makes the Masterson Method Different
01:07:15 How to Start Doing Body Work on Your Own Horse Without an Agenda
What Your Horse's Nervous System Reveals About Trust and Liberty with Kaleigh Marie - Sponsored by Triple Crown Feeds
Liberty trainer and Braveheart Beasts founder Kaleigh Marie shares how training oxen, mammoth donkeys, and mules before ever seriously working with horses shaped everything she knows about connection, trust …
Notes de l’épisode
Liberty trainer and Braveheart Beasts founder Kaleigh Marie shares how training oxen, mammoth donkeys, and mules before ever seriously working with horses shaped everything she knows about connection, trust, and the nervous system.
Kaleigh Marie is a liberty trainer and performer based in the Northeast who has spent the last decade developing a nervous system-informed approach to horsemanship rooted in connection, positive reinforcement, and the foundational lessons she learned working with cattle, donkeys, and mules long before horses became her focus.
In this episode you will learn:
- Why Kaleigh's foundation in training oxen and mammoth donkeys gave her a unique edge with horses
- What "conversational quality" means and how it shows up in your relationship with your horse
- Why donkeys ask "why should I?" — and why that's actually a gift to any trainer
- How the nervous system underlies everything from leg aids to liberty work
- The honest story of how clicker training almost derailed her liberty performances — and what she rebuilt from the ground up
- The difference between expectation and intention when you're struggling in a session
- What to do when you're not showing up as the trainer you want to be
- Why dull horses are often the most sensitive ones — and how they got that way
- The "backpack" concept and how co-regulation with your horse actually works
- Why self-regulation — for both horse and human — matters more than connection
To find out more about Kaleigh Marie: website | instagram | facebook
This episode is sponsored by Triple Crown Feeds The secret to raising a healthy horse begins with nutrition that goes beyond. The team at Triple Crown is dedicated to helping our customers succeed by understanding your horse's unique needs and working to develop the right feeding program for the horse you love. www.triplecrownfeed.com | instagram.com/triplecrownfeed | facebook.com/TripleCrownFeed | youtube.com/@triplecrownfeeds
If you love honest conversations about horsemanship, trust, and the ongoing practice of becoming a better horse person, subscribe for more.
Chapters:
00:00 Meet Kaylee Marie
01:10 Road to the Horse Memories
03:38 First Meeting with Tik
08:12 Braveheart Beasts Origins
08:31 Farm Kid to Oxen Trainer
13:07 Riding Cows and Controversy
18:39 Back to Horses and Draft Life
20:16 Mammoth Donkeys in the City
24:01 Connection and Motivation Lessons
8:05 Conversational Quality Explained
32:22 Nervous System Awakening
38:31 Rescue Rehab and Roman Story
45:18 First Q&A Reset as a Trainer
47:30 Gut Brain Connection
48:27 One Percent Better
48:55 Expectation Versus Intention
51:44 Stop And Regulate
53:28 Co Regulation Release
56:41 Leg Aid Without Fight
58:40 Sensitivity Versus Expression
01:00:46 Rehab Dull Horses
01:04:17 Clicker Training Ethics
01:09:42 Rock Bottom Without Food
01:15:47 Pressure And Resilience
01:18:53 Clicker For Quality
01:22:10 Keep Learning Through Pain
01:24:03 Rapid Fire Favorites
01:28:23 Final Thanks And Wrap
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
"Easy Keeper" Horses Are a Warning Sign… Here's Why with Dr Kent Tooman sponsored by Pegasus Training & Rehabilitation Center
In this episode of Dear Horse World, equine veterinarian Dr. Kent Tooman breaks down the truth about equine metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and why more horses than ever are at risk of laminitis. Dr …
Notes de l’épisode
In this episode of Dear Horse World, equine veterinarian Dr. Kent Tooman breaks down the truth about equine metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and why more horses than ever are at risk of laminitis.
