You want a horse with a great mind, to start with. You can get a horse to do a lot, but if you can’t control it, that doesn’t help you either. My best advice there is to buy one that wants to be a show horse. There are just certain horses that just say, “I’m a show horse.” They’re not all that perfect...

The number one quality a good competition horse possesses is desire. Desire goes further than anything else and is the number one necessity to a show horse. After that comes ability, and then beauty.

The first thing I try to get people to do is understand the horse a little so they keep themselves out of trouble. That’s very important. The other thing you need to do is when you start looking for your horse, make sure that you like the horse. Make sure you fit that horse mentally and physically...

Is your horse cranky at feed time? Does he pin his ears, bare his teeth and stomp his feet? Or worse, does he grab the hay out of your arms and shove you aside? If your horse has bad manners at feed time, he may be displaying aggressive and dominant behavior because he thinks his actions are making you...

Here’s a quick tip about clipping your horse’s bridle path. Although bridle path length varies in expectations with breed and discipline, in general, less is more. For Quarter Horse- and Thoroughbred-type horses, the bridle path should be fairly short—just long enough to accommodate the headstall...

Let’s start with tack and its adjustment. We’ll start with the jointed bit. With the jointed bit you will see a couple of wrinkles at the horse’s mouth. With a straight bit you will see only half a wrinkle, not two or more. Now let’s go to the martingale. I don’t use or advocate a running martingale...