Bob Wood Horses For Life

11/28/2025

The new video is of Matilda or Tilly a Thoroughbred filly in training with the Horses For Life crew. Tilly is very self confident. This new short video shows the first step in the process of backing a young horse in a stall. If you have questions or comments please post them on YouTube.

In the video I'm teaching Tilly to circle the stall on the wall using voice commands. I use voice as a primary communication tool when training young ones. Having a young horse respond to voice commands is essential in backing and for the steps to follow.

The next step is to have a small person lay across their spine. After that, when it is safe, the person lays along the spine hugging the neck, and eventually they sit up holding mane. I hold the lead rope in each step and often the person's leg in the first step. We try not to use a tool to motivate the young horse during the backing steps because it could startle the horse. Voice is safer. All this is done at a walk in both directions in the stall.

In time, we will pony her off a seasoned horse where voice commands are extremely helpful. After that we will ride her ba****ck with snap reins on her halter in the round pen. Again, voice commands are very useful then. Starting a horse ba****ck teaches them to pay attention to the rider's seat bones.

My voice is strong for clarity. The filly is learning two things at once, how to circle the stall properly for backing, which also helps later when cleaning stalls, and the horse learns to better respond to voice commands. The tool is a 1/2 inch PVC electrical conduit.

You can see this new short video by going to YouTube and entering to get to my channel, or the direct link is in the comments. The link is in the comments because Facebook severely limits the reach of any post with a YouTube link.

11/27/2025

Today is a day we give thanks. Those of us who love horses give thanks for them in our lives. But today I want to address the people who say they love horses and when it comes down to it, they don't. What they love is thinking about themselves as the protectors of horses and how special they are to do that.

They come on my page and say I am cruel because I will use a wiffle ball bat on a horse in training. That's a kid's toy that can't hurt them, but I am cruel for training horses, so they become safe and useful. These are the people who stop Bureau of Land Management (BLM) horse roundups with lawsuits because they love horses more than anyone else does. Watch this 10 minute video. It's about these people and how they really love horses. It's hard to watch.

Because Facebook intensely restricts the reach of any post with a YouTube link in it, please share it so people who love horses can see where we have come. And share it so people who have a sense of reason and ethics can learn what loving horses really is. Thank you.

Welcome to the first episode of our Love to Death series, where we bring you inside the western rangelands through the voices of the people who live and work...

11/26/2025

Conformation is the science of body types. The word comes from "conform" and its meaning relates to how well or not a horse conforms to the proportions of the ideal horse. But there is more to it because the ideal horse for polo is very different from the ideal of a Grand Prix jumper. One main difference in this example is the length of the back.

The two lower images are of long backed horses. The left picture shows a horse jumping a high spread or oxer jump with the horse's back rounded in what we call a bascule, which translates to seesaw. In order to jump the challenging jump, the horse must round its back such that the apex or top of the jump arc is high enough to clear both top rails during the seesaw of the upward and downward arcs of the jumps path.

Imagine a horse with a very short back achieving the necessary bascule over this pictured jump. With a shorter back a horse will have greater difficulty smoothly arcing over a difficult jump than the long backed horse in the picture. Therefore, one element of overall conformation for a jumping horse to consider is the length of the back.

Similarly, but different, when you need a horse for a sport that requires lightning quick agility on the ground for gaming, working cattle or polo, a long back will slow the ex*****on of quick movements. For agility on the ground, a shot back is an advantage. I will put a link at the bottom about a short backed horse.

Conformation is science directly related to biomechanics. But due to all the variations in the ratios between parts of the horse, like leg length to back length to neck length, understanding and using conformation when selecting a horse is also art in addition to being science. The art is in predicting how the horse will move as it develops based on its conformation. Understanding conformation is a practical skill more than an academic exercise. People who fail to study conformation regularly make poor choices when purchasing horses.

11/25/2025

It doesn't matter if you are starting a young prospect or training a horse in the canter pirouette, the horse in training determines the type of training they require. There are three approaches or types, Partnership, Leadership and Supremacy.