Dr. Kent Tooman is an experienced equine veterinarian with over 30 years in practice, specializing in performance horses and metabolic health.
In this episode you will learn:
- What's really happening inside your horse's body
- Why "easy keepers" may be misunderstood
- The subtle signs most owners miss (including fat deposits and barn blindness)
- Breed predispositions (ponies, Arabs, draft crosses, and more)
- Practical steps to reduce risk and manage weight safely
How insulin affects your horse's health
The connection between weight, metabolism, and laminitis
Why modern horse management is increasing risk
How to spot early warning signs before it's too late
If you care about better horse health, training, and management, subscribe for more expert conversations.
This episode is sponsored by Pegasus Training & Rehabilitation Center
Here at Pegasus, our mission is to run a first class horse training, rehabilitation, and conditioning facility; provide horses of all disciplines with full and complete care of the highest quality; partner with our clients to ensure that we not only meet, but exceed, their individual goals and needs; and maintain our facility and equipment with the highest level of care.
To find out more about Pegasus - website | instagram | facebook
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
Chapters:
0:00 – The "Easy Keeper" Myth (Why This Matters) 1:12 – Meet Dr. Kent Tooman 3:45 – Why More Horses Are Developing Metabolic Issues 6:20 – What Is Equine Metabolic Syndrome? 9:10 – Insulin Explained (Simple Breakdown) 12:30 – Where Fat Shows Up (Signs Most Owners Miss) 16:15 – Barn Blindness: Why You Don't See the Problem 20:40 – Breed Risk: Ponies, Arabs & "Thrifty" Horses 25:10 – Why Modern Horses Are Getting Overweight 30:25 – The Link Between Weight & Laminitis 35:50 – How to Reduce Risk (Practical Steps) 41:30 – Feeding, Exercise & Management Mistakes 47:10 – Can This Be Reversed? 52:00 – The Future: Ozempic for Horses? 56:30 – Final Advice for Horse Owners
⚠️ Disclaimer - This content is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for veterinary advice.The Most Powerful Thing you can Train isn't Your Horse—it's Your Mind with Barbra Schulte - sponsored by Total Feeds
Champion cutting horse trainer Barbra Schulte joins the Dear Horse World Podcast after teaching host Noelle her first cut in Weatherford, Texas, explaining her teaching approach through mechanics and nervous …
Notes de l’épisode
Champion cutting horse trainer Barbra Schulte joins the Dear Horse World Podcast after teaching host Noelle her first cut in Weatherford, Texas, explaining her teaching approach through mechanics and nervous system regulation.
They discuss staying in an optimal state between under-arousal and fight-or-flight, slowing down when things speed up, and building skills through fundamentals, clear sequences, repetition, and positive reinforcement (dopamine) to install neurological pathways rather than "muscle memory."
Barbra Schulte outlines beginner learning, the discouraging "messy middle," refinement, and mastery, emphasizing between-lesson work, visualization, scripts/mantras, and self-coaching tools like "what's my job?" and "what do I control?" They address negative self-talk, fear of judgment, blame vs responsibility, and self-worth, and Schulte shares how human performance training influenced her competitive success, plus retreats and book recommendations.
To find out more about Barbra - Website | Instagram | Facebook
Barbra Schulte is hosting a Cutting Clinic September 17-20th 2026 in Pony, Montana. Click here for more info.
