Three Years Among Wild Horses
- Isaac Ares
Some experiences change you so deeply, there's no way back to who you were before.
Years ago, I decided to leave not as an escape, but as a search.
I left behind arenas, schedules, protocols even electricity.
I rented a small wood cabin high in the mountains of A Groba, isolated, disconnected, silent. No electricity, but it had an old fireplace I would light every night like a ritual.
There, surrounded by wild land and silence, I built my home.
Little by little, I filled the five empty stables next to the cabin with my own horses. Each one carried a story, an energy, a gaze.
But one of them stood out during those years: Gaitiarra, my Lusitano stallion noble and powerful, with a heart as wide as his elevated gaits.
His presence in that untamed landscape seemed like a bridge between two worlds: classical art and ancestral freedom.
I didn’t go into the mountains to train horses.
I went to listen.
For three years, I lived among wild herds. I brought no headstalls, no tools, and no intention to interfere. Just my body, my notebook, and the willingness to be there.
To observe without altering.
To understand without translating everything into human language.
Among heather, wind, and silence, I learned more about horses than in all my formal studies.
And I don’t mean techniques or methods I mean presence, relationship, coherence.
I saw how they organized themselves without rigid hierarchies, how they lived together in a harmony born of mutual respect not control.
No one ruled, and yet everything flowed.
Some horses would suggest a direction, others would follow. And when they didn’t, there was no conflict. Just subtle readjustments, slow movements, gazes speaking in an ancient language.
I learned that personal space is not enforced it’s negotiated with grace.
That true leadership doesn’t shout it radiates.
And that deep relationships grow through shared time in calm, not through constant work.
Every night, back at the cabin, the smoke from the fireplace would mix with the scent of horses.
The stables were a place of rest, not confinement.
And Gaitiarra, free in his paddock, walked like a living poem among mud, mist, and pine trees.
He never needed me to remind him of who he was. His dignity was innate.
He didn’t obey me. He listened.
And that difference changes everything.
Over time, I came to understand that training should not be about shaping the horse, but about unfolding what already lives within him.
Not about teaching, but about accompanying him as he explores his own capacities.
And most importantly: not interfering more than necessary.
True dressage the kind that honors the soul of the horse doesn’t begin with the reins. It begins with human humility.
Today, everything I teach comes from that experience.
I'm not just looking for the right technique, I'm also looking for authentic relationships.
Because when you’ve seen horses live together without fear, without tension, without competition... the old narrative of dominance and submission simply falls apart.
You realize that respect cannot be demanded it must be earned.
And trust cannot be imposed it grows through consistency.
If you, too, feel that dressage could be something more...
If you sense there’s a way to be with horses that isn’t about control or performance, but about connection...
You’re in the right place.
Here, we don’t come to impose.
We come to observe, to listen, to let go of urgency and old certainties.
And maybe, just maybe, to learn how to see the world again
the way a horse does: without judgment, but with depth.
Isaac Ares