Before I get into these types, I want to be clear that bribing horses with treats is not a horse training method. While countless social media "experts" advocate for various forms of treat training, the truth is using treats to train creates a barrier or obstacle between the trainer and the horse.

Riding or driving horses requires a physical connection that in its highest form is unity of balance and motion. We don't have that when training dogs or other animals. Treat based training can be effective with many animals but not with horses because the treats become a distraction from the training process. The treats become an intermediary between the trainer and the horse when an intermediary of any kind, including the intense use of whips, etc. work to separate, not unify the relationship between the horse and the trainer.

Of the three types of training approaches, Partnership, Leadership and Supremacy, we begin applying the principles of Partnership. Horses, being herd animals, have an impulse to be part of a group. To accomplish Partnership, we access this herd impulse that horses can have between us and them. We access this by developing our own "horseness" while we subordinate our human impulses. We create a herd of two, us and the horse.

Developing our "horseness" means thinking and feeling like a horse. Horses have far fewer emotional or intellectual impulses compared to humans, so we limit these impulses in ourselves to meet them where they are. For example, we are not a horse's "mom" or any other human concept of human relationship. Instead we must become like them, physically centered.

This means subordinating our illusions of how horses relate. They don't want or need to be your child. They need instead to be taught to understand where they are in the pecking order of the herd. In a herd of horses teaching includes kicks, bites, threats and intimidating looks or sounds from fellow herd members.

In spite of these equine physical teaching methods, the herd remains unified for mutual protection from predators. Many amateur horse trainers reject the physicality of how horses teach other horses as being cruel. This rejection is a form of humans anthropomorphizing horses. Horses that are bitten or kicked into respecting the herd order do not pout and leave the herd. They stay and accept their position or rank in the herd according to the rules of horseness.

But not every horse that finds themself in a herd with a human trainer accepts the human as the leader. Many horses are genetically programmed to be the herd leader. They believe that you, the trainer as leader is incorrect. They believe they are the leader of the Partnership. With these kinds of horses, the focus of training must shift from establishing a partner relationship to a relationship of clear Leadership by the human trainer. And to be the leader of a herd of horses, you must have sufficient horseness in order to lead effectively.

Once leadership is established and accepted by the horse in training, we can return to a more partnership, fellow herd member connection.

Lastly, some horses are firmly committed to being the leader in their herd of horses and in the human-horse herd of two. What results, as in the pictures of the horses pictured at the bottom, is a contest of Supremacy of leadership. In my first paid training job, the head trainer, Chris Heinrich, told me never get into a fight with a horse that you cannot win. Losing that contest only teaches the horse to become a better fighter.

Most amateur horse trainers don't have enough hoarseness to win a contest of leadership using Supremacy. They shouldn't try. I am not going to explain this level of training except to say that the trainer must control the context of the training. And it doesn't hurt to know how to use a wiffle ball bat, a harmless child's toy, in training.

I hope that if you think this is a useful post you will share it. The quality of horse training is in decline as more people relate to horses primarily projecting human concepts of relationship onto horses. It doesn't occur to them that we must relate to horses as they are, not as what we imagine them to be.

11/24/2025

Facebook is now placing AI tips and advice all over content providers' pages. I got a tip on how to improve my page last week telling me to be more personal and tell people about myself. Apparently, AI thinks I am too formal or business like. This inspired me to write my first Thanksgiving post.

That's me cutting a Turkey in half with a Sawzall. Someone gave us one of those supermarket points reward turkeys a couple years ago. I cooked half and put the rest in the freezer. I learned to cook working in commercial kitchens during my educational years. I hope AI thinks that is personal enough.

The other image is my farm in Skaneateles NY back in the 1980s. In the background, that is the sun setting on Skaneateles Lake. It was the nicest farm I ever owned, with a polo field, indoor arena and a nice home where I had a Vulcan commercial range in the kitchen.

