The NOËLLE FLOYD Podcast

There's one horse you would cross the country for.
You know the one. The horse who found you when you had the least to give and somehow handed you back to yourself.
Now hold that horse in your mind, and sit with this: roughly 20,000 of them a year get loaded onto trailers bound for Canada and Mexico, and it reaches every kind of horse — the show jumper, the Thoroughbred who ran too slow, the lesson pony grown old, the wild horses rounded up off land that was meant to protect them.
Ashley Avis has looked straight at it. She sewed a button cam into her shirt and walked into the Texas auctions where kill buyers wait. She founded the Wild Beauty Foundation, directed the mustang documentary Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West, and remade Black Beauty for Disney+. And she has turned all of it toward one aim: passing the SAFE Act in the year of the horse.
This conversation goes to the place most people flinch from. Ashley and I talk about why horse people, of all people, find horse slaughter the hardest thing to watch — and how she makes you look anyway, through ninety-second films voiced by Mackenzie Foy, Jessica Springsteen, and Diane Lane, and scored by Billie Eilish's "What Was I Made For?"
We talk about my mare Lady, one of those wild horses herself, who ran feral for fifteen years before she came to me, and who could have ridden that same truck to Mexico.
We talk about the black colt with pneumonia that Ashley coaxed out of a kill buyer's pasture, and the economics that let a man triple his price on a horse's life.
And we talk about Black Beauty — what Anna Sewell did in 1877 by writing from a horse's point of view, and why it still rearranges the people who meet it.
Then Ashley tells you exactly what two minutes of your day can do. A microsite. Your zip code. A pre-written letter your member of Congress will read.
If you have ever been remade by a single horse, this is the reason to pull the car over.
Ashley Avis is a filmmaker and the founder of the Wild Beauty Foundation. She directed Disney+'s Black Beauty and the mustang documentary Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West, and her Lost Horses campaign is carrying the SAFE Act toward a vote.
Make the call to Congress to pass the SAFE Act: Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard to directed to your Senators and Representative: 202-224-3121. Once connected, all you have to say is, "Hi, my name is [NAME] and I am calling from [City/State] to ask that the [Senator/Representative] pass the SAFE Act (H.R. 1661, S. 775) to protect American horses, both domestic and wild, from being exported out of the United States to slaughter. Thank you."

Share the Lost Horses PSA: The Lost Horses campaign and legislation to stop horse slaughter is gaining momentum and we must keep up the awareness. Please share the PSA on social media and with your friends and family. Vimeo, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook.
Donate to the Lost Horses campaign: Help continue to reach the masses so that no horse is lost again. losthorses.org/support
 
Episode Sponsor:  YETI
Made for early mornings in the barn and long days in the saddle. Whether you're hauling feed, chasing daylight on the trail, or loading up for a weekend on the road, YETI coolers and drinkware are built to handle it.
No shortcuts. No compromise.
Just gear that works as hard as you do.
Explore more at YETI.com | @YETI | facebook.com/YETI
 
And for even more expert-led workshops, in-depth courses, and exclusive lectures designed to elevate your riding and horsemanship, visit NoelleFloydPlus.com and use code 'DHW' for 15% off annual memberships!

NF+ brings you direct access to top equestrian professionals, training insights, and a passionate community of riders dedicated to learning and improving.