What You'll Learn:
- Why your nervous system — not your technique — is the real ceiling on your riding performance
- How to find and stay in the sweet spot between flat and frantic, and what to do when you lose it
- Why positive reinforcement creates a dopamine cycle that accelerates skill acquisition
- The truth about muscle memory — and where new riding skills actually live in your body
- How to navigate the messy middle of learning without losing confidence or motivation
- Why nervousness is closer to peak performance than you think — and how blame moves you furthest away
- How Barbra used visualization and nervous system work to win two legs of cutting's triple crown
This episode is brought to you by Total Feeds:
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
Chapters:
00:00 Meet Barbra Schulte
01:00 Teaching With Awareness
03:40 Cutting Fundamentals Explained
07:06 When Things Speed Up 1
2:41 Dopamine And Learning Waves
19:38 Installing Skills And Practice Plans
31:41 Surviving The Messy Middle
35:48 Taming Negative Self Talk
38:46 Scripts Mantras And Regulation
42:38 Why You Ride In The First Place
43:54 No Failure In Learning
44:07 Total Equine Feed Story
47:19 Coming Home To Yourself
49:50 Visualization For Show Nerves
52:05 Do You Be You
01:00:28 Why Judgment Hurts
01:09:02 Nervous Anger Blame Rings
01:17:09 Hard Things Build Confidence
01:19:34 Why Nervous System Work
01:24:18 Retreats And Courses
01:26:37 Rapid Fire Wrap Up
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
Bring a Proven System Into Your Riding - an NF+ Masterclass Exclusive with Ian Millar and Amy Millar sponsored by Connaway & Associates
NF+ is proud to present our exclusive new Masterclass, The Millar Method Complete Training System, where Ian & Amy Millar introduce their system for building winning horses. Olympian Ian Millar returns on NF+ …
Notes de l’épisode
NF+ is proud to present our exclusive new Masterclass, The Millar Method Complete Training System, where Ian & Amy Millar introduce their system for building winning horses.
Olympian Ian Millar returns on NF+ with Amy Millar to introduce the first of 16 episodes of the Millar Method, a consistent, repeatable system designed to develop horses that stay sound, confident, and ready to win.
They share their backgrounds—Ian's record 10 Olympic Games, role with the Canadian show jumping team, and scholarship work in Ontario; Amy's two Olympic appearances, Canadian championship, team ambitions, and efforts to improve accessibility through Can Jump. The episode explains how their method applies from trail riding to top sport, grounded in understanding the horse's nature and using tools like lunging, round penning, gymnastics, grids, and courses.
They emphasize principles that stay consistent while adapting teaching to how each horse and rider learns.
A Program Responsible for nine Olympic Horses across two Generations.
The Millar Method | Complete Training System - Save 25% on annual memberships with code DHW25
Learn the system that has developed top-level horses for Olympians lan and Amy Millar.
Chapters:
00:00 Meet the Millar Method
01:12 Ian and Amy Introductions
02:26 Why Teaching Matters
04:44 Sharing the Method
05:28 What the Method Covers
06:47 Tools and Foundations
07:45 Principles and Adaptation
08:19 How Horses and Riders Learn
08:55 Teaching Wins
The Millar Method | Complete Training System - Save 25% on annual memberships with code DHW25
Exclusively available on NF+, the equestrian masterclass platform for riders of all levels and disciplines.
