08/17/2026
This is what I’ve been working on for September 12.
I’m developing the idea of the Horseman Scientist into the class itself, and this post explains where that idea is taking me.
I’ll be sharing more of the behind-the-scenes development and the stories that led me here on my Monica O. Knight page.
If you’d like to attend the demonstration or just follow along as I build it, come follow the story there.
Somewhere along the way, I became a Horseman Scientist.
I've been thinking about those words a lot lately because I'm building the material for September 12, and I've realized this is really what I want to teach. For me, being a Horseman Scientist is about how we learn, how we apply what we've learned, and how the horses in front of us keep shaping that understanding.
When we have an objective, it gives our work direction. Maybe today we'd like to put a halter on a horse. The objective gives us something to work toward, but the work begins with understanding the horse standing in front of us and developing our own ability to interact with that horse successfully.
All horses are horses, but each one is sensitive in its own way. We notice. We question what we think we know and look for patterns. We consider the nervous system, the environment, how horses learn, what this particular horse is showing us, and all of the knowledge we've accumulated along the way. And we have to remember that we are part of what's happening too. We're observing while participating.
That means part of the study is us. One of the things I tell my students all the time is, "If you do you, Horse does Horse." Before we start trying to change the horse, I want to know that we're performing our own part correctly. Are we in the right place at the right time? Is our timing right? Is our position right? Are we communicating clearly? Are we actually doing what we think we're doing?
The horse's response gives us information, but first we need to develop our own ability to perform the work. That's where self-mastery comes into this for me. We're developing our timing, movement, awareness, feel and ability to put all of those pieces together with the least amount of fuss. Once we're doing our part well, if the horse still gives us something different than we expected, now we have something useful to investigate.
Then we experiment, but we experiment from a foundation. We start with what we already understand about the nature of the horse and what generations of horsemen before us have gathered and confirmed over time. We take those pieces of knowledge, apply them, combine them in different ways when necessary, and watch what happens.
Part of being a Horseman Scientist is learning how to build formulas from what we know, combining different inputs to produce different results and then measuring what actually happened. Those measurements give us a starting point, help us recognize the changes along the way, and tell us when we've reached a good stopping point for that exercise.
Sometimes the horse gives us exactly the response we anticipated. Sometimes the horse gives us an answer we didn't expect. Both give us information. Often the things that didn't work have taught me the most because they cleared room to find what does.
The objective gives us direction, but we don't have to be in a hurry to arrive there. The horse helps determine the pathway. Sometimes today's win is three steps into what may eventually be a ten-step process. Part of becoming a horseman is learning to recognize that win, knowing when you've accomplished enough for today, and being willing to pick the objective back up another time.
That's very different from abandoning the objective. We're still going somewhere. We just aren't so attached to arriving there today that we stop paying attention to the horse that's actually standing in front of us.
A Horseman Scientist also learns to examine the information we've inherited. Horse knowledge has traveled from teacher to student and generation to generation for a very long time. Along the way, pieces of the understanding behind a method can get lost while the method itself survives. That's where I want to know more.
I want to understand why something works, what principle is underneath it, and whether what I'm seeing from the horse supports what I think I know. I value the knowledge refined by horsemen before me, and I also want to understand it well enough to recognize what's true, what's been lost in translation, and what the horse in front of me is actually telling me. This is a way of thinking and a way of performing the work.
I didn't start out thinking this way. I started as a kid who was very good at following instructions. I was coachable and did what my instructor told me. Over the years, different horses, teachers, students and experiences kept adding pieces and changing how I understood what I was doing. Looking back, I can see how the Horseman Scientist developed. I think I'm going to start sharing some of those stories here.
For September 12, I'm looking for an unhandled or minimally handled horse. A horse with very little education from humans gives us an opportunity to begin with fewer human-taught answers already in place and watch some of that early communication develop in real time. It also gives us an opportunity to see something I call the Equi-dance.
The Equi-dance is flow. It's movement and the constant exchange happening between horse and human in the present moment. Horses experience and respond to so much of their world through movement, while we humans have a remarkable ability to get stuck inside our own heads, reasoning and overthinking everything. The horse brings us back into our bodies. We have to pay attention to what's happening right now and learn to move within that conversation. Before there's an established bond, before we've taught a long list of cues and expected responses, there's already movement between us. That's where the dance begins.
And that's what I want everyone learning to see on September 12. We'll notice the horse before I tell you what I noticed. We'll make predictions, ask questions, watch for changes, and think about why we got the result we got. We'll establish an objective and then watch the actual horse help reveal the pathway toward it.
There will be notebooks, questions and real discussion. There will be a real horse in front of us who gets a vote in where we find today's win.
I'll be handling the horse and demonstrating the work, but everyone in the room will be doing part of what I'm doing too: observing, participating, and learning from what actually happens.
I want to develop Horseman Scientists. That's starting to feel like the real purpose of September 12.
And now I have to build the class.
—Monica O. Knight