You get the thing you chased for five years.
And the ride is the worst one you've ever put down.
Kasey Perry-Glass reached the Olympic Games on the horse she bought to take her there — Doublé — and came home into a depression that blindsided her. This is the conversation under the medal photo. What it costs to want something that badly, and what she found on the far side of it.
She married a cowboy. Dana Glass starts colts and takes in the horses other people gave up on — the rearers, the buckers, the bolters, carrying baggage nobody unpacked. Two worlds under one roof: her classical dressage, his groundwork. What one taught the other is most of this hour.
We get into the perfectionism that dressage rewards and then punishes — a score out of 100 that stays out of reach, a sport where the best mark is a C or a D on a good day. Why she stopped posting to social media. The line Martin Black uses, let them cook, and why ending a ride a little early beats grinding it into the ground. Pain versus behavior, and the checklist she taught Dana: clear the ulcers, the hindgut, the teeth, before anyone calls it attitude.
Then the mental game she learned the hard way. Finding her number with Annette Paterakis — the exact pitch of nerves and calm that lets her ride her best. The work with Dr. Jenny Susser. Blacking out in the saddle, ten minutes gone, grinding the same movement. Boundaries. Getting told she was "too nice" for this sport, and what she kept anyway.
Behind the vertical, point of balance, throughness without a single draw rein — she explains the dressage the way she explained it to Dana, the sport he first met through her.
This one is for anyone who has wanted something so badly it made them small, and found their way back to the size they actually are.
Kasey Perry-Glass is a US Olympic dressage rider — team bronze at Rio 2016 (America's first Olympic dressage medal since 2004) and team silver at the 2018 World Equestrian Games — who competes as Kasey Perry. Her longtime partner was the Grand Prix gelding Doublé (Goerklintgaards Dublet), now retired; she currently campaigns Heartbeat W.P. She and her husband, cowboy and colt-starter Dana Glass, run Two Worlds Equestrian, joining Western horsemanship and Grand Prix dressage under one program.
To Learn more about Kasey Perry-Glass: website | instagram | facebook
In This Episode You'll Learn
What it costs to reach an Olympic Games and ride your worst test there, and the depression Kasey came home to
The perfectionism dressage rewards and then punishes,  chasing a score out of 100 in a sport where a great mark is a C
Let them cook: why ending a ride a little early beats grinding a movement into the ground
The pain-versus-behavior checklist Kasey taught Dana — ulcers, hindgut, teeth, before anyone calls it attitude
Finding your number with sports psychologist Annette Paterakis — the exact pitch of nerves and calm that lets you ride your best
Blacking out in the saddle, ten minutes gone on the same movement, and the mental work that pulled her out
Behind the vertical made plain: the poll as the highest point, and why a horse's own point of balance can't be copied and pasted
Throughness without a single draw rein, and how groundwork gave an Olympic rider tools her dressage babies never had
Chapters:
 

0:00    How Kasey met a cowboy
4:51    What Dana does: colt starting & unpacking a horse's trauma
8:41    Groundwork, the rope halter & being a beginner again
14:34   [ad: Total Feeds]
15:14   The perfectionism dressage rewards and punishes
19:51   Let them cook: ending on a good note
23:17   Pain vs. behavior: what we blame on the horse
29:05   Bringing two worlds together
30:36   Welfare, eliminations & the "blood" rule
33:44   [ad: Noëlle's Substack]
36:07   Judging transparency & educating the viewer
39:21   Behind the vertical, explained
41:44   Point of balance & throughness without draw reins
44:47   Training aids as tools; groundwork informs the saddle
49:34   The Olympics — and the depression after
53:44   Patience in a same-day world
57:22   The mental game: finding your number
1:02:29 Boundaries, thick skin & remaking herself
1:07:19 Tough vs. strong; raising horses and kids
1:12:50 Rapid-fire questions


Episode Sponsor: Connaway & Associates Equine Insurance Services, Inc.

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Visit www.connaway.net | @connawayassociates | facebook.com/connawayassociatesequine 
 
Episode Sponsor: YETI
Made for early mornings in the barn and long days in the saddle. Whether you're hauling feed, chasing daylight on the trail, or loading up for a weekend on the road, YETI coolers and drinkware are built to handle it.
No shortcuts. No compromise.
Just gear that works as hard as you do.
Explore more at YETI.com | @YETI | facebook.com/YETI
 
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments. 
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!

You think the cow is the hard part.
She isn't. You are.
You get ahead of her to turn her, and she beats you to the herd every time. You spur, you pull, the horse's head comes up, and now nobody is watching the cow at all.
Martin Black has read millions of head of cattle, and the horse training lesson underneath all of it is the one almost everybody gets backwards. To cut one cow out, you leave her alone and stir the herd around her. To turn her, you turn away — not toward. The horse rates the cow the way a foal learns to rate its mother in the first thirty minutes of life. It's already in there. Our job is to stay out of the road so the horse can use it.
This is Part 2 of my week with Martin on his ranch in the Great Basin. Part 1 is the ranch, the horses, and reading the moment — start there.
We work the balance point and the flight zone, and why a cow reads your horse's head like a horn and your horse's hip like something softer. Why getting in front of a cow to block her only sends her faster. What Tom Dorrance told Martin decades ago about turning tail, and how that one idea makes a green horse handier by the day. Gene Lewis, his mother's cousin, and jumpers that rate a fence with nobody telling them where to put their feet.
Then the part that reshaped how I keep my own horses. Turnout over stalls. Bare feet when the ground allows. A crick to cross and rocks to pick through, because a horse who has to sort out the terrain grows savvy, and a horse who never has to stays a passenger.
Martin runs horses as a business, not a companion animal, and says his vet bills will stand against anyone's. Colic almost unheard of. Feet the ground keeps honest. It made me ask what I was really protecting when I bubble-wrapped mine.
The horse training here is subtraction, not addition. Cows think more like horses than you'd guess, and empathy runs under all of it.
Martin Black is a lifelong Great Basin horseman and stockman from a multi-generation ranching family, working in the vaquero tradition and the lineage of Tom Dorrance. He spent ten years starting young horses at Calumet Farm in Lexington and now teaches horsemanship and stockmanship through clinics and a ranch school. 
If you want to go further with your own horse, NF+ has 70+ masterclasses at noellefloydplus.com or through the app link in the show notes.
 
