Riding With Bill - True Horsemanship Through Feel

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horse people
Riding
WITH
Bill
12 O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 A M E R I C A ’ S H O R S E
Bill Dorrance coaches
Leslie Desmond on how
to apply a better feel.
P A T W E E D M A N
Ride along as Bill Dorrance teaches
a student how to “walk the talk.”
By Leslie Desmond

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Editor’s note: In the mid to late 1990s, horsewoman Leslie Desmond co-wrote and published “True
Horsemanship Through Feel” with noted rancher and master horseman Bill Dorrance. Now, as she
embarks on a demo tour of the United States, she is preparing for the publication of two more books, “The
Feel of a Horse,” which contains detailed explanations and illustrations of feel-based techniques, and
“Riding With Bill,” in which she shares anecdotes from the four years she spent writing, training and
riding with her mentor, who passed away in 1999 at age 93. Here, a sneak peek at those adventures:
I
IN 1994, I WAS FORTUNATE TO MEET BILL DORRANCE AT A RAY
Hunt clinic in Gustine, California. We were introduced by a
mutual friend, and before our first conversation
had concluded, I had accepted Bill’s
surprising invitation to visit him at his
ranch with my horses and my students.
“No more than you can get done with
a horse, you’re doing all right,” he said,
offering in his next breath to start teaching
me how to apply my “better feel,” as
he put it. That short conversation is the
only reason that I can write about any of
this today.
Two weeks later, I drove down from
Novato, California, to his ranch on
Mount Toro in Salinas. In the months
and years that followed, Bill showed me
how he taught a young colt or a belligerent
re-start to step toward the “float,” or
“slack,” by releasing him to it.
He would start by checking the horse
Bill riding his good horse “Patrick,” circa 1957.
out and usually offering a release first, instead of a pressure
and release. Bill would extend the float in the horse’s direction,
slowly, and wait, not staring the colt in the face, not
holding his breath, and harboring no expectation
whatsoever about the outcome of the offer.
Not unlike a horse, Bill’s gesture was purely
inquisitive, a sort of “Hello there, little horse.
Here is the float. Now, let’s see here, wait a
minute, what is your response going to be?”
That all depended on the individual horse.
Bill made it very clear that with some
horses, it was not necessary to offer a release
as a reward for yielding to pressure; you
offered the release “on the start.” With
others, it was the reverse, and firmness
could highlight the first hello. He did
not tire of demonstrating the elusive
concept of feel in its many manifestations
and applications. From the folding
chair where he sat, he would release
horse after horse to the maneuvers he
wanted before my disbelieving eyes.
Consistently, he searched for the best presenta-
tion he could make for that individual horse at the time.
Among the many lessons I took from that experience, I
learned that when some horses are really
fresh, a feel and release will get you farther
along faster, as long as you know
what you are after and can follow the
way of that horse to get there.
“Adjusting your presentation” is another
way of saying this. “Feel of the horse, so
the horse can feel of you” is another way.
“Set the horse up to succeed” is another
way. “Go with the horse, so that the horse
can pick up your feel and then go with
you,” “blend with the horse” and such
phrases that, by now, are familiar to many
of you, are a part of this. “Make the right
thing obvious to the horse on the start,”
are Bill’s exact words,
and I believe that this
sums it up the best.
I recorded many
of my observations of Bill’s efforts to
help others – from teens to cowboys to
housewives and horse trainers – so they could
get a handle on what he called their “better
feel,” as he preferred to call it.
Bill in 1994.
D I A M O N D L U C O L L E C T I O N