I bring up that farm because after our first child was born, my future ex wife's parents used to come to the farm every Thanksgiving. I usually had 15 to 18 horses on the farm in various stages of training, and every Thanksgiving I would go out to the barn in the morning and pull all the shoes and trim the feet. I timed the work to end when the turkey was done. Then I'd go to the house, eat Thanksgiving dinner, then claim exhaustion from the pulling and trimming and go up to bed.

Saturday, I trimmed one horse, my new TB Velvet. At 78 I was so sore the next day and in so much pain from work that I started thinking about installing grab bars by the toilet.

It seems like yesterday that I could pull at least 60 shoes and trim 60 feet. Yesterday I trimmed four feet and could hardly walk the next day. I am not liking getting old. The results after years of injuries training horses hurts more when the weather turns cold. I may have trimmed my last horse yesterday. I will miss it, having always trimmed my own horses for so many years.

That farm was lost in the divorce. I moved to Pennsylvania for the climate and got a job teaching and training horses at a Hunter barn where eventually I was fired for teaching correct riding. I hope you like my personal Thanksgiving post. I will add a couple more personal touches to satisfy Facebook AI. The guys at the polo club used to call my spouse bitchzilla and I was at Woodstock until the last act, Jimmy Hendrix playing the Star Spangled Banner as the sun came up. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

11/22/2025

This is the most ridiculous way I have ever seen to teach riding. While I see so many programs that teach students to become passengers, not riders, this riding instructor has perfected the way to ensure that students become passive passengers and never truly learn to ride.

11/21/2025

After a divorce and being without a farm for the first time in many years, I got involved with a gifted PhD therapist who taught me a lot. Together we started an equine therapy program in a locked mental health facility for boys. I did this work for six years. Here is one of many stories I have written about those years.

Horses are powerful as healers. I think most of us who have spent our lives with them have done so largely to feel that feeling of simple strength that somehow makes the tough parts of life OK. Most of the kids in the locked facility Equine Therapy program couldn't get enough of it once they let it in.

There was a kid named Brian, 15 years old, 6' tall, size 14 sneakers, locked up half his life. He was expected to be transferred to an adult locked facility when he reached 18. He had one coping skill, violence. I put Brian on a big muscled unshakeable mare,

Moonlight, a big bay Thoroughbred mare, the kind that will not stop grazing when you go out to get them, so you have to bend over, snap the lead by the ground and raise their head. I had to tell Brian not to jerk her head up too hard. He was very strong.

One time the other boys had taken their horses from the pasture to the barn ahead of Brian. Brian and his horse had not moved a foot. After some angry words and some hard tugs on the rope, Brian started punching Moonlight in the shoulder. The mare was unphased. I yelled to him from 20 feet away, "Be careful, if you punch the shoulder bone you will break all your fingers". He halted a punch halfway to the horse and screamed, "What should I do?" Clinicians call that kind of stopping violence and self regulating a breakthrough.

I told Brian to gently pull the horse off balance to the side and get her walking in a circle. Brian, with surprise, yelled "It worked". Another breakthrough. After 3 or 4 circles he asked, "What now?" I told him to keep circling and put his hand on her as they walked side by side. Then for fun I said, "Say "nice horsey", which he did over and over in a mechanical voice. The picture of Brian, his body relaxed, walking slowly next to that horse, with his hand on her neck was the image of a miracle. The "nice horsey" was the cherry on the sundae.

Eventually I told him to walk out of the circle to the barn, which got another surprised, "It worked." When his therapist got my session notes, she called me and said that was the first time in his history that he resolved a conflict without using violence. Weeks later she told me that Brian, who had refused to speak in group therapy for years, would speak if she asked him how it was going with his horse. She said you couldn't shut him up. In time he was transferred to a transitional housing unit and eventually home to his family.

Years later after nice horsey, they taped Brian's Senior Prom picture with his date up on the cabinet behind the front desk at the locked facility. Moonlight changed Brian's life.