This episode is brought to you by:
Connaway & Associates Equine Insurance Services, Inc. The friendly and knowledgeable team at Connaway & Associates brings together more than 30 years of experience to offer a wide range of insurance services, including horse insurance, farm insurance, and liability insurance. Visit www.connaway.net | @connawayassociates | facebook.com/connawayassociatesequine
Give the Horses Time - Peter Charles on Developing Riders and Horses that Last Sponsored by Connaway
Peter Charles on Starting from Nothing, Building Champions, and Giving Horses Time Peter Charles joins the Dear Horse World Podcast for his first podcast and recounts leaving Liverpool at 15 after his parents …
Notes de l’épisode
Peter Charles on Starting from Nothing, Building Champions, and Giving Horses Time Peter Charles joins the Dear Horse World Podcast for his first podcast and recounts leaving Liverpool at 15 after his parents died, starting as a groom in Ireland, getting limited early riding opportunities, and working up through top European yards before winning the Brussels World Cup at 24 on the 7-year-old April Son. He contrasts his non-equestrian start with raising and training his children—Harry, Scarlett, and Sienna—emphasizing basics, hard work, confidence, and separating father from trainer; Harry learned on modest horses, was encouraged to choose riding himself, and later achieved multiple major medals and wins. Charles critiques the American hunter pathway versus Europe's pony system for developing competitive reactions, argues modern sport's nonstop schedule reduces time for partnerships, and stresses patience in producing horses, later starting ages, breeding selection via strong mare lines, and managing soundness by learning, asking questions, and knowing each horse's movement.This conversation explores:
- What starting from nothing actually teaches you (and what money can't replace)
- Why the European pony-riding system produces more instinctive, competitive riders
- The difference between giving your kids opportunity and making it too easy
- How to build a genuine partnership with a horse — and why rushing it will cost you later
- What to do when your string of top horses disappears overnight
- How confidence is built, not born — and why Peter never once doubted himself
- Why the mare matters more than the stallion in any breeding program
- How to become your own horse's best advocate when the vet doesn't have all the answers
Connaway & Associates Equine Insurance Services, Inc. The friendly and knowledgeable team at Connaway & Associates brings together more than 30 years of experience to offer a wide range of insurance services, including horse insurance, farm insurance, and liability insurance. Visit www.connaway.net | @connawayassociates | facebook.com/connawayassociatesequine
Chapters: 00:00 Welcome to the Podcast 01:25 From Liverpool to Horses 02:43 First Rides and First Win 03:47 Training the Charles Kids 07:52 Keeping Them Hungry 08:59 Europe vs America Systems 10:37 Letting Kids Choose 13:39 Learning From Mistakes 14:56 Giving Horses Time 20:08 Talent Versus Work Ethic 23:42 Modern Showjumping Chess 27:35 Building Confidence Today 29:27 Rotating Horses On Tour 29:49 Confidence Through Preparation 30:20 Show Circuit Eats Time 31:57 Basics Beat Money 33:29 Nations Cup Glory Days 37:18 Mentors And Giving Back 45:19 Breeding Starts With Mares 47:15 Soundness And Vet Wisdom 52:55 Rapid Fire And FarewellInterested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
Solving Horse Separation Anxiety: Why Herd-Bound Behavior Isn't Disobedience — It's Instinct with Kathy Baar
Horse Separation anxiety is something most horse owners will face at some point. Sometimes it shows up as calling when a buddy leaves. Sometimes it's a refusal to leave the barn. Sometimes it escalates into …
Notes de l’épisode
Horse Separation anxiety is something most horse owners will face at some point.
Sometimes it shows up as calling when a buddy leaves. Sometimes it's a refusal to leave the barn. Sometimes it escalates into behavior that feels dangerous, overwhelming, or emotionally exhausting.
And despite how common it is, it can feel isolating — especially when even experienced professionals don't always have a clear roadmap.
In this episode, we sit down with clinician and author Kathy Baar to unpack herd-bound behavior through the lens of psychology and biology. Kathy has spent decades studying how horses bond, how they regulate, and how easily their instincts can be misunderstood.
This conversation explores:
- What separation anxiety is (and what it isn't)
- Why horses bond so deeply — especially when traveling or stabled together
- The difference between connection and codependency
- How to expand your horse's comfort zone safely
- What to do in show situations when you don't have weeks to rebuild patterns
- How your own personality type impacts how your horse learns
- Why safety and comfort must come before food or reward
This episode is for you if:
- Your horse struggles leaving the barn or their buddy
- Show warm-ups feel unpredictable
- You feel embarrassed or alone in this challenge
- You want to understand herd-bound behavior at its root
- You're ready to build confidence in your horse without escalating intensity
- Kathy's book that she would read to the horse world - Natural Horse-Man-Ship: Six Keys to a Natural Horse-Human Relationship (A Western Horseman Book) by Pat Perelli
Kathy offers understanding — when you understand what your horse is truly seeking, your approach begins to change.
