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1 " I don't know about you but I've learned plenty from mistakes and I want to learn from laughing now. "
― Anna Blake , Relaxed & Forward: Relationship Advice from Your Horse
2 " First, if you’re fighting, you’ve lost already. Second, there’s no negotiating power in being right if it makes your horse wrong. "
3 " If the truth is that you’ll never be a world-class rider on a world-class horse, then why not do life-changing work? Ride a rescue. "
4 " It’s amazing what you can learn after you’ve learned all that you think there is to learn.” —Ray Hunt. "
5 " Here’s the secret: never give up. Get a tortoise tattoo if you need to, but just stick it out, slowly and patiently, because consistency is the greatest kindness a horse will ever know. "
6 " There will be ribbons in a range of colors with placings noted and records kept. Ribbons aren’t worth much more than that; they’re only a symbol. It’s your partnership that mattered. That the two of you spent weekends challenging yourselves to improve, always competing against your last show, and balancing winning and losing into a place of faith and trust. That the two of you built a special relationship that made a difference, if not in the huge world, certainly in your own hearts. You persevered through joy and pain, thrill and dread, and in the end, there was a place that the two of your shared. Ribbons say it was worth celebrating. In a world where horses struggle, suffer, and die for the whims of humans, it says that you saw past the surface and shared breath and heart with another soul. You lifted your eyes higher. "
7 " I had no time for patience. It was a dull, slow-witted thing, so foreign to me that I couldn’t even figure out what it was that people did while they were being patient. You know? Patience isn’t even a verb. "
8 " So a rider might continue to take lessons, not from an inability to learn, but a desire to improve, fueled by respect for an equine partner. Riding is sometimes like interpretive dance, creative and spontaneous. "
9 " On this one day, the most you can do is have one ride. Lower your expectations of perfecting your world in an instant. Instead of getting greedy, be content to make one good deposit. "
