The NOËLLE FLOYD Podcast

When Training Isn't the Problem and the Plan Is

You start with a plan. Maybe it's the hunters, jumpers, dressage, eventing. You buy a horse with that picture in mind.

Then you get into the work, and something feels off. The horse isn't taking to it the way you expected. Or you start questioning whether the path you chose even suits them.

This conversation gets into those moments.

Tik Maynard, Karen Rohlf, and Brendan Wise talk about what it looks like when a horse pushes you to rethink your direction. Tik brings a lens rooted in how horses learn and how small changes in timing and pressure change the outcome. Karen focuses on how the horse feels in the work and how that affects willingness. Brendan comes from the performance world, where communication has to hold up under pressure.

Together, they talk through the kinds of decisions riders face all the time. Keeping a horse and changing your expectations, or selling and starting again. Sticking with a discipline, or trying something new because the horse in front of you is asking for it.

This is less about finding the right system and more about recognizing when the one you chose isn't lining up with the horse you have.

In This Episode:

• What to look at when your horse isn't progressing the way you expected
• How to decide if it's a training issue or a direction issue
• The thought process behind selling a horse versus changing your plan
• How trying another discipline can reveal what your horse needs
• Why the horse in front of you often tells you more than the plan you started with

Guests:

Tik Maynard – International event rider, clinician, and author of In the Middle Are the Horsemen. Known for blending learning theory with practical horsemanship, Tik brings a thoughtful, analytical approach to how horses learn and how riders can improve timing and communication.

To find out more about TIk - Website | Instagram | Facebook

Karen Rohlf – Author, founder of Dressage Naturally, and a leading voice in horse-centered training. Karen combines classical dressage with an emphasis on the horse's emotional experience, helping riders create willing, motivated partners.

To find out more about Karen - Website | Instagram | Facebook

Brendan Wise – Trainer and clinician known for his focus on feel, communication, and developing horses for high-level performance. His work often challenges traditional reliance on equipment, showing what is possible through refined aids and understanding.

To find out more about Brendan - Website | Instagram | Facebook

Key Takeaway

When a horse isn't lining up with the plan, the answer may be in the direction, not just the training.

Episode Sponsor: Flex Hoof Boots - https://flexhoofboots.com

Every horse deserves to move the way nature intended. Flex Hoof Boots are manufactured in Finland, where every boot is designed and tested through frozen winters, hard summer ground, and everything in between. Each Flex Boot is built around two patented features: an air-cushioned sole that absorbs impact and supports a natural heel-first landing, and a reinforced toe callus that guides the hoof through a smooth, correct breakover. The flexible material preserves proprioception - the horse's natural ability to feel and respond to the ground - so every movement is balanced, confident, and natural. With 33 sizes covering everything from miniature horses and foals to full-sized horses, there's a Flex boot built for your horse. And with the new FlexMini Ahti: engineered from the ground up for the biomechanics of miniature horses and foals, no horse is too small to move at their best. Flex Boots. Proving every day that healthy, barefoot horses are possible anywhere in the world

Your horse grabs the fence board. Arches the neck. Pulls back, and you hear that low gulp of air.

What is that horse telling you?

For years we called horse cribbing a stable vice. Something to stop. Something to strap a collar around.

Dr. Carissa Wickens has spent her career listening to it instead. She is an associate professor of animal sciences at the University of Florida, and horse cribbing has held her curiosity since she walked into a field of ten cribbing horses as a PhD student at Auburn.

What she has found is tender, and a little unsettling.

Cribbing looks like coping. When these horses are allowed to crib, their heart rate and stress hormones tend to drop. Take it away, and many start weaving, pacing the fence line, calling for their friends.

The need stays. Only the outlet moves.

And once the behavior settles in, it seems to live on its own. The ulcer heals. The diet improves. The horse joins a herd. The cribbing remains, because the brain has learned something.