11/20/2025

Artificial Intelligence or AI will likely destroy what is left of authentic horsemanship. But first people must understand how what we call "internet search" is changing. Google, the dominant internet search engine, RETRIEVES information based on your search criteria. You get pages of internet posts, articles and opinions that you can read and determine the quality of the source or author offering the information.

For example, if I search for "optimum rider position in jumping" I would get a wide range of articles and opinions ranging from Denny Emerson's very funny satire praying mantis image where he makes fun of today's crest release. And I would get posts about John French with his bizarre, hyper crest release jumping position, and I would get very correct and balanced jumping position info from greats like William Steinkrause, Beezie Madden or military riders. Such a search would also come up with many results from George Morris and his followers advocating for the common crest release jumping position.

I then could evaluate all the RETRIEVED information on "optimal jumping position". I could see the authors and sources and apply my experienced judgement as to which are safe, useful and correct and what positions are dangerous, incorrect and defy the laws of physics to be dangerous. I can use my judgement.

AI doesn't RETRIEVE, it GENERATES. Both methods use the database or large language model found across the vast internet to do what they do. But what each does with this information is very, very different.

Search and RETRIEVE allow me to decide what is real and useful, while AI GENERATES gives me a sort of summary or consensus of what is known and collected from essentially the same sources, but AI's GENERATIVE result leaves me no opportunity for me to use my experienced judgement on matters concerning horses and riding.

The top right image is a now rare correct auto release with following hands. It is a balanced jumping position with the rider's feet under their body mass. The rider's hips are over the saddle. This is a safe jumping position should the horse stumble or collapse its forehand on landing. The rider can respond to a poor landing by staying secure in the saddle, sometimes with the ability to help the horse to better survive a tricky landing.

The bottom right image shows the very common crest release with the rider's feet back behind their body mass, their hips over the pommel and their entire upper body leaning on their horse's neck. When jumping in this position, if the horse stumbles or collapses on the forehand on landing, the rider can do nothing to protect themself or their horse. This crest release position has the rider in a static position unable to deal with a tricky landing. It is unbalanced and unstable but it gives a rider a false sense of security until something goes wrong. Then the rider gets pitched to the ground according to the laws of physics.

The problem is that a GENERATIVE AI based answer to the question of what is the optimal jumping position would be based on the massive wrong thinking today about safe optimal jumping positions. AI would indiscriminately use the common stylized, not effective, misinformation about safe jumping positions and give it equal weight as correct effective jumping. An AI consensus based GENERATED conclusion would be wrong and dangerous, and this could be the last nail in the coffin of authentic, balanced, effective jumping because people don't use critical thinking. They are impatient for a simple answer.

I can see it now, all the trolls, Morris groupies and poorly trained riders will come on my page and challenge me with their AI GENERATIVE answers to refute the horsemanship information I post on my page. At that point, I will end ability to comment on my page.

I began opposing flawed riding in the 1970s when Morris started spewing his shortcuts and unbalanced stylized positions. Then, and forever after, I have been called an anachronism, out of touch, anti progress and many other things. I can see that AI will bring on another "fact based" round of opposition.

11/19/2025

When I started this page during COVID I just needed something to do. At the beginning l told stories about my experiences riding training and learning. Readers asked questions and I began posting more about traditional horsemanship methods and the page became much more educational and it grew. Then the trolls came and defended their ribbon chasing, their 30 or 40 foot reining slides that crippled horses and other people advocating for normalized abuse in their disciplines.

I am going to tell more stories. This is a story about how my education in riding and horsemanship began in the early 1950s. It is about my first instructor, Mr.Gratwick. He had a farm in upstate East Aurora NY, a town with a rich equestrian heritage. I have recreated an image of his barn with its large stone walled barnyard that was our riding arena. Each lesson began with a fifteen minute skill of the day exercise, regarding the use of the feet and legs, how to hold the reins, and more. I was fortunate to have five lessons a week during the summer, each with its unique fundamental skill, followed by a "follow me" ride out of the barnyard and out onto his farmland.

