Wirgler's Horse Human Partnership Program

10/11/2026

Spot on! ❤️💐

Lameness vs compensation or stiffness - pain vs avoidance of new patterns?

Firstly before reading on, I am not a vet. I do not have a vet’s education and you should in no way replace veterinary investigation and support or advice with any thing i say.

But - a lot of times when people find their horse has some hitch in their get along, something has happened to their horse’s gait or normal responses to riding have changed, they fear pain and back off.

While we can never definitively say a horse is not in pain, there is a difference between pain and stiffness, uncertainty, or fear of changing a pattern.

And- even if there WAS pain and it is now treated, those patterns can still exist - leaving with us with a pain response and (assuming) no pain.

Quite often I help people and their horses through these spots, revealing a magically sound horse who was limping, balking, sucking back or unsteady in their gait just a few minutes or days ago-
It’s not magic, it’s mobility and movement patterns.

If the horse is actually lame - say a bone fracture - it will worsen with movement.

If the horse is STIFF or reserved in movement patterns, it should improve pretty soon with GOOD movement, not just moving around.

Where things get tricky is people often say the horse takes 15-20 mins to warm up and move out of it, and often these are sloppy or incorrect warm up patterns. We need to address range of motion, joint flexion, alignment, breathing, and of course most importantly help the horse feel safe in being in these.

To tie it together with a personal example: I found my knees and joints to be very sore and painful suddenly. I started a mobility training program and really disliked the first week of the work - but I was reminded if I feel stiff that is not the same as pain. I worked through it preserving correct range of motion over depth of squat or intensity and so on - two weeks later I already feel “sound” again.

Joints need to work through their correct range of motion, and when a horse hurts, they often protect themselves, often to their own detriment.

Don’t panic. Ride in rhythm - see what you get on the other end and re evaluate

10/02/2026

Ahhhhh. This is so true!, 🙌🙌👇👇👇

10/02/2026

People ask often…. Whos philosophy do I follow… This sums up my philosophy…. And shares where it started. It’s the basis of my helping the horses. And I’ve quoted Ray more times than I can count.

For most of human history, the word used was breaking.

A young horse was run into a corral. Several men roped it and threw it to the ground. They tied up a hind leg to prevent resistance. A saddle was placed on whether the horse cooperated or not. A rider got on. The horse bucked, fought, panicked, and eventually stopped — not because it understood what was being asked, but because it had exhausted its resistance. The term was accurate. Something was broken. The method worked, if you defined worked as producing an animal that tolerated being ridden because the alternative had been worse.

Two brothers on an Oregon cattle ranch grew up learning something different.

Bill Dorrance was born January 19, 1906. His younger brother Tom arrived May 11, 1910. They learned their horsemanship through the Great Basin buckaroo tradition — a lineage rooted in the vaquero culture of Spanish California, brought north through generations of ranch work in Nevada, Oregon, and Idaho. The vaqueros had their own way of starting horses: slower, more patient, built on feel rather than force. They used rawhide hackamores and light aids. They worked with the horse's nature rather than against it. They believed in relationship as a practical matter, not a sentimental one.

Tom, in particular, seemed to receive something from horses that most people couldn't access. He read them the way other people read weather — constantly, precisely, ahead of the event. He developed a habit of asking: what happened, before what happened happened? It was his key to every difficult horse. A horse that wouldn't stand for saddling wasn't being defiant — something had made saddling frightening, and the fear ran back through time to a moment most people had long forgotten. Find the moment. Address the moment. The behavior changes.

People who watched Tom work described the same experience: the horse that had been impossible became willing. He hadn't forced it. He hadn't frightened it more. He had found the thing beneath the thing, and spoken to it in a language the horse understood. Tom called it feel — a concept he spent decades trying and largely failing to put into words, because words were not the medium. "Everything I learned," he said, "I learned from the horse."

Bill complemented Tom's gifts with his own. An exceptional roper and rawhide braider, Bill applied the same sensitivity to groundwork and rope handling that Tom brought to the horse's mind. Between them, they described a complete philosophy: the horse as partner, fear as information, patience as precision, feel as the only language that mattered.

They stayed home. They worked their ranches. They helped neighbors who showed up with horses nobody else could manage. Tom gave a handful of small clinics late in life and found them exhausting. He wasn't a teacher in the formal sense; he was a practitioner, and what he practiced was too subtle to demonstrate on a schedule. If someone wanted to understand, they had to come and watch and wait and ask questions and watch some more.