We talk about the study that found cribbers carry their own pattern of dopamine receptors. Why Thoroughbreds, Warmbloods and Quarter Horses turn up so often in the research. Why weaning is when so many young horses begin. How a high-grain, low-forage diet multiplies the risk. And the chicken-and-egg question every owner asks: do ulcers cause cribbing, or does cribbing cause ulcers? Carissa gives the honest answer, which is that the science is still out.

I bring my own lens to this one too. As someone who is neurodivergent, I see a coping behavior the instant I see a horse crib. Carissa brings the research to meet it.

Three words keep coming back. Forage. Friends. Freedom.

Everything else rests on that foundation.

If you have ever stood at the fence frustrated with a cribbing horse, this conversation may let you see that horse with new eyes. As Carissa puts it, when behavior changes, look past the horse. "It's something that's not going right in the horse's world."

Dr. Carissa Wickens is an associate professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Florida, where she leads equine extension and research in horse behavior and welfare. She earned her PhD at Michigan State University, studying cribbing alongside Dr. Cindy McCall at Auburn University.

In this episode you'll learn

Why a cribbing horse's heart rate drops while it cribs.

The dopamine receptor study that found cribbers' brains wired their own way.

What happens the day a crib collar goes on: weaving, pacing, calling for friends.

Why weaning, around five months, is when roughly one young horse in ten begins.

The diet change after weaning that multiplied cribbing risk fourfold.

Why the behavior outlives the ulcer that may have started it.

The questions Carissa asks first in every behavior consult, from diet to sleep to saddle fit.

Chapters

0:00 Cold open: "I can't crib right now, but I need to do something"

0:29 Meet Dr. Carissa Wickens

2:06 How a field of cribbing horses started a career

6:26 What a stereotypy is, and why wild horses don't crib

11:36 Coping, not a vice: dopamine and the cribbing horse's brain

17:58 Born sensitive: genetics, Thoroughbreds and what a crib collar triggers

25:10 Weaning, diet and when horse cribbing begins

31:13 Why cribbing outlives its cause: OCD, crib collars and ulcers

39:59 The gut-brain connection

44:38 Forage first: what horse owners can do

48:33 Rapid fire

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!

Last year my horse G slid down the side of a mountain in the Tetons.

He came out of it okay. I carried it for a lot longer.

Gillian Larson has spent her twenties and now her thirties trail riding the backcountry from Mexico to Canada, more than once, on the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide, the Arizona Trail and the Colorado Trail. She calls herself a thru-rider. She recently raced across Patagonia in the inaugural Pass of Tears and finished second.

I traveled to Gillian's backyard in California to talk about trail riding at that scale. The mountain horse who reads the trail fifty feet ahead. The horse who pours gasoline on the fire. Two five-year-old Criollos nicknamed the Ferrari and the tractor.

And then I asked her the question I had been carrying since the Tetons.

How do you live with a decision that put your horse at risk?

Her answer is one of the most honest things I have heard about horses.

Gillian says the guilt belongs. It comes with being a good horse owner. You sit with it, you ask what you would do next time, and then you let yourself go back out. Horses forgive our flubs with a generosity that is, in her words, "immense and wild."

We talk about her first ride from Mexico to Canada at 22, when good horses carried a rider who was still learning. Why she went back and rode it again. Why the horse world shows the clean version of every trip and hides the scrambles. And why second place in Patagonia feels like a win to her, because she rode a race she can stand behind.

If you have ever lain awake replaying a call you made with your horse, this one is for you.

The question that stays with me is the one Gillian lives by.

Was I a good teammate to my horse today?

Gillian Larson is a thru-rider who travels long-distance backcountry routes on horseback. She first rode from Mexico to Canada at 22 and has since completed the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, the Arizona Trail, the Colorado Trail and the John Muir Trail, along with her own route from the Grand Canyon through Utah to the Wyoming border.

