My first horse, a mustang named Tonto, came home as a wild, untrained five year old from Salt Wells Creek, Wyoming with very little trust in humans. Though I had grown up riding and spent a lot of time with horses, my formal training when Tonto came home was very limited. Walking into a relationship with a horse who also had no formal training left the two of us curious but confused about how to approach each other. I became determined to do everything I could to do right by this wild horse to make us perfect partners. I spent many hours every day researching horse behavior, horse psychology, horsemanship techniques and riding disciplines, and following the journeys of others who had trained mustangs. I steadily built my relationship with Tonto, having as much fun with him as I could think to have, and filmed myself working with him as I learned new things to later judge my technique against the training videos. While all the information from the internet was useful, Tonto became the real teacher as I applied my studies, and he guided me towards the mastery of not what should work for most horses, but what worked for HIM. He helped me discover that the true meaning of horsemanship is not in your communication with the horse, but in your connection with the horse in the moment.