One person came, watched, waited, asked questions, and then took what he'd learned to a world that had no idea it was waiting for it.

Ray Hunt grew up in southern Idaho during the Depression, the son of a ranch family who raised workhorses. He became a skilled horseman in the traditional mold — capable, competitive, effective. In the late 1950s, he came across a horse named Hondo that his methods couldn't reach. Nothing worked. He asked Bill Dorrance if he had any ideas. Bill suggested he find his brother Tom, who was in Elko, Nevada. Ray tracked Tom down. Tom agreed to come to Ray's place in California that fall to see what they could figure out together.

Nine months after Tom helped Ray work through Hondo, Ray won the 1961 working cow-horse, hackamore class at the Cow Palace in San Francisco — one of the most prestigious competitions in Western riding.

He never forgot the source. "Tom Dorrance is the man who made it possible," Ray said. "Until I met Tom, I wasn't working from the horse's needs."

What Ray understood was that Tom's way of thinking could be taught, given the right conditions — not in one-on-one ranch visits that reached a dozen people a decade, but in clinics, where thirty or fifty or a hundred horse owners at a time could watch and try and fail and try again under Ray's observation. Around 1971, Ray began doing exactly that. He traveled constantly. He started every clinic with the same words, spoken to the horse, in front of whoever had come to watch:

"I'm here for the horse, to help him get a better deal."

He taught them to make the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy. He taught them that if the horse wasn't responding, the human was asking wrong. He told them what Tom had told him: the horse doesn't lie, doesn't hide, doesn't strategize. The horse tells you exactly where it is, every moment. The only question is whether you're listening.

By the time Ray died in 2009, he had given clinics in every American state and across multiple continents. The students he sent out carried the philosophy further: Buck Brannaman, whose story became a documentary and whose methods inspired the novel and 1998 film The Horse Whisperer; Pat Parelli, who built a global teaching system from the same foundations; Clinton Anderson; Martin Black; a line that runs unbroken to working horsemen today.

Bill Dorrance died in 1999 at ninety-three.
Tom Dorrance died in 2003 at ninety-three.
Ray Hunt died in 2009.

Three quiet men from the rural West. No fame sought, little found until the clinics, no comfort with cameras or crowds. A philosophy that could not be summarized in a sentence and required years to embody. A question that turned everything around:

What happened, before what happened happened?

Every horse trainer who believes a horse has something to say, and that a human who listens carefully enough can hear it — traces that belief, eventually, back here.

09/30/2026

This is so true.

05/24/2026

Oh boy. Long read. But so worth it. I’ve done this. And I stand behind it. If I don’t think a horse is going to be safe for the owner….. I don’t continue taking their money. I’d rather hurt your feelings, than get you hurt. Land you in the hospital, or worse.
That doesn’t mean a horse is not trainable, most are. But some will never match the persons skill. And that’s a bad deal for the horse too. My favorite part of this long post is this 👇

“When I am deciding whether a horse should stay in training, I am not just asking, “Can I get this horse better?” I am asking, “Will this horse be safe enough for the life he is going back to?” That is a much more important question. If the answer is no, then continuing to take the owner’s money just because I can keep making small improvements is not honest. At some point, a trainer has to be willing to say that better is not good enough.

That is usually where these horses land. They are better than when they came in, but not good enough to trust. They may be more responsive, but still too opportunistic. They may be more rideable, but still too dangerous. They may have fewer bad moments, but the bad moments that remain are the kind that can put someone in the hospital. I do not care how talented a horse is. I do not care how expensive he is. I do not care how much potential he has. If I believe he is still looking for a way to hurt someone, I do not want my name attached to him.”

I get asked fairly often if I ever get a horse that is just not trainable. My answer is usually that every horse is trainable to some degree, but that answer can also be misleading if people do not understand what I mean by it. Trainable does not always mean safe. Trainable does not always mean suitable. Trainable does not always mean the horse should continue in the job the owner wants it to do.

In over thirty years of training horses professionally, I have only had a very small number of horses that I would say were so low in trainability that almost nobody could handle them. Those horses exist, but they are rare. I can probably count on one hand the horses I have seen where their trainability was so low that maybe less than one percent of riders could deal with them. But those are not really the horses I am talking about here because that kind of horse usually reveals itself pretty clearly.

The more important group is the couple of horses a year that I identify fairly quickly as horses I do not want to continue with. I do not need months to figure these horses out. Most of the time, they show me early who they are, and once I believe the horse is still going to be dangerous after training, I would rather send that horse home early than keep taking the owner’s money just to prove I can make some improvement. That is an important distinction. I am not talking about quitting on a horse because it is difficult. I am talking about recognizing that even if the horse gets better, I still do not believe it will become trustworthy enough for the owner.