In this episode you'll learn

1. How a seasoned mountain horse reads the trail thirty to fifty feet ahead, and how a rookie fixates on the next step.
2. The horse who pours gasoline on the fire, and the one who freezes and looks to you.
3. Racing the Pass of Tears on two five-year-old Criollos, the Ferrari and the tractor.
4. The weigh-in, the waypoints, and the riders who dropped gear and called it kindness to the horse.
5. G's slide in the Tetons, and the guilt that followed Noëlle into the Wind Rivers.
6. Why Gillian rode Mexico to Canada a second time, and how it felt to finally carry her share.
7. The most undervalued skill a rider can have, according to someone who has ridden thousands of backcountry miles.

Chapters:

0:00 Welcome: the Wind Rivers and why the backcountry grounds us 5:18 What a thru-rider is, and how it differs from long riding 12:05 The Pass of Tears: racing across Patagonia 16:15 The Ferrari and the tractor: two five-year-old Criollos 20:56 What makes a good mountain horse 26:00 Criollos, estancias and making weight 35:06 Money, ethics and defining success 39:43 Guilt, mistakes and the horse you put at risk 50:19 Hyper-fixation: watching a horse after an injury 53:04 Why the horse world hides its mistakes 59:34 Being the partner your horses deserve 1:07:27 Rapid fire

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!

What does it cost to go and find out who you are?

For me, it cost a house.

I sold mine to travel 25,000 miles across North America with my horses, Lady and G, and I filmed all of it. That road became Unbridled, a six-part horse documentary series. Episodes 1 and 2 are on YouTube now.

This time the microphone turned around.

Jen Landon, actor, Yellowstone cast member, horsewoman, and the person who owns Shorty, took the host's chair and asked me the questions I usually ask everyone else.

She asked why I nearly stopped filming. So many times on that trip I looked at the footage and heard the same three sentences. I'm not good enough. This isn't good enough. No one's gonna care.

I kept the cameras rolling anyway. I'm so glad I did.

Jen tells the story of how Unbridled reached her. My husband, Ben, looked at me and made me promise to send it to her. I thought that was gauche. I sent it. She planned to watch two episodes as a favor to a new friend, and she watched the whole season.

She compared it to Chef's Table. Jen calls herself a bad cook, and she still walked away from every episode of that show with something for her own life and her craft as an actor. She says Unbridled did the same for her. The horses are the backdrop for a bigger lesson.

That is my hope for this horse documentary. That someone who has lived their whole life away from horses watches it and sees who I became because of the way Lady and G live as horses, every single day.

We talk about process-based horsemanship and outcome-based horsemanship, and how far that idea reaches past the arena.

"If you focus on the process, then the outcome is more expansive than you could possibly imagine. But if you focus on the outcome, then you're limited to the outcome you can imagine as the person you are in the moment."

Then we go to Texas.

Florida humbled me. I left it feeling small. And then I cut cows with Lyndi Birch and Barbra Schulte, on Jen's own horse, Shorty, who carried me like the all-star he is. Barbra is nurture. Lyndi is nature. Two sides of one coin, and between them I learned what I now call cowgirl confidence. Thinking confident is one thing. Being confident lives in the body.

Jen adds the piece I keep coming back to. Cowgirl confidence has fun in it.

When you sell the house, where do you find home?

Inside ourselves. In our horses. In the people who show up for us.

If you have a big, scary dream, you are more capable than you think. And you will be amazed by the allies, the people and the animals, who arrive to support you on your hero's journey.

Episodes 1 and 2 of Unbridled are on my YouTube channel. Episodes 3 through 6 live on NF+, and you can buy Season 1 on its own, separate from membership. Episode 4 is Texas: Shorty, the cows, Lyndiy and Barbra.

