There’s a lot of wisdom in that line of thinking. In fact, if we’re honest, plenty of us have crunched a carrot, hoping the horse we were trying to catch would become interested and mosey over to us.

Carrots figure prominently as we think about horsemanship. It’s not just that they are loaded with vitamin A. It’s that when we use them wisely — or at least the positive training they symbolize — our horses get a A on performance, and we do, too.

One of the major challenges in life is to operate as if we had only a carrot, and not a stick. So, as we ride through life and horsemanship in this blog, we'll be sure to keep plenty of carrots in our back pocket. And from time to time, we’ll stop and munch on one ...just to enjoy the moment, to make sure we're on the right track, or to encourage ourselves and others to keep thinking in a carrot-worthy mode.