Kathy Baar is a clinician, trainer, and author known for her thoughtful, psychology-based approach to horsemanship. Drawing influence from the lineage of Tom and Bill Dorrance and Ray Hunt, Kathy focuses on developing both connection with the human and internal confidence within the horse. Recently, Kathy was a judge at Road to the Horse and enjoyed the opportunity to experience the event from a judges perspective.
Her book, Solving Separation Anxiety: Over 77 Savvy Solutions for Herd Bound Behavior, is a practical guide for riders navigating barn sour and buddy sour behavior.
Chapters:
- 00:00 Introduction
- 3:00 How Motherhood Sparked a Book About Horse Separation Anxiety
- 7:00 What Is Herd Bound Behavior and Why Does It Happen
- 11:00 Building the Kind of Relationship That Replaces the Herd
- 17:00 How Common Is Separation Anxiety — and Is It Ever Solved?
- 22:00 Why Horses Bond So Deeply When They Travel Together
- 23:00 Horses in Pastures and Herds: Strategies That Work
- 28:00 Noelle's Feral Mare and Learning to Slow Down
- 36:00 Horses in Stalls: Training From the Comfort Zone
- 40:00 Nature vs Nurture — Is Your Horse Born Anxious?
- 45:00 Horses Kept in Pairs: The Hardest Scenario
- 51:00 Groundwork That Actually Transfers to the Saddle
- 58:00 Pressure, Yielding, and the Man's Horse Myth
- 1:00:00 Riding With a Buddy Horse — and Staying Present
- 1:06:00 Emergency Strategies at Horse Shows
- 1:08:00 Extroverted vs Introverted Horse Learners
- 1:14:00 Key Takeaways Before You Go
- 1:15:00 Barn Sour vs Buddy Sour: What the Terms Really Mean
- 1:17:00 Rapid Fire Questions with Kathy Barr
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
Amazon Disclosure: Third-party books and products denoted on this page and website may be hyperlinked to the Amazon affiliate program. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
From Alaska to Argentina on Horseback: The Untold Aftermath with Filipe Masetti Leite Sponsored by Total Feeds
What does it really mean to commit to something that scares you? In this episode, we sit down with Filipe Masetti Leite, a journalist, filmmaker, and long rider who traveled more than 27,000 kilometers on …
Notes de l’épisode
What does it really mean to commit to something that scares you?
In this episode, we sit down with Filipe Masetti Leite, a journalist, filmmaker, and long rider who traveled more than 27,000 kilometers on horseback from the Canadian Rockies to the southern tip of Argentina. Over eight years, he crossed 12 countries, navigated remote terrain, built partnerships with 11 horses, and lived at the speed of a walk.
But this conversation goes far beyond the mileage.
We talk about what happens when you slow life down to three kilometers an hour. What leadership looks like when your team has four legs. The bond of a heart horse. The tension between loving horses and using them. The identity crisis that can follow achievement. And why having an "X" on your map might matter more than the destination itself.
This is a conversation about fear, resilience, ego, spirituality, and the responsibility that comes with living a dream out loud.
You can find The Long Rider - Filipe's award-winning film documenting his ride across the Americas here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7hudXw67yw
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Filipe's memoir detailing the journey, the borders, the horses, and what it changed in him - Long Ride Home: Guts, Guns and Grizzlies
- Tschiffely's Ride by Aimé Tschiffely - The 1925 account of a Swiss schoolteacher who rode from Buenos Aires to New York on two Criollo horses — the book that inspired Filipe's dream as a child.
- The Long Riders' Guild - An organization preserving the history and stories of modern long-distance equestrian explorers.
- Children's Cancer Hospital in Brazil - The ride to Ushuaia helped raise awareness and funds for pediatric cancer support.
Follow Filipe on instagram - https://www.instagram.com/filipemasetti/
Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Dear Horse World wherever you listen, leave us a review — it genuinely helps more people find these conversations — and share this episode with someone who needs to hear more adventure horse stories.
