Tom Dorrance: The Quiet Man at the Start of It
Tom Dorrance left his family's Oregon ranch at fifty, wrote one book and avoided the spotlight all his life. Much of modern horsemanship still traces back to him.
The Two Rein: Horsemanship, hand to hand.
In the old California way, a horse moving from the hackamore to the bridle spends a season carrying both. That stage is called the two rein: the old and the new in the same pair of hands. This is a history of horsemanship told the same way, from the first teachers on record to the people riding now.
Ray Hunt and a Horse Named Hondo
A horse he could not get along with sent Ray Hunt to Tom Dorrance around 1960. What he learned there he spent the next four decades teaching to anyone who would come.
Bill Dorrance: Rawhide, a Reata and a Book at Ninety-Three
Tom Dorrance's older brother was a roper and a rawhide braider who taught riding through feel into his nineties. His one book came out the year he died.
John Rarey, the Ohio Horse Tamer Who Performed for a Queen
In January 1858 a farmer's son from Groveport, Ohio, lay down beside a horse in front of Queen Victoria. A century before Dorrance and Hunt, John Rarey made gentleness famous.
Buck Brannaman: The Line Carried Forward
A student of Ray Hunt, an adviser on The Horse Whisperer and the subject of an award-winning documentary, Buck Brannaman has spent his working life on the road teaching.
Where the Words Natural Horsemanship Came From
The men credited with starting natural horsemanship did not call it that. The name arrived later, and it has been argued over ever since.
The First Teachers on Record: Kikkuli, Simon and Xenophon
Horsemanship was being written down more than three thousand years ago. The oldest texts already hold the two halves of the craft: a program, and a way of treating the horse.
The Hard School: Grisone, the Riding Academies and the Long Argument About Force
The first printed riding manual of the Renaissance recommended punishments that read today as cruelty. The masters who came after it spent two centuries arguing their way back to gentleness.
Hackamore, Two Rein, Bridle: How the Vaqueros Made a Horse
The California vaqueros took years to finish a horse, moving it by stages from the hackamore to the spade bit. The stage in the middle gave this publication its name.
Cow Horse, Reining and Cutting
Four Arenas, One Root: Cutting, Reining, Cow Horse and Rodeo
Cutting, reining, reined cow horse and rodeo all began as ranch work. Each has its own association, its own records and its own line of horsemen and horsewomen.