Every day Mr. Gratwick wore a fresh khaki Army uniform of pants and shirt pressed with creases. If you got there early, before he went out to get the horses, you got to see his perfect "uniform" with no insignia that included combat like work boots and a red baseball cap. The horses grazed out on the farm with no fences and with the lead horse hobbled. Students could walk with him to get the horses while he explained, based on the night's weather, where they could be found and he was always right. He'd snap a rope on the lead horse, remove the hobbles, throw them over his shoulder and we walked to the barn, with the herd following, where we helped him feed.

The picture of the wrinkled Army uniform is about how he looked by noon. The only ironed crease that remained was in a sleeve. I was too young to ask him about his Army life, his regiment and all the rest that I wish I knew now. My dad told me he was an Officer and I learned what that meant by the way he addressed us. One memory is of how he taught us to slide a horse down a slope into a creek with a slippery rock bottom that made some horses scramble with their feet once in the water. He led us down the slide in a column, but before descending the slope, he explained that we needed to be in the "C" position during the slide.

A "C" position is when your feet are ahead of the girth and your upper body is folded making a "C". We were instructed to be in a "C" with our head alongside the horse's neck below the crest, which is an extreme "C" position I can no longer do. We were taught to approach the slide with a strong rhythm and once over the brink to do a half halt to lock up the hind to slide and to allow the forehand to "walk" down the slope so as to not get our horse's feet caught on a root. Before he went over the brink, he would ask us, "Why do we descend the slope in a "C" with our heads low?" We'd all raise our hands and he'd pick a student to answer. The answer was, "So we make a smaller target, Sir!

Mr. Gratwick would disappear over the brink and we would follow in a column, sliding one by one. Upon arriving at the bottom in the water, he would be sitting on his big black and white horse in the creek. When a horse would scramble its feet on the wet slippery stone bottom, in his deep voice he'd say, "Be still." Then we would move on to field riding over terrain focused on the skill of the day that we learned back in the barnyard. We learned the difference between a line and a column, military hand signals, silent so as not to tell the enemy where we were, and to stay in formation.

There is so much more to tell. The barn had a big door up in the hay loft that we would open on rainy days. The students would sit on the floor and clean tack with glycerin soap bars while we looked out the open door where we saw and heard falling rain. Everything we did was according to the military standard. When we helped feed we learned the proper way. This was true of every detail, how to place a saddle pad on a horse, how to clean tack, how to groom, clean feet, bridle, mount and dismount. There was the Army way, the best way, nothing else.

In the 1950s Mr. Gratwick was in his late 60s or early70s. He was, therefore, born in the 19th century when horses were essential for life. He had a head of thick white hair you could see when we returned from a long hot "follow me" ride. We would tie our horses, untack, groom and then we could go to the water spicket in the barnyard to get a drink. Mr. Gratwick did the same and after his drink, he'd take off his red hat, soak it in the cold water and put it back on his head. But he was not one of us. When he addressed students, it was an Officer addressing enlisted men. We were treated as men, recruits to the cavalry.

I save one detail for the end. Looking at the picture of the barn, on the right end of the barnyard there was a double gate that went to a dirt road that led to the land we'd ride. After our barnyard lesson, with Mr. Gratwick and all the students were mounted up, he would watch us trot a circle together in both directions to check if all saddles were well secured. If yours wasn't, that was very bad, but it was met only with silence from our teacher as we all stood still and quiet while the failed student dismounted and adjusted their saddle.

After that Mr. Gratwick, on his very tall horse, would walk to the beautiful handmade wooden arched gate and open it from the saddle. I loved it. That was how our "follow me" rides began, through that opened gate. I can still see him leaning over to open the latch from his horse. Young and dumb as I was, I knew each time that I was a very lucky boy.