Watch Unbridled Episodes 1: https://youtu.be/XI6lxdaSM7Y

and Episode 2: https://youtu.be/X0xOcksn7TQ

Buy Unbridled all 6 Episodes of Season 1 on NF+: https://noellefloyd.com/pages/noelle-floyd-unbridled

Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/IpBkLxUk8AA

About Jen Jen Landon is an actor and horsewoman known to Yellowstone audiences. She worked cattle on her horse, Shorty, between takes on the Yellowstone set, and Shorty appears in Unbridled Episode 4 in Texas with Lyndy Burch and Barbra Schulte. She is a recent NF+ member who watches lessons before heading to the barn.

Episodee Sponsored by: 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!

Is the horse-human bond the ultimate secret to better training?

Watch the trailer as professional horsewoman Noëlle Floyd launches her new six-part documentary series NOËLLE FLOYD: UNBRIDLED.

🐴 Subscribe for more horse training & equestrian insights:

https://noellefloyd.com

💻 Catch the SEASON PREMIERE on Youtube MONDAY, OCTOBER 19 AT 4PM ET and binge the whole season! at NF+ https://noellefloyd.com/pages/noelle-floyd-unbridled

Created and hosted by Noëlle Floyd, this groundbreaking documentary series explores the deep connection between horse and rider through adventure, master class training, and essential equestrian skills.

Discover powerful answers and insights that have the potential to completely transform the equestrian community.

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!

I wrote my mare a letter the day she came to me. Out in the field with her, with G grazing nearby, I read it to her out loud for the first time. It is the most honest thing I have said about horsemanship in fourteen years.

Fourteen years I spent interviewing the horse world's best — the trainers and riders everyone turns to for answers. Then Lady arrived, more wild than tame, and I stepped in front of the camera to say the one thing the interviewer's chair never let me say: I don't know.

That admission is where Unbridled begins.

This is the solo letter underneath the whole series — the private writing that became the reason I made it. Lady came to me more questioning than compliant, unwilling to perform a smaller version of herself for anyone's comfort. Loving her made it impossible to stay safely behind the microphone. She asked me harder questions than any guest ever had. Not "can you make me do this," but "how can you meet me if you will not meet yourself?"

Somewhere in there my horsemanship began to change, and so did I. I call it rewilding — taking the bridle off my horse and the invisible one off myself at once. Fit in. Obey. Be manageable. Do not become too much. Lady answers every one of those instructions by simply being who she is.

When the bridle comes off, the truth comes out. Without the equipment and the familiar measures of success, what remains? Two bodies. Two nervous systems. Two living beings trying to understand each other across the line between species.

This letter is about worthiness — and how Lady taught me it was never a thing I earn by knowing enough. It lives in the willingness to listen, to repair, to begin again.

If you have ever loved a horse who would not let you hide, this one is for you.

Unbridled is a six-part series following me and my horses across North America, asking whether partnership can go somewhere freer than control. Lady is the reason it exists.

▶️ Watch Unbridled — Catch the SEASON PREMIERE on Youtube MONDAY, OCTOBER 19 AT 4PM ET

and binge the whole season! at NF+ https://noellefloyd.com/pages/noelle-floyd-unbridled

In This Episode:

• Why she almost didn't make Unbridled — the fear that fourteen years of interviews still left her unworthy of her own horse.
• The gap between a horse obeying you and a horse choosing you, and why only one survives the bridle coming off.
• What Lady asks that no technique can answer: how can you meet me if you will not meet yourself?
• Rewilding horsemanship — taking the restraints off the horse and off yourself in the same motion.
• Why "I don't know" became the beginning of her authority instead of the end of it.
• The promises she wrote to a horse she had dreamed about before they ever met.

Chapters :

• 0:00 — Out in the field with Lady (and G)
• 1:00 — Why she writes letters to her horses
• 2:31 — "Dear Lady" — the letter begins
• 3:52 — The mare unlike any she'd met
• 5:10 — When the bridle comes off, the truth comes out
• 8:00 — Rewilding her horsemanship, rewilding herself
• 9:00 — The Fool, the threshold, the heroine's journey
• 11:37 — What Unbridled actually became
• 13:02 — "You did not come here to heal me"
• 14:50 — Worthiness, and the horsewoman she's becoming

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!

