The Californio Bridle Horse Tradition: An Education Measured in Years Aug 23, 2026 Ocean View Stables The old Californios prized a kind of horse that almost no market today would have the patience to produce: a horse worked one-handed on a draped rein, steering off the weight of the reins and the ride... History of Horsemanship The Vaquero & Western Tradition Read more
Federico Grisone, Riding Master: The Renaissance Return of Riding Schools Aug 18, 2026 Ocean View Stables In 1550, a Neapolitan nobleman published a book about riding horses, and Europe could not get enough of it. Federico Grisone, the riding master whose name now anchors the story of modern equitation, c... History of Horsemanship The Old Masters & Classical Tradition Read more
Horses in North America: The History of a Long Round Trip Aug 14, 2026 Ocean View Stables Dig in the right hillside in Wyoming or Nebraska and you can hold the tooth of a horse that died tens of millions of years before any human saw one. The horse is not an import to this continent. It is... History of Horsemanship Horses & Human History Read more
Bill Dorrance and True Horsemanship Through Feel Aug 9, 2026 Ocean View Stables Bill Dorrance was still roping cattle in his nineties, on his ranch in the hills outside Salinas, California. He put his only book into the world in 1999, the last year of his life. Most people would ... History of Horsemanship The Natural Horsemanship Movement Read more
The History of the Stirrup: A Small Invention With Large Consequences Aug 6, 2026 Ocean View Stables For most of the time humans have been on horseback, there was nothing under the rider’s feet. Alexander’s cavalry broke infantry lines with their legs hanging. Scythian archers shot from the gallop, R... Cavalry & Working Horses History of Horsemanship Read more
Mission Horses: How Spanish California Got Its Herds Aug 3, 2026 Ocean View Stables In the fall of 1769, scouts from Gaspar de Portolá’s overland expedition climbed a ridge a few miles south of what is now Daly City and became the first Europeans to look down on San Francisco Bay. Th... History of Horsemanship The Vaquero & Western Tradition Read more
Xenophon the Cavalryman: The Life Behind the Book Jul 29, 2026 Ocean View Stables The oldest surviving manual on riding was not written by a hobbyist or a court trainer. It was written by a soldier who had trusted his life to horses across some of the hardest country in the ancient... History of Horsemanship The Old Masters & Classical Tradition Read more
Where the Horse Was Tamed: The Steppe and the Shifting Evidence Jul 25, 2026 Ocean View Stables Somewhere on the grasslands of Eurasia, thousands of years ago, a person and a horse arrived at an arrangement that would remake human history. We cannot point to the spot on a map with confidence, an... History of Horsemanship Horses & Human History Read more
Tom Dorrance, Horseman: The Quiet Source of a Movement Jul 20, 2026 Ocean View Stables The man most often named as the source of modern natural horsemanship never franchised a method, barely published, and spent the better part of a century politely declining to be famous. Ask working h... History of Horsemanship The Natural Horsemanship Movement Read more
Chariot Warfare History: Before Cavalry, the Horse Pulled the War Jul 17, 2026 Ocean View Stables For roughly a thousand years, the deadliest thing on a battlefield rolled on two wheels behind a pair of horses, and nobody sat on the horses at all. Chariot warfare history usually gets told backward... Cavalry & Working Horses History of Horsemanship Read more
Vaquero History: Spain's Horsemen in the New World Jul 14, 2026 Ocean View Stables The word is built from cattle. Vaca, the cow; vaquero, the man who works her from a horse. Everything else about the tradition follows from that plain job description, and vaquero history begins long ... History of Horsemanship The Vaquero & Western Tradition Read more
Xenophon on Horsemanship: The Oldest Riding Manual We Still Read Jul 9, 2026 Ocean View Stables Around 355 BC, an aging Athenian cavalry veteran wrote down what he knew about buying, keeping, and schooling a horse. Men had written about horses before him, and nearly all of it is dust. His surviv... History of Horsemanship The Old Masters & Classical Tradition Read more