These horses are not necessarily untrainable. In fact, that is what makes them more complicated. They can learn. They can improve. They can have good days. They can look better after a few rides, in some cases even excel. Somebody watching from the outside may even say, “That horse looks fine.” But underneath the improvement, there is still something dangerous in their mind. They are looking for an opening. They are looking for a weak spot. They are looking for a time when the rider is not paying attention, gets out of position, or makes a mistake.

That is the part a lot of owners do not understand. A horse can get better and still be dangerous. A horse can learn to respond better, carry itself better, guide better, stop better, or tolerate more pressure, and still not become the kind of horse I would call trustworthy. Improvement and safety are not the same thing. Progress and dependability are not the same thing. A horse can show enough progress to make an owner hopeful while still showing enough danger to make me unwilling to attach my name to the outcome.

Those are the horses I am most likely to flunk out of training. I am not flunking them out because I cannot ride them. I am not flunking them out because I cannot make progress. I am not flunking them out because they are too difficult for me on that particular day. I am flunking them out because after working with them, reading them, testing them, and seeing how they handle pressure, I believe they will eventually hurt the person they are going home to.

That is a hard thing to tell an owner. Nobody sends a horse to training hoping to hear that. Most owners want to believe the horse just needs more time, a better program, more consistency, or someone who understands him. Sometimes that is true. I have had plenty of horses come in with problems that were caused by poor handling, lack of clarity, lack of leadership, soreness, fear, confusion, or simply never being taught correctly. Those horses can often change dramatically when the training becomes fair, consistent, and understandable.

But there is another kind of horse that is different. This horse may improve, but underneath that improvement there is still a dangerous intention. I am not talking about a horse that makes a mistake. I am not talking about a horse that gets worried, confused, or overwhelmed. I am talking about a horse that, even after training, still is watching for an opening. He may comply when everything is in order, but he is still looking for the moment when the rider gets weak, the handler gets out of position, or the situation gives him a chance to take over.

That is the horse that concerns me. Not because he cannot learn, but because he does learn. He learns where the opening is. He learns who he can intimidate. He learns when the rider is off balance. He learns when the handler is late. He learns which people will quit if he threatens them. He learns that certain behaviors create space, stop pressure, or make the human back down. A horse like that can become more dangerous with the wrong kind of experience because he is not just reacting blindly. He is learning how to use his behavior.

This is why I do not judge these horses only by whether I can ride them. There are plenty of horses I can ride that I would not want their owner riding. That is not bragging. That is just the reality of experience, timing, and awareness. A professional may be able to stay ahead of a horse, feel the thought before it turns into action, correct the smallest change, and keep the horse from completing the behavior. That does not mean the horse is fixed. It may only mean the horse has not found the opening yet.

When I am deciding whether a horse should stay in training, I am not just asking, “Can I get this horse better?” I am asking, “Will this horse be safe enough for the life he is going back to?” That is a much more important question. If the answer is no, then continuing to take the owner’s money just because I can keep making small improvements is not honest. At some point, a trainer has to be willing to say that better is not good enough.

That is usually where these horses land. They are better than when they came in, but not good enough to trust. They may be more responsive, but still too opportunistic. They may be more rideable, but still too dangerous. They may have fewer bad moments, but the bad moments that remain are the kind that can put someone in the hospital. I do not care how talented a horse is. I do not care how expensive he is. I do not care how much potential he has. If I believe he is still looking for a way to hurt someone, I do not want my name attached to him.

This is especially important because owners often measure progress differently than trainers do. An owner may see a few good rides and think the horse is fixed. A trainer sees the same rides and notices the moments where the horse thought about doing something dangerous but was stopped before he got it done. The owner sees the improvement. The trainer sees what is still waiting under the surface.

That is one of the biggest differences between watching behavior and reading a horse. A horse does not have to complete the dangerous act for me to know the thought is there. If I feel that horse thinking about rearing, bucking, biting, striking, dragging me somewhere, or using his body against me, that matters. The fact that I was able to stop it does not erase the thought. It only tells me I was ahead of it that time. The owner may not be ahead of it. The next rider may not be ahead of it. And eventually, the horse may find the person who misses it.