*link to "C" position post -

11/18/2025

Yesterday I posted about yearling Matilda's training with the crew and how we are building a team to truly train horses for long versatile careers. The past twenty or so years have brought specialization of horses in disciplines to an irrational level. I have been riding long enough that developing narrowly trained single purpose horses strikes me as a very strange concept.

In business there is the term "residual value". It means that when you purchase a machine for your business and for whatever reason it no longer fits in your business plan, you sell it for its residual value after it has contributed to your business.

While horses are expensive today and as a result it is relatively easy to sell a horse to someone (many being clueless about horses) by simply lowering the price a little. These highly specialized horses today have very little true residual value outside their specialization. Their training has so many voids in it that once their specialized value runs out and decreases. These horses rarely make a good horse for the next owner in a second career.

That kind of bad fit can quickly turn into a failure that results in another sale, and another and another with none of the relationships with the new owners working out in anything close to an optimal relationship. Horses suffer from this now common serial failure as do riders who buy these horses with the hope of a great partnership.

I am hoping that our new venture will train the whole horse for a long and happy life with whoever might become a future owner or owners. Our hope is that giving the fundamentals of training to all our horses, making versatile mounts, will start a new trend. By training our prospects, not for a specialized discipline, but rather for a bright adaptable future no matter where their lives lead them Will end some of the suffering that specialization forces on them. They will have real residual value and happy lives appreciated by many people and treated well until they die.

*link to post about our group -

www.facebook.com/BobWoodHorsesForLife/posts/pfbid02hRKG9jg1qp887H4bFAS1Nt3jzCQash5fs1fXT2awxbQ3ra3r392WwTCsBWEBnXYrl

11/17/2025

The UDJClub is change for the better.

11/17/2025

This is Matilda, an unraced, untrained, green as grass Thoroughbred yearling. She is full of herself and already the boss mare in our herd. She came to me through Turning For Home, which I greatly appreciate. Her breeder/owner felt she had some conformation flaws and decided not to put her into race training. Since speed is not a top priority for me, and because I am a sucker for a big butt TB, I am very happy to have her.

At right is the crew. We came together a few months ago to train horses the traditional way. This means training the whole horse. We are not going to make her a Hunter horse, a polo horse or any kind of specialized mount. Together, we will make her a horse everyone wants to own. She will have manners, boundaries, even gaits, agility, crisp transitions, unshakeable balance and she will be fun to ride.

Matilda, I call her Tilly, has been here for about a month. While the lower left pictures are of me lunging her, I can't take credit for her progress. The past few weeks for me have been demanding, dealing with a family matter that is now ending. I have not been at the barn as much as I would have liked. While I have been away Megan on the left, on her big young Irish TB cross, has done most of her training work. Laura on the right has also been lunging her. The pictures of me are only my second round pen session with her but she has learned to stay on the rail when lunged, she has a very nice even trot now and when she responds to Woah, she stands perfectly, but her Woah still needs some work.

She doesn't drag you around when led anymore or run into you when she's not paying attention. Tilly is making steady progress in the basics thanks to Megan and Laura, who is in the saddle with Velvet at the far right. Velvet is our other prospect in training and Laura has been doing a great job with her.

The three of us are in the process of building a training enterprise. Also on the team are Dan and Karen who have been helping build the required training environment and documenting our progress. I think by spring we will be ready to invite others, people and horses, to the farm for training. In my view, today the biggest lack or void in today's horse world are people who really know how to train the whole horse. We eventually plan to do mini clinics lasting a day or two.

We need a name. Got any suggestions? Whole, Complete or Total Horse Training or Horsemanship? The name needs to reflect that we are not training specialized horses, which is pretty much all that you can get today. Today's specialized horses have voids in their training that exposes them to risks over their lifetime because they don't have the fundamentals that can make them versatile enough to change careers multiple times over the years.

Please put your suggestions for names for our business in the comments. We are building a community around complete fundamental training. Be a part of it. Our website and social media will happen in the days to come, but we will need a name for what we do.