In This Episode You'll Learn
The move almost everyone gets backwards: to hold a single cow, you leave her alone and stir the herd around her
Why getting in front of a cow to block her only sends her faster back to the herd — and what to do the instant she turns
How a cow reads your horse's head like a horn and your horse's hip like something softer, so a leg-yield moves her where a headbutt would spook her
What Tom Dorrance told Martin about turning tail to a cow, and how it makes a green horse rounder and handier by the day
Gene Lewis and colts that rate a fence themselves, with nobody telling them where to put their feet
Why a collected walk finally had a purpose the day Noelle worked cattle on Lady
What ten years starting babies at Calumet and a lifetime in the Great Basin say about turnout, bare feet, and letting a horse sort out rough ground
The barbed-wire story, and what a horse who navigates real terrain has that a bubble-wrapped one lacks
Chapters
0:00    Part 2: cutting a cow by leaving her alone
1:40    Holding cattle without a fence — what it takes
3:40    Sorting without stalking: keeping a cow parasympathetic
5:40    Cows think like horses — Dr. Peters & Temple Grandin
8:30    The old way wasn't the cruel way
10:40   After WWII: how the mechanized age lost the horsemanship
11:20   What a chuck wagon really was (Great Basin history)
14:34   [ad: Total Feeds]
17:49   The balance point & flight zone, explained
21:00   Rating: the foal, the herd, and the safe place
26:40   Headbutt vs. tail-butt: why a leg-yield moves a cow softer
30:40   The move most people get backwards: never turn into the cow
33:43   [ad: Noelle's Substack]
34:47   Predator habits that get in the way
37:30   Tom Dorrance on turning tail
40:50   Gene Lewis: horses that rate the jump themselves
47:00   Managing horses naturally: turnout over stalls
49:00   Barefoot when the ground allows
52:00   Rough terrain makes a savvy horse — the barbed-wire story
55:00   Horses as a business, not a companion animal
59:40   Advice for urban riders: get out of the arena


Episode Sponsor: Total Feeds
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
 
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments. 
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!

We pat our horses to tell them they did well.
Martin Black says the horse would rather we kept our hands to ourselves.
He has spent a life inside western horse training — starting close to five hundred colts a year on the same Great Basin country his family has ranched since the 1860s, seventy miles from his nearest neighbor, the road over the mountain closed all winter. And what he showed me this week is that the pat is for us. The reward the horse is after is chemical: the flood of serotonin and dopamine that arrives when pressure lifts and the body comes home to rest. Martin calls it the cocktail. Rouse the horse, bring him down, and he licks his lips — he got his drink, and he will go to that edge with you again because he knows you will take him to the bar after.
This is western horse training as one of its living masters practices it, and almost none of it looks like technique.
Martin reads a colt the way the rest of us read a single sentence — ten things at once. He calls it peripheral thinking. The predator in us locks onto the prey: the outcome, the lead change, the plan for the day. Martin holds the objective and lets the plan bend to whatever the horse hands him. The seed that wants to grow today gets watered today. The one that is not ready waits.
We talk about the hours. I could shadow him in Idaho for years and still not own his timing, because feel does not transfer. You earn it one horse at a time, and no clinic sells it.
We talk about why he trains his cattle the way his family has since the 1860s — the rodear, the old vaquero work that crossed from Spain and reached Texas two centuries late — and why a dressage horse belongs on a cow as much as any ranch gelding does.
And we go into the cowboy neuroscience of it: sympathetic arousal, homeostasis, pressure and its relief as one thing rather than two. Dr. Steve Peters pulled Martin out of a lineup for this. Martin calls himself a bartender. He once waited forty-five minutes on a traumatized cutting mare, feeling her heartbeat through the saddle horn, until she finally licked her lips and found her way home.
Part one of two. In part two, Martin takes it to the ground — reading cattle by the million, and moving one cow out of a herd by leaving her alone.
Martin Black is a Great Basin horseman and colt starter who has started close to five hundred colts a year, working the same remote Idaho country his family has ranched since the 1860s. He carries the lineage of Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt into a plainer, harder question: what does the horse in front of you need?
In This Episode You'll Learn
Why the pat you give after a good round is for you, and what the horse is asking for instead.
The cocktail — how serotonin and dopamine turn pressure and its release into the reward the horse remembers.
Peripheral thinking: reading ten things at once, and why the predator in us locks onto only one.
Why Martin holds the objective and lets the horse choose which seed grows today.
The forty-five-minute wait on a traumatized cutting mare, and the heartbeat he felt through the saddle horn.
The hours nobody can hand you — why feel is earned one horse at a time.
Find out more about Martin Black: website | facebook | youtube
Chapters 
0:00 — The pat is for you, not the horse (cold open)
0:30 — Seventy miles from the nearest neighbor
5:00 — No formula fits all: hold the objective, bend the plan
14:38 — Peripheral thinking and the predator's focus
19:33 — Moving the feet: sympathetic arousal and self-preservation
28:45 — Why loving on your horse is for you
31:01 — The invitation: the cocktail, the margarita, the lick of the lips
39:29 — Cowboy neuroscience: pressure, relief, homeostasis
50:40 — The colt-starting science project
51:53 — Can a jumper work a cow? Stockmanship and the rodear
57:29 — Holding the herd without a fence — and what empathy means
Total Feeds
Our mission to provide quality nutrition to people and animals puts us in contact with all manner of interesting folks. Whether you're interested in our animal feed, or the people involved in the animal industry: you'll find it at Total Feeds!
Check out our line of Quality Animal Feeds here: https://totalfeeds.com
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments. 
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!

