Bob Pruitt

How did InfoHorse.com begin?

In 1997, Bob saw a convergence no one else did. Modern horsemanship was breaking out of the round pen and onto VHS tapes and home video, in every discipline. At the same time, ordinary people were buying their first computers and connecting over dial-up — slow, with tiny images, but a genuine new way for people to connect. Standing at the meeting point of those two revolutions, Bob and Ann built the directory the horse world was missing: real information about horses, and about the products and services that serve a roughly $177-billion industry. Their rule was simple — to get real information about horses, ask people who have horses. Nearly three decades later, the same family still runs InfoHorse.com by hand.

What are Bob Pruitt's qualifications as a horseman?

Bob has more than 50 years with horses, and it started young — as a boy he worked in his neighborhood barns, learning to handle horses and to do every job around them. That early work taught him a lesson he never let go of: clean water and a clean stall are never beneath you; the basics are the whole foundation. He has started and trained all of his own horses, learned directly at the clinics and expos of John Lyons, Richard Winters, and Clinton Anderson, and owned properties and boarded horses across several states. He has helped many people work through horse-and-human problems — the kind solved with patience, safety, and mutual respect. Today three generations of his family ride.

What is Bob Pruitt's training philosophy?

The respect-based training that got popular in the 1990s was not invented in the 1990s. Around 400 BC — some 2,400 years ago — a Greek named Xenophon wrote a book called On Horsemanship describing many of the same ideas Bob lives by: work with the horse's nature, reward the slightest try, and make the right thing easy. As Bob puts it, “popularized is not the same as invented.” The great clinicians of his era — John Lyons, Richard Winters, Clinton Anderson and others — were excellent trainers and, just as importantly, excellent teachers. What was new in the 1990s was not the horsemanship. It was that the message could finally travel.

What does Bob Pruitt believe about horsemanship?

Spend any time around Bob and a handful of lines stay with you. They are not slogans — they are how he teaches, and how he thinks about the partnership between a person and a horse.

Why is InfoHorse independent?

InfoHorse exists for one reason, and it has never changed: helping horse owners make informed decisions. There are thousands of products an owner could buy; InfoHorse sells none of them, but it reviews them. Some visitors read about something here and buy it at their local feed store; others don't see a product listed and decide to pass. That trust is the whole point, and Bob and Ann have never taken it lightly. You can meet many of the experts who trust InfoHorse, or read the story of the whole family behind it.