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Bill was a master rawhide
braider, completing 67
riatas, 103 hackamores, a
few hundred hondas and
more. Here, he displays
some strands of rawhide in
a bundle called a “tamale.”
There are 90 feet of
rawhide string in each bundle,
and it takes four of
these to braid a 65-foot
riata.
D I A M O N D L U C O L L E C T I O N
We were not spared, unfortunately, some of the rigors of
the teacher-student dynamic, as he struggled to help me
unlearn some things that he preferred I not do.
To be fair to the mentors I had up to that point, for whose
coaching and friendship I will forever be thankful, I thought
I had learned some very useful things about how you get control
of a horse and how you teach horses to respect and listen
to you. The truth is that I had, or I never would have met Bill
in the first place.
But, for two reasons those lessons did not endure. First, I
was still in a hurry and more concerned about what my coaches
thought of my effort and results than what my horse was
learning from me and might be thinking about me. And, second,
when I was getting started on all this in the early 1990s,
I did not have consistent access to the input I needed to be
sure that I was on the right track.
The sad part was that some of these things I hoped to one
day master, Bill saw as his job to eliminate from my repertoire,
and, I have to say, this placed me in a serious quandary.
By the time we were about half finished with the book, I realized
one day that he had succeeded in changing my thinking
about horse handling and riding a good bit.
When you are in the painful throes of unlearning something
that you have worked hard to learn so that you can
incorporate new and more useful skills into your repertoire,
you must have regular access to a coach whose character you
trust, whose personality meshes with yours and whose results
with a horse you emulate.
“Oh, yeah. A fella sure needs to have these things in place
to get his better feel available to those horses, all right,” I
heard Bill say, over and over.
In the course of our daily work and exchanges, he was just
as particular, and maybe even a bit tougher. Bill demanded
that I stop using a few select everyday words in his home.
And I did. One was the word “hate,” (he loved chocolate, and
I hated it), and the other was the word “best” (I thought
Fushi was my best horse; he said there certainly was a better
one). Those words were extreme in his view, easily misunderstood
and left the listener in a “poor position.”
He thought I should not own one dog. I had two that I
loved and counted on to protect the truck when I was on the
road alone, so at that I drew the line.
Each spring, my love of nature and the fresh feeling of
renewal in the earth inevitably drew me to the hillsides where
I would collect an armload of wild flowers, bring them back
and set a bouquet in the middle of the big kitchen table. Bill
said the time I spent in that pursuit could have been used
much better writing our book or working with a horse. He
always hoped I would make the time to learn how to work in
rawhide, so each year when those flowers would show up, he’d
say, “I really don’t see the point in those.”
He cooked luscious meals, but sometimes he would not
reveal the ingredients until after I had swallowed. He advised
me to stay around home at Christmastime, to yield the right
of way to aggressive drivers and to stop traveling overseas. He
worried constantly when I did, because our manuscript and
all the negatives for our book went with me on every trip.
With one agonizing four-day-long exception, the guts of
our book never left my side or sight until the DVDs were en
route by jet to the printer in Beijing.
Bill kept a watchman’s hours and was in bed by 8 or 9 p.m.
so he could be up before dawn, usually around 2 or 3 a.m. I
could hear him shuffle out to the living room, click on the

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lamp, and soon I’d hear a thud as the cumbersome ranch
ledger landed on his desk. The chair would scuffle over the
cracked plastic rug protector, he would sharpen a pencil and
review the economics of the ranch. A number in most every
block, a carefully printed tiny entry on each corresponding
line. He kept good records and encouraged me to do the same.
“A fella doesn’t want to own more than he can take care of,”
Bill said, “and he oughtn’t get into debt at all if he can help it.”
Those last words of advice were
offered not long before Bill passed.
Those years were packed full of
lessons about horses and cattle and
rawhide and branding, to be sure.
They were also richly appointed
with his little gems of wisdom, wry
remarks, sharp dry humor and really
delightful wit.
I photographed and sketched
some of the goings-on around there
with his grandchildren, his livestock
and friends who came to ride, watch
the brandings and use the ranch for
hunting. There were many memorable
hours spent in the rawhide and
saddle rooms, the meat room and the
barn. I recorded some of our conversations
and took copius notes on
many more.
There are innumerable small mat-
Bill won the stock horse
class at Salinas, California,
with Patrick in 1957.
A triumvirate of great horsemen: Bill Dorrance,
Ray Hunt and Bill’s brother Tom Dorrance. They
were together at this clinic in Gustine,
California, in 1994, when Leslie first met Bill.
ters that come up in the course of a day to interrupt two people
who are trying to discuss something concrete like book
writing and horse training. The latter, Bill wanted me to live
so that I could practice and explain it “in a way that another
fella could understand it.”
“Walking the talk” is shorthand for that tall order.
“Feel,” yes, I was living, breathing, studying, practicing
feel – and also hoping that, before it was all said and done,
the six kinds of feel he describes in
“True Horsemanship Through
Feel” would add up for me the way,
or at least close to the way, that it
did for Bill.
I wanted to get that sorted out
more than anything, to get it clear,
well-applied and smooth.
Bill admitted that he was not
born with “it.” But anyone could see
that he had “it” … so, why couldn’t
I? Bill assured his students that anyone
who wanted to learn the language
of the horse, indeed can.
On more than one occasion, sheer
frustration with my own inadequacies
led me to consider bolting
right off the ranch. And, truth be
known, the job description seemed
to be getting out of hand fairly
often, so I actually almost did quit
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D I A M O N D L U C O L L E C T I O N

