11/10/2025
The Cost of Entry
The cost of entry into becoming a good horse hand is discomfort.
Learning is not supposed to feel easy. When someone is teaching you, especially in horsemanship, it’s going to challenge you. You’ll feel awkward. Unsure. Maybe even frustrated. That’s part of the process.
Because horse training isn’t something you can memorize or “figure out” through words alone. You can’t study enough in a book to master technique.
It takes feel, and feel can only be developed through time, mistakes, and experience.
Every great hand you admire once sat right where you are: fumbling through timing, missing moments, questioning themselves. But they kept showing up. They stayed open. They let the horse and the work shape them. And most of us are still reaching, still pressing to learn more, do better, and putting ourselves in the awkward learning stage.
If you want to be a good horseman, you have to be willing to pay the price, and that price is being uncomfortable learning but still showing up anyways.
**borrowed from a friend.