The same patience it takes to earn a horse's trust is the patience Evan the Groom brings to teaching the rest of us. He came to horses the way most people never do — from the outside, with no background, terrified of the biggest one in the barn — and turned that beginner's-eye view into an education. Today he does the horse grooming and horse care in his wife's dressage business, and the horse world knows him as the viral comedian who makes the barn make sense to people who have never touched a horse.

This is a No Stupid Questions episode, and it is one of my favorites we have done. Evan explains horses the way he once needed them explained to him — no jargon, no ego, just plain answers to the things beginners are too embarrassed to ask out loud.

He was an engineer turning algae into protein. Then marketing. Then the pandemic took his job, his wife Ashley needed help at the barn, and he picked up a camera. The videos were meant to make his own family laugh — people who knew nothing about horses. Instead they built a following, and somewhere in there Evan became something he never trained to be: an educator.

We get into the skill he rates above all others and hears discussed least — observation, watching for the thing that is off today — and how six years of it on the ground is only now showing up in the saddle. His advice for every "horse husband" and non-horse partner out there: just support that. Why he would rather make a video so ridiculous you remember it than one only horse people understand, and how a loogie teaches you the word "hock." The groom's real job when no one is watching: being the horse's constant. And the mare who taught him the most — a year to earn her trust, and then, he says, she gives you everything.

There is also a talking pony named Piper, a children's book about a lost little bird, and — as of last week — his first ride off the lunge line.

If someone in your life doesn't understand the horse thing — or if you're the one at the rail — send them this.

Evan is a groom, content creator, and horse-care specialist in Southern California, where he works alongside his wife, dressage trainer Ashley Donant. He built his following making horses funny and reachable for people who have never touched one.

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!

A horse has two choices. Learn to accept the bit, or fight it for the rest of its life.

That's Steffen Peters, and this is the half where his hands are on the reins. If you heard Part 1, you met the man — six Olympics, the dark place, the way back. This one is the horse training — the groundwork up through Grand Prix. Forty years of it, distilled into the way he starts a five-year-old and the way he brought a brand-new stallion into the ring after two weeks together.

Here's the thing that runs through all of it: he doesn't push a horse into the bridle. Ever. He thinks ninety-five percent of horses are ridden with too much contact, and he'll tell you why "more hind legs, more into the hand" was never the answer for him. What he wants is suppleness, self-carriage, lightness — a soft rein you can see, and a horse that carries itself instead of leaning on your hand.

We get into where that starts, and it is earlier than you would think. The groundwork — on a lead rope, in a halter — the horse that stops when you stop without a pull on the rope. He calls it cooperation, not submission, and he means the difference exactly. From there it's the walk work most riders rush past, the half halt that becomes a reflex, the spur as a reminder and never a crutch, and the three aids he says are the only tools you really have.

There's the new stallion — fourteen, extremely smart, the horse that trained his rider to say "don't quit." There's Totilas, and what it takes to watch someone beat you and mean it when you call it good. And there's the compliment two vets paid him without knowing he could hear: at Steffen's barn, they can't make any money — because of the walk breaks, and what they save.

If Part 1 was how he learned to manage himself, this is how he manages the conversation with the horse. Same man. Now the method.

Steffen Peters is a German-born American dressage rider, a six-time Olympian and multiple Olympic medalist, and one of the most decorated dressage athletes in United States history. He returned to competition this year, opening his season aboard a new stallion with wins across the Prix St. Georges, the Intermediaire I, and the Grand Prix.