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D I A M O N D L U C O L L E C T I O N
Bill was a great roper and a great
teacher. Here, he uses both skills to help
this student learn to rope a little better.
my day job on Mount Toro a couple of times before the book
was done. But I never could quite do it.
Bill Dorrance was not one you walked out on. He was not
a man whose trust you even remotely conceived of breaking
or whose dream, once known, you would not do your utmost
to fulfill.
After a fashion, I got hooked on his instructions and almost
mesmerized by the slow and easy lifestyle of an aging rancher
who surely, for the most part, thought that at 90-something,
he was still running the ranch the way it needed to be run.
I stayed, fortified some days only on the steady daily ration
of how-tos and what-nots, as Bill wanted me to understand
things when it came to business dealings, daily speech,
accounting, braiding, grocery shopping, driving, leather care,
feeding the dog and, of course, horses and horsemanship.
In between it all, Bill managed to announce and often
repeat his recommendation that I discard much of what I had
going for me, or at least thought I had working for me – not
just with the horses, but as a person.
He had not written a book before either, but he let me know
that he hoped I could start the book-writing journey fresh.
Those were not his exact words, but that was the route he laid
out for me, plain as day. We agreed to write a couple of articles
together as a test run, to see if we were on target for the book.
The first day was a long one. We got one line written.
“Whatever that horse needs is what you’re going to do,” he
said. We sat a while longer.
“Oh,” I said. “Is there any more to it that I should take
down today?”
“No, not really,” Bill said. “I think that pretty well sums it up.”
Bill said he thought there was a chance that I could fill in
a little for some horses in the future. He felt sure that people
in future generations were going to need help.
I had no clue how, but I didn’t question it.
As if he had heard my thoughts right as they came to me,
Bill, the master of understatement, said: “Somehow.”
At that point, sitting there with only one line on the page,
I believed him. But I also knew that he wasn’t sure exactly
how either.
If you missed something important when Bill spoke, you
hoped to never miss another word, so relevant were his obser-
16 O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 A M E R I C A ’ S H O R S E
vations and ideas to his focus on the betterment of
living conditions and handling for horses in
the future.
Finally, in words I can’t recall exactly, he said
something to the effect that if I would just take a
closer look at myself in relation to the horse, and a
closer look at horses in relation to the jobs they
needed to stay interested in working for someone –
meaning jobs that most of them do not have – that
then I would “do all right.”
“There’s a little gap there,” he said, “that’s not
getting smaller in the understanding between horses
and people, and that needs to get filled in a little,
I’ll say that.”
So, using the horses he had at the ranch and a few
of my own as role models, I stayed with it through
the rough spots. And, boy, am I glad that I did.
Never mind that I occasionally slid, gutted
myself and cried out across a seemingly endless
abyss. One fine day, that abyss actually widened out
between that place where he sat and I stood, as we
gazed out across a sea of celluloid and color glossies.
We had more than 2,600 snapshots spread out on the floor,
with slides and negatives covering every surface in the house,
and notes and bits of manuscript everywhere tucked and
stuck and pasted in the crevices between.
Surveying the scene, Bill said, “You know, I’ve been thinking
… maybe, instead, a fella ought to make a movie.”
Visit www.lesliedesmond.com to learn more about Leslie and to
see the fall schedule of her California-to-New York demo tour of the
United States. Her Web site also has information about the books’
release and ordering details.
Bill shows Leslie the finer points of attaching a bosal to the horse’s forelock,
so it stays in the correct position on the horse’s head. This is
explained in more detail in “True Horsemanship Through Feel.”
D I A M O N D L U C O L L E C T I O N