Learning to ride is like peeling an onion by hand. You can peel only one thin layer at a time, it will take you a long time to get to the central part… and there will be a lot of tears in between. But the sensation you get when you peel off one more layer and understand for the first time something new about horses and riding is what keeps horsemen coming back for more. And when you get to the essential core? That’s just one horse… now you must start peeling the layers on a new horse, hoping to get to the center of him as well. That means more tears, yes, but more enlightenment as well.
It has been a while since we have talked, so I want to tell you where my mind has been wandering recently. I partly view myself as a translator, explaining to the horse what his rider actually meant by that aid, then telling the rider what her horse meant by his reaction to it. Naturally, a lot gets “lost in translation,” but that is part of the process, and I’m used to it. Thinking about translation in this light, however, led me to realize that a great deal of our riding theory has been translated from other languages, and it is possible that what we sometimes we hear is different from what was said in a different language. For example, take your
