Why You Should Stop Patting Your Horse | Martin Black on Western Horse Training

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!