About Me
Ā
Some people haveĀ an analytical mind with aptitudes for science, physics, math, and other abstract, fact/rule dependent topics. Add to that analytical mindĀ an obsession with horses and redheads. Now raise that person as a middle child, and the only boy, and you get a wit and tinge of irreverence that makes that analytical mind palatable.
I'm Daniel Dauphin and some odd confluence of events has set me on a path of teaching the world what it needs to know about How and Why Bits Function.
I've always been hard working. I bought a chainsaw when I was 13 and started selling firewood. That chainsaw bought me my first truck and I even bought my own first horse when I was 15, without my parents' knowledge or permission...
My horse trainer origin story begins with that horse. Duke came from a legit (or illegitimate as it turned out) horse trader. He was a trick horse. He'd flip over backwards, regularly. He was very hard to catch. I was in WAY over my head, but I refused to give up. There's a fine line between brave and stupid.
The first thing I ever taught a horse was teaching him to go to his stall when I arrived at the pasture. It wasn't clean or sophisticated, but I intuitively made the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult. That was a long day, but he headed to his stall when I drove up until I sold him years later.
It's addicting, the process of building a relationship with a horse. I've been privileged to do that a few thousand times and I still can't get enough of it. It also follows the same patterns and rules of the physics, math, and science that I've always been so comfortable with along with this massive amount to learn that one lifetime won't put a dent in.Ā It takes a lot of time and maturity before you can zoom out enough to see the forest instead of the tree. When you do, a lot of the things you've been so worried about just don't matter anymore and the truly important things reveal themselves.
I worked my way up the lowly stable hand ranks in college, trying to learn more about horses. I cleaned stalls and fed at a halter horse barn. Still smell the ammonia in that barn... Who was an exercise rider for thoroughbred racehorses too? Me. Don't look like I was ever small enough to do that, but I was, once. I spent a total of 6 years apprenticing under 3 different cutting horse trainers.Ā I've cut my teeth the hard way and have the scars.Ā
I've also read a bunch of classical dressage masters. Human psychology is probably the subject I have studied the most over the last decade. I'd love to enjoy a whiskey and campfire while talking about neurotransmitters and pigeon guided torpedos. I've read a ton of the kind of peer reviewed research that'll have you re-reading the same paragraph 8 times and still not be sure what it says.Ā
The bit topic is my life's work at this point. I know it inside out, left, right, backwards, forwards, and upside down. I can help you. I can help your horses too. I want to. Except Earl. You just can't help Ear.
Ā