This episode is brought to you by:
Total Feeds
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!
Chapters:
00:00 Inro
02:06 NFR Host Origins
02:57 Writing the Dream
05:19 War Room Planning
05:37 Finding the First Horses
08:13 Bruiser Heart Horse
09:57 Living Like a Herd
14:19 Presence at Three KPH
17:59 Lessons on Fear
20:47 Defining Resilience
22:06 Finding Your Purpose
25:21 Grounded by Walking
29:18 Loving vs Objectifying
34:46 Intent Over Outcome
35:39 Natural vs Forced Riding
39:01 Trail Riders Matter
40:14 Judgment and Humility
44:55 Bruiser the Heart Horse
48:32 Cowboy Life and Meaning
50:54 Leadership Lessons from Horses
53:20 Wild Horses and Border Chaos
55:13 PTSD Depression and Recovery
01:00:01 Staying Whole with Horses
01:03:14 No Excuses Mindset
01:04:45 Rapid Fire
Road to the Horse Prep: Elisa Wallace Reveals her Secret to Staying relaxed under Pressure - Sponsored by StableFeed
Not every rider has access to the perfectly bred, professionally produced sport horse. Many are figuring things out with the horse they could afford, learning as they go, and trying to build a partnership along …
Notes de l’épisode
Not every rider has access to the perfectly bred, professionally produced sport horse. Many are figuring things out with the horse they could afford, learning as they go, and trying to build a partnership along the way.
In this episode, 5★ event rider and trainer Elisa Wallace shares what she has learned from producing horses many others overlook, including Mustangs and off-the-track Thoroughbreds. Alongside competing at the highest levels of eventing, Elisa has built a career developing unconventional horses into dream ones.
In this episode of "No Stupid Questions," we discuss:
- How to evaluate a horse when shopping on a budget
- The red flags riders should pay attention to early on
- The first steps to building trust with a new horse
- How to rebuild confidence after setbacks
- Signs your horse is progressing, even when improvement feels slow
- What unconventional horses can teach riders that highly produced horses cannot
- The book Elisa would read to the horse world - Four Square by Lucinda Green
For riders navigating the journey with one horse, modest resources, and a lot of determination, this episode is a reminder that your dreams are possible with the horse you have.
Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/c/WallaceEventing
https://roadtothehorse.com/elisa-wallace-usa/
This epidsode is generously sponsored by:
StableFeed - What You Feed Your Horse Matters
StableFeed is redefining equine nutrition with all natural horse feed and supplements made from real, whole foods. Using a unique forage, Sainfoin, as the base of their forage prodcuts and clean plant ingredients, never chemicals, fillers , or by products. StableFeed helps horses thrive with nutrition designed the way nature intended. Real food with real results.
Explore more at stablefeed.com | @StableFeed
Chapters: 00:00 Ocala Week Announcement 00:39 Meet Elisa Wallace 01:57 Road to the Horse Nerves 04:46 Mustangs to Eventing Path 06:30 Fledge and Mustang Magic 14:03 Mustang Sensitivity Explained 19:59 Pressure and Communication 23:53 No Stupid Questions Begins 26:29 Underdog Success Story 28:49 Permission to Be Unorthodox 35:41 Producing Horses and Fear 40:57 Mentors and Asking for Help 44:40 Choosing Horses by Intuition 45:32 Overthinking Choices 46:32 Colts Versus Fillies 48:32 Mare Mindset Lessons 52:16 Format Change Gameplan 56:55 Learning From Past Rides 59:23 Green Horse Basics 01:05:43 Pressure Off Progress 01:10:50 Play Builds Partnership 01:13:29 Fun Groundwork Ideas 01:15:42 Gratitude And Perspective 01:16:47 Rapid Fire WrapEnjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Dear Horse World wherever you listen, leave us a review — it genuinely helps more people find these conversations — and share this episode with someone who needs to hear this.
