Bridle Bit Horsemanship

12/25/2025

A Short Long Time
For us older folks, it seems, sometimes, like we’ve been around for a long time. We celebrate birthdays in our 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s; we’ve been out of school for what seems like forever, and we can’t remember how many different holidays we’ve taken part in or endured, depending on perspective.

And yet, there are things that happen in our lives that take us back. It seems like just yesterday. Or, we actually start to count back the years that such-and-such happened and it really wasn’t that long ago. How it feels is likely related to how we look at the world around us. Things that were done or built back in the 60’s and 70’s are relatively new compared to the things done and built by the pilgrims to the America’s and those things are relatively new when compared to things done and built in Europe. To relate it more personally, Amy grew up on a ranch that was developed in the 1880’s. Steve grew up in neighborhoods that were developed in the 1960’s and 70’s. Quite a difference!

We recently lost a couple of horses. One was what some consider older, 22. The other was what we considered younger, 10. When feeding and taking care of them, it felt like they’d been with us a long time. But, when we got to counting back, it felt more like a short time. Our dogs are getting older, we have some 10-year-old cats, part of our cow herd is 11 or 12 years old. We don’t really know how our animals look at time. Some say they don’t have the same clock as we humans. They do feel time, we think. Just like us, it’s harder to get up, their joints don’t work like they did, and their mind settles into living what they’ve learned.

Christmas is a time when we reflect on the gift God gave us a very long time ago. A long time ago to us but a short time when compared to the eternity we’ll spend after this life is through. We hope this Christmas season is filled with love, laughter, kindness, and thoughtfulness. Spend it with those you love, those you care about, those that are a special part of your life. We don’t know how much time we have with each other, it could be a short, long time.

Merry Christmas from Bridle Bit!

12/19/2025

Ray Hunt, Horseman
The revelation for Ray, that things were changing, came at a time when he was close to giving up.
After close to seven years of trying to understand Tom Dorrance, Ray rose one morning and said to himself – “Aw, to heck with it. I’ll just ride my horse for today”.
“I never had a better day in my life!”, Ray says.
“I saddled my horse and started off. When I looked in a direction that’s where the horse went. If I looked back, that’s where he went.
I thought - ‘My God, Tom said to ‘fix it up and let him find it’ - but I was so busy 'DOING' that I was getting in the horse’s way.
That was so powerful to me; a person can sometimes work too hard at something.’”

From an article that appeared in the January 2005 edition of 'Western Horseman' titled 'Ray Hunt, Western Horseman of the Year'.
Image of Ray is by W.T. Bruce and is from the same article.
— with Carolyn Hunt....

12/15/2025

Bridle-Bit LLC Blog "Practice Makes Perfect"
by bridlebit

The verb practice means to perform (an activity) or exercise (a skill) repeatedly or regularly in order to improve or maintain one's proficiency. Ray Hunt would tell us that practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. My questions are, how do I get to the point that I can practice perfectly and if I have achieved perfection in a skill or activity, do I really need the practice?
To be perfect is to have all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics in my activity; getting it as good as it can possibly be. So, recognizing what perfection is will help me to achieve it. In horsemanship, perfection requires both the horse and the rider to be in perfect harmony. Minds and bodies come together to perform a maneuver in complete symphony. It’s beautiful to watch, exhilarating to experience.
What would make perfect practice with my horse? For me, it’s first having a picture in my mind of what I want my horse and I to look like and second, understanding the elements of what I want to achieve. My mentors have done a good job of placing short videos of how I want to ride in my brain. It’s been years of riding and making mistakes that has helped me to better understand the pieces that have to come together to create that video picture. For a long time, I thought that I could “make” my horses look the way I thought they should look. I could hear the words, “set it up and let it happen”, playing in my head but, I didn’t truly understand what that could be. As a consequence, I was still making things happen and putting braces in the horses I was riding. I’m still searching for how good it will one day be but, I’m discovering smaller, more minute elements of some simple things that I didn’t realize made such a big difference to the horse. For example, all of the things that have to come together between the horse and rider to make a perfect circle with no resistance.
Is it possible that Ray was trying to get us to search for perfection in our practice not to actually achieve perfection but to discover more about how our horses are? When we bury our ego and give ourselves to our horses, we get closer to feeling what our horses can give back to us. When we “turn loose” and allow things to happen between ourselves and our horses, we get one step closer to the symphony of movement in our practice. We feel more about how our horses move and are better able to get in rhythm with that movement and then influence that movement in a way that makes complete sense to our horse. It becomes more natural for the horse to come with us and for us to go with them. It’s perfection! For a moment.
In answer to the second question I asked about needing to continue to practice; the answer for me is YES! Just because I become better with my horse doesn’t mean that I’ve achieved perfection. I never will. The wonderfully frustrating part of having and riding horses is that they will always keep us searching for something better. It’s just a part of the journey. Isn’t that just perfect!?

The verb practice means to perform (an activity) or exercise (a skill) repeatedly or regularly in order to improve or maintain one’s proficiency. Ray Hunt would tell us that practice doesn’t…

12/15/2025

11/26/2025

At this time of Thanksgiving we pause to count our blessings which includes all of you!

Thankful for your friendship and confidence you have shown in us.

Our best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving🦃🍁❤️

Thank you for your business!
Steve and Amy

11/11/2025