When I was eleven, my mom handed me The Man Who Listens to Horses.
Last week, the man who wrote it died.
Within days, the horse world also lost Alexandra Kurland — the woman who spent decades convincing us that a clicker and a handful of food belonged in serious horse training.
This is a solo episode. An essay, read aloud, on two pioneers who stood in opposite corners of horse training and still moved the same conversation forward. On join up, and what it asks of a flight animal sent around a round pen. On positive reinforcement, and why handing a horse food never automatically creates consent. On the disputed parts of Monty's story, and why we can hold gratitude and discernment at the same time.
And underneath it all, the question I keep circling: why do we need our teachers to be heroes?
We put trainers on pedestals. The flaws appear — they always do — and reverence flips to contempt overnight. Either way, the person is never allowed to be human. And pedestals are useless to horses. A pedestal has never once made a horse feel safer, calmer, or less confused about what we are asking.
I believe we are living through the biggest shift in the human-horse relationship since machines took horses out of our fields and our wars. The question used to be: can the horse do it? The question becoming ours is: what does it cost the horse to do it? Did the horse understand, or did it simply stop resisting? Does the absence of conflict mean the horse feels safe?
One day, we will be the outdated ones. The next generation will see pressure we could not recognize and pain we rationalized. I hope so. If they never outgrow us, we failed to help them see farther.
Monty Roberts and Alexandra Kurland do not need us to decide which one was right. They need us to carry the torch. And the torch is not join up. The torch is not the clicker. The torch is the responsibility to keep listening.
Thank you, Monty. Thank you, Alexandra. This one is for the lineage — and for my mom, who put that book in my hands.
In This Episode:
Why join up is pressure and release in learning-theory terms — and why naming that honors Monty more than sainthood ever could
The question Alexandra Kurland made possible: how do I create a learning environment where the horse becomes an active participant
What the clicker teaches the human — poor timing, criteria that jump too fast, a missed try; the horse reports every one
Why food on its own creates neither agency nor consent, and what positive reinforcement still demands of the person holding it
Becky Moody at the top of dressage: trained with Carl Hester, embracing clicker work — evolution over allegiance
The pedestal inversion: how reverence flips to contempt when the flaws appear, and why both extremes abandon the horse
The three sentences responsible learning gets to say: this is what you made possible, this is where I believe you were wrong, this is what I will carry forward
Learn more about Monty Roberts: website | facebook | youtube
Learn more about Alexandra Kurland: website | facebook
Chapters 
0:00 — The book that started it
2:30 — What positive reinforcement changed first
6:00 — Two truths about Monty Roberts
8:40 — The biggest shift since mechanization
13:00 — Pedestals are useless to horses
15:20 — The torch and the next generation
Interested in more from Noëlle?
Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com
Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments. 
https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus
And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com
You can also download the app - NF+ App
Thank you for your listening!