And you can follow us on instagram too! Click here 👉 www.instagram.com/dearhorseworld
The Truth About Black Cowboy Culture that Nobody Taught You with Drake LeBlanc sponsored by YETI
What if the story of the American cowboy is bigger than the version most of us were handed? In this episode, Noëlle sits down with Drake LeBlanc, a Creole cowboy from Louisiana, filmmaker, and cultural …
Notes de l’épisode
What if the story of the American cowboy is bigger than the version most of us were handed?
In this episode, Noëlle sits down with Drake LeBlanc, a Creole cowboy from Louisiana, filmmaker, and cultural preservationist. The conversation that unfolds is about history, identity, and what it really means to live a culture rather than wear it.
Drake was raised in a community where horses are not a hobby or an aesthetic. They are Sunday trail rides, music in the air, food cooking by trailers, land passed down through generations, and families riding together. They are belonging.
Together, they explore the untold history of Black cowboys, how the image of the American cowboy was reshaped through media, and what was lost when culture became costume.
This conversation is not just about the past. It is about how the stories we are handed down, the way they shape how we see ourselves, and who we believe belongs in the horse world.
In this episode you will learn:
- Creole identity and language in Louisiana
- Haitian Creole cultural parallels
- Native American symbolism in Western fashion and saddle design
- The history of cattle herding practices rooted in African tribes
- The book Drake would read to the Horse World - Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500-1900
About Drake LeBlanc: Drake LeBlanc is a Lafayette, Louisiana-based filmmaker, documentarian, and photographer. He is one of the most compelling cultural voices working today in the preservation of Creole heritage and black cowboy history. His documentary Footwork has brought international attention to the Louisiana Creole cowboy tradition and the Louisiana trail rides that keep black cowboy culture alive every weekend across the American South.
You can find Drake on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lovebenoir/
Drake's film work can be found here https://filmfreeway.com/FootworkLA
Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Dear Horse World wherever you listen, leave us a review — it genuinely helps more people find these conversations — and share this episode with someone who needs to hear the real story of cowboys in America.
This episode is generoulsy sponsored by:
YETI
Made for early mornings in the barn and long days in the saddle. Whether you're hauling feed, chasing daylight on the trail, or loading up for a weekend on the road, YETI coolers and drinkware are built to handle it.
No shortcuts. No compromise.
Just gear that works as hard as you do.
Explore more at YETI.com | @YETI | facebook.com/YETI
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction & the moment on the Atchafalaya Basin that set the tone
03:00 "I know my community" — why deep roots change everything
04:00 What is a Creole cowboy? Defining Creole culture and Louisiana's gumbo pot
07:00 What is a parish? Louisiana's Napoleonic Code explained
08:00 The vulnerability of introducing yourself as a Creole cowboy
10:00 Why Drake feels called to educate even when it's exhausting
12:00 The real history of black cowboy culture Hollywood erased
14:00 Why "1 in 4 cowboys were Black" is actually an undercount
15:00 "Cowboy" was a derogatory term — the truth about who built the West
17:00 What Hollywood took from Black cowboy culture and what it missed
19:00 Why money can't buy the spiritual bond between horse and rider
22:00 Tribal designs, turquoise, and the hidden origins of Western style
26:00 The spiritual meaning of turquoise in Native American horse culture
29:00 "You not pap" — live your culture or kill it, there's no in between
32:00 Shoutout to Chris Lewis & reining horses in the Creole community
37:00 Cultural gentrification in the horse world — what it is and why it matters
42:00 Advice for horse communities feeling threatened by change
45:00 Feeling alone in the horse world — Drake's answer
47:00 "Move to Louisiana" — and what community actually looks like
51:00 Time and intention: the only two things a horse truly needs
53:00 How to be brave when you're afraid to speak up
56:00 Find something you fear MORE — Drake's philosophy on courage
58:00 When Drake realized the outside world didn't know Black cowboys existed
1:07:00 Trail rides, thousands of riders, and how Creole horse culture thrives
1:11:00 Zydeco music, food, and why making it fun kept the culture alive
1:13:00 Rapid fire: book rec, most iconic horse, most undervalued skill
1:17:00 Greatest horseman of all time and mares vs stallions vs geldings
Laura Kraut's Road to the Top and the Future of American Show Jumping
There is a whole generation of insanely talented young riders who feel like the system is not built for them. You want the top sport, you want the big moments in show jumping, you want to know what it actually …
Notes de l’épisode
There is a whole generation of insanely talented young riders who feel like the system is not built for them. You want the top sport, you want the big moments in show jumping, you want to know what it actually takes to get there, yet the pathway feels gated and the access feels invisible. That is exactly why this conversation with Laura Kraut hits so hard. Laura is a legit icon in show jumping and she shows up here with zero ego, full transparency, and a real blueprint for what it takes to rise in a sport that can feel impossible to break into.