Chapters:

0:00 Riding Becomes Training 01:39 Flow State With New Stallion 02:19 Suppleness Over Hind Legs 04:37 Stop the Nagging Leg 05:52 Feel Over Looks 08:16 How Much Contact 11:57 Western Lightness Lessons 13:45 Warmup Is Training 17:30 Mindful Aids and Tools 20:38 Reliable Tests and Nerves 22:32 Refining Pressure Release 25:05 Walk Work and Discipline 27:12 Quiet Coaching Shift 27:54 Trainer Judge Clinics 29:06 From Thinking To Reflex 31:02 Flow State In Competition 34:09 Building Presence On Ground 37:46 Mindfulness In Daily Life 41:04 Rapid Fire Questions 47:59 New Stallion Partnership 50:26 Walk Breaks And Longevity

Want to go deeper into the training behind a clean, confident flying change?

In his new NOËLLE FLOYD Masterclass, six-time Olympian Steffen Peters breaks down the entire process—from developing the right canter, balance and response to the aids to introducing the change and troubleshooting tension, anticipation, crookedness and changes that are late behind.

Learn more and watch Training the Flying Change with Steffen Peters: https://noellefloyd.com/pages/flying-changes-with-steffen-peters

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 did you make it?

Ask most riders that question and they'll point to a medal. Steffen Peters points somewhere else — to the darkest place he has ever been, and the way back out of it.

This is Part 1 of my conversation with a six-time Olympian, and we barely touch a rein. Forty years of horse training sit behind this man, and the first thing he wants to talk about isn't a horse. It's the thing underneath the ribbons.

The neuropathy in his hands and feet after Paris that twenty-five doctors couldn't explain. The cold plunge and the vagus nerve, and the natural experiment that gave him relief when the medications didn't. The one ride in Tokyo — September 27th, 2018, a date he can still name — that sent him spiraling, and what it taught him about himself that no arena ever did.

He says you cannot manage stress. You can only manage yourself. He learned it, in his own words, way too late. The quality of your thoughts becomes the quality of your life, and for a while his thoughts were trying to take him under.

We get into the ego leaving, and the pride that stays. Why he loves that strangers in an airport call him "the rave horse" and never say his name. Why exposing weakness became the strength he's known for. What radical acceptance looks like at a Grand Prix, standing at the gate. And how the same sensitivity that can tip a person toward anxiety is the exact instrument that reads a horse — the sensitivity that is the whole art of his horse training, and also the thing that nearly broke him.

Dr. Reiner Klimke is here too, in a story Steffen didn't learn the truth of until five years after it had already set the course of his career.

If you have ever carried a bad day home and let it live in you overnight, this hour is for you. It is a rider telling you what the podium doesn't show.

Steffen Peters is a German-born American dressage rider, a six-time Olympian and multiple Olympic medalist, and one of the most decorated dressage athletes in United States history. He returned to competition this year after stepping away following the Paris Games, opening his season with wins in the Prix St. Georges, the Intermediaire I, and the Grand Prix.

Chapters:

00:00 When It Got Dark 02:04 Neuropathy After Paris 06:36 Managing Thoughts Not Stress 08:28 World Games Spiral 12:34 Why Horses Deserve Credit 17:55 Flow Junkies Explained 20:15 Stepping Away To Heal 22:30 Las Vegas Highs And Lows 25:07 Vulnerability And The Brain 27:23 Tools for Dark Days 29:15 Radical Acceptance Practice 30:34 Sensitivity as Superpower 33:05 Awareness in the Saddle 35:05 Judged Sport Pressure 36:35 How Dressage Judging Evolved 41:02 Modern Horse vs Tradition 42:10 Klimke Sponsorship Story 45:26 What Made Dr. Klimke Great 47:29 Flow State Principles

Want to go deeper into the training behind a clean, confident flying change?

In his new NOËLLE FLOYD Masterclass, six-time Olympian Steffen Peters breaks down the entire process—from developing the right canter, balance and response to the aids to introducing the change and troubleshooting tension, anticipation, crookedness and changes that are late behind.

Learn more and watch Training the Flying Change with Steffen Peters: https://noellefloyd.com/pages/flying-changes-with-steffen-peters

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!

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.