That is why I do not like calling these horses “fixed” just because they have improved. Fixed means something different to me. Fixed means the horse has changed enough that I believe the owner has a reasonable chance to continue successfully. Fixed means the horse is not just behaving because I am staying ahead of him every second. Fixed means the horse has developed enough understanding, willingness, and acceptance that the improvement can survive outside my arena. If the horse still requires professional-level awareness every moment just to keep someone safe, that horse is not fixed. He is being managed.

There is a big difference between a trained horse and a managed dangerous horse. A trained horse has learned to accept the human’s decision and find the answer. A managed dangerous horse may comply as long as everything is controlled, but the wrong rider, wrong timing, wrong environment, or wrong pressure can bring the dangerous behavior right back to the surface. That kind of horse may look improved in the right hands, but the improvement is fragile.

That is why some of these horses can fool people so easily. They are not bad every day. They are not explosive every ride. They may have stretches where they look completely normal. They may walk quietly, lope nice circles, stand tied, load in the trailer, or go through a training session with no obvious blowup. Then, when the situation changes, when the rider makes a mistake, when the pressure hits a certain point, or when the horse decides he has an opening, that dangerous thought shows back up.

Those are the horses that make people say, “He did it out of nowhere.” From their perspective, it may feel that way. But many times, the horse did not do it out of nowhere. The horse had been showing who he was the whole time. The problem was that he did not show it in a way the owner recognized, or he only showed it when someone was skilled enough to stop it before it became a full event. That is why a professional might be very concerned about a horse that looks fine to someone else.

When I send a horse home or tell an owner that I do not want to continue, it is not a decision I take lightly. I know there is money involved. I know there are emotions involved. I know owners are attached to their horses. I know some people will take it personally. I also know there will always be somebody who says, “Another trainer could fix him.” Maybe another trainer will take the horse. Maybe they will make more progress. Maybe the owner will initially be happy. But my concern is not whether someone can make the horse look better for a short period of time. My concern is what happens later.

What happens when the horse goes home and the owner is not as quick as the trainer? What happens when the horse has a few weeks to test the boundaries again? What happens when the owner misses the first thought, then the second thought, then the third thought? What happens when the horse finds the same opening that worked before? Those are the questions I have to think about, because those are the situations where people get hurt.

I would rather lose a training horse than send home a horse I believe is going to injure someone. I would rather have an uncomfortable conversation than pretend a dangerous horse is just misunderstood. I would rather tell the truth and have the owner upset with me than give them hope that I do not honestly believe in. There are times when the most responsible thing a trainer can say is, “I do not think I will be able to train this horse to be safe for you.”

That does not mean the horse has no value. It does not always mean the horse should be put down. It does not always mean there is no possible situation where the horse could exist safely. What it does mean is that I am not going to market the horse as trained, safe, fixed, or suitable when I do not believe that is true. I am not going to use my experience to make the horse look better just long enough for the owner to feel good, while ignoring the danger that is still there.

This is also why I have very little patience for people who think every horse problem can be solved with enough kindness, enough time, or enough love. Kindness matters. Fairness matters. Patience matters. But none of those things replace judgment. A horse that is dangerous still has to be evaluated honestly. Sometimes the kindest thing for the horse and the safest thing for the people is to admit that the horse is not suitable for the job people are trying to make him do.

People want training to be a redemption story. They want every horse to turn into the success story at the end. I like those stories too, and I have been part of a lot of them. But my job is not to create a fairy tale. My job is to evaluate the horse in front of me and be honest about what I believe that horse will become. Sometimes the honest answer is that the horse has improved, but he has not become trustworthy.

I see a couple of these horses every year. They are trainable enough to make progress, but dangerous enough that I do not want them in the hands of the owner. They are not the completely untrainable horses people imagine. They are more complicated than that. They can learn. They can improve. They can have good rides. They can make people hopeful. But after enough time with them, I know the danger is still there.

When I flunk one out of training, it is usually not because of what happened one time. It is because of the pattern I see over time. It is because of what the horse keeps returning to when pressure increases. It is because of what the horse thinks about doing when he feels challenged. It is because the improvement does not change my belief that the horse is still likely to hurt someone.

That is a hard standard, but it is the only standard I am willing to put my name on. I do not want to be known as the trainer who made a dangerous horse look good enough to send home. I would rather be known as the trainer who told the truth before someone got hurt.

So yes, every horse is trainable to some degree. But that is not the most important question. The more important question is whether the horse becomes trustworthy enough for the person who owns him. If the answer is no, then progress is not enough. Better is not enough. Looking good for a few rides is not enough.

Some horses do not fail training because they cannot learn. They fail training because even after they learn, I still do not trust them.