Laura brings us inside Road to the Top, the program she created with Katie Prudent to give hungry riders the mentorship, horsepower, and behind the scenes education they never get access to. She talks openly about the emotional and financial pressure of show jumping, how real horsemanship gets built, and what separates riders who make it from riders who burn out. This episode is equal parts wisdom, reality check, and hype. If you're dreaming big, this one will light a fire under you.
In this episode, you will learn:
How Road to the Top actually works and why it gives overlooked riders a real shot in show jumping
The mindset mistakes that hold promising riders back and how to avoid them
How to think about horse management, horse picking, and building real feel
What mentorship looks like at the absolute top and how it shaped Laura's Olympic career
How to stay grounded when social media makes everyone else look perfect
How owners and supporters can get involved and genuinely move the sport forward
The book that Laura would read to the Horse World - The Perfect Horse by Elizabeth Letts
This episode is brought to you by:
Connaway & Associates Equine Insurance Services, Inc. The friendly and knowledgeable team at Connaway & Associates brings together more than 30 years of experience to offer a wide range of insurance services, including horse insurance, farm insurance, and liability insurance. Visit www.connaway.net | @connawayassociates | facebook.com/connawayassociatesequine
and
YETI
Made for early mornings in the barn and long days in the saddle. Whether you're hauling feed, chasing daylight on the trail, or loading up for a weekend on the road, YETI coolers and drinkware are built to handle it.
No shortcuts. No compromise.
Just gear that works as hard as you do.
Explore more at YETI.com | @YETI | facebook.com/YETI
Chapters:
00:00 Why Riders Feel Stuck
00:24 Meet Laura Kraut
01:47 Road to the Top Explained
04:12 Horsemanship and Horse Sense
05:53 Funding Model and First Riders
11:38 Owners and Horse Rotation
16:47 Beyond the Highlight Reel
19:07 Building Community Support
25:41 Keeping US Talent Competitive
35:26 Mentorship Versus Teaching
42:30 Passing the Torch
44:04 Scarcity vs Sharing
45:55 Road to the Top Vision
47:53 Mentorship and Independence
49:00 Applying Like Harvard
52:52 Grit and Handling Failure
57:41 Mentors Who Shaped Laura
01:05:13 Love of the Horse
01:06:29 Pay It Forward Chain
01:10:33 Rapid Fire and Wrap
And for even more expert-led workshops, in-depth courses, and exclusive lectures designed to elevate your riding and horsemanship, visit NoelleFloydPlus.com
NF+ brings you direct access to top equestrian professionals, training insights, and a passionate community of riders dedicated to learning and improving.
And you can follow us on instagram too! Click here 👉 www.instagram.com/dearhorseworld
Voici les 40 derniers épisodes sur 100. Les épisodes plus anciens se trouvent dans le flux du podcast.
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