The NOËLLE FLOYD Podcast

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1. Why Horses Crib (And Why a Crib Collar Won't Fix It) - Dr. Carissa Wickens

   2 november 2026 · 1 uur 4 min

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   Your horse grabs the fence board. Arches the neck. Pulls back, and you hear that low gulp of air. Lees meer

   What is that horse telling you?

   For years we called horse cribbing a stable vice. Something to stop. Something to strap a collar around.

   Dr. Carissa Wickens has spent her career listening to it instead. She is an associate professor of animal sciences at the University of Florida, and horse cribbing has held her curiosity since she walked into a field of ten cribbing horses as a PhD student at Auburn.

   What she has found is tender, and a little unsettling.

   Cribbing looks like coping. When these horses are allowed to crib, their heart rate and stress hormones tend to drop. Take it away, and many start weaving, pacing the fence line, calling for their friends.

   The need stays. Only the outlet moves.

   And once the behavior settles in, it seems to live on its own. The ulcer heals. The diet improves. The horse joins a herd. The cribbing remains, because the brain has learned something.

   We talk about the study that found cribbers carry their own pattern of dopamine receptors. Why Thoroughbreds, Warmbloods and Quarter Horses turn up so often in the research. Why weaning is when so many young horses begin. How a high-grain, low-forage diet multiplies the risk. And the chicken-and-egg question every owner asks: do ulcers cause cribbing, or does cribbing cause ulcers? Carissa gives the honest answer, which is that the science is still out.

   I bring my own lens to this one too. As someone who is neurodivergent, I see a coping behavior the instant I see a horse crib. Carissa brings the research to meet it.

   Three words keep coming back. Forage. Friends. Freedom.

   Everything else rests on that foundation.

   If you have ever stood at the fence frustrated with a cribbing horse, this conversation may let you see that horse with new eyes. As Carissa puts it, when behavior changes, look past the horse. "It's something that's not going right in the horse's world."

   Dr. Carissa Wicken…

2. The Trail Riding Mistakes Nobody Talks About - Gillian Larson

   27 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 16 min

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   Last year my horse G slid down the side of a mountain in the Tetons. Lees meer

   He came out of it okay. I carried it for a lot longer.

   Gillian Larson has spent her twenties and now her thirties trail riding the backcountry from Mexico to Canada, more than once, on the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide, the Arizona Trail and the Colorado Trail. She calls herself a thru-rider. She recently raced across Patagonia in the inaugural Pass of Tears and finished second.

   I traveled to Gillian's backyard in California to talk about trail riding at that scale. The mountain horse who reads the trail fifty feet ahead. The horse who pours gasoline on the fire. Two five-year-old Criollos nicknamed the Ferrari and the tractor.

   And then I asked her the question I had been carrying since the Tetons.

   How do you live with a decision that put your horse at risk?

   Her answer is one of the most honest things I have heard about horses.

   Gillian says the guilt belongs. It comes with being a good horse owner. You sit with it, you ask what you would do next time, and then you let yourself go back out. Horses forgive our flubs with a generosity that is, in her words, "immense and wild."

   We talk about her first ride from Mexico to Canada at 22, when good horses carried a rider who was still learning. Why she went back and rode it again. Why the horse world shows the clean version of every trip and hides the scrambles. And why second place in Patagonia feels like a win to her, because she rode a race she can stand behind.

   If you have ever lain awake replaying a call you made with your horse, this one is for you.

   The question that stays with me is the one Gillian lives by.

   Was I a good teammate to my horse today?

   Gillian Larson is a thru-rider who travels long-distance backcountry routes on horseback. She first rode from Mexico to Canada at 22 and has since completed the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, the Arizona Trail, the Colorado Trail and the John Muir Trail, alon…

3. I Sold My House to Make a Horse Docu-Series UNBRIDLED | Noëlle Floyd with Yellowstone's Jen Landon

   20 oktober 2026 · 26 min

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   What does it cost to go and find out who you are? Lees meer

   For me, it cost a house.

   I sold mine to travel 25,000 miles across North America with my horses, Lady and G, and I filmed all of it. That road became Unbridled, a six-part horse documentary series. Episodes 1 and 2 are on YouTube now.

   This time the microphone turned around.

   Jen Landon, actor, Yellowstone cast member, horsewoman, and the person who owns Shorty, took the host's chair and asked me the questions I usually ask everyone else.

   She asked why I nearly stopped filming. So many times on that trip I looked at the footage and heard the same three sentences. I'm not good enough. This isn't good enough. No one's gonna care.

   I kept the cameras rolling anyway. I'm so glad I did.

   Jen tells the story of how Unbridled reached her. My husband, Ben, looked at me and made me promise to send it to her. I thought that was gauche. I sent it. She planned to watch two episodes as a favor to a new friend, and she watched the whole season.

   She compared it to Chef's Table. Jen calls herself a bad cook, and she still walked away from every episode of that show with something for her own life and her craft as an actor. She says Unbridled did the same for her. The horses are the backdrop for a bigger lesson.

   That is my hope for this horse documentary. That someone who has lived their whole life away from horses watches it and sees who I became because of the way Lady and G live as horses, every single day.

   We talk about process-based horsemanship and outcome-based horsemanship, and how far that idea reaches past the arena.

   "If you focus on the process, then the outcome is more expansive than you could possibly imagine. But if you focus on the outcome, then you're limited to the outcome you can imagine as the person you are in the moment."

   Then we go to Texas.

   Florida humbled me. I left it feeling small. And then I cut cows with Lyndi Birch and Barbra Schulte, on Jen's own horse, Shorty, who carried me like the all-star …

4. The Real Reason I Walked Away From Horses | UNBRIDLED Official Trailer

   13 oktober 2026 · 2 min

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   Is the horse-human bond the ultimate secret to better training? Lees meer

   Watch the trailer as professional horsewoman Noëlle Floyd launches her new six-part documentary series NOËLLE FLOYD: UNBRIDLED.

   🐴 Subscribe for more horse training & equestrian insights:

   https://noellefloyd.com

   💻 Catch the SEASON PREMIERE on Youtube MONDAY, OCTOBER 19 AT 4PM ET and binge the whole season! at NF+ https://noellefloyd.com/pages/noelle-floyd-unbridled

   Created and hosted by Noëlle Floyd, this groundbreaking documentary series explores the deep connection between horse and rider through adventure, master class training, and essential equestrian skills.

   Discover powerful answers and insights that have the potential to completely transform the equestrian community.

   Interested in more from Noëlle?

   Noëlle's writing again — head to her Substack for essays, observations, and the kind of thinking that doesn't fit in an episode. https://noellefloyd.substack.com

   Every episode is also on YouTube, where the conversation continues in the comments.

   https://www.youtube.com/@noellefloyd_plus

   And if you're ready to go deeper, NF+ is where the real work happens — masterclasses, curated content, and a community that takes horses seriously. https://noellefloydplus.com

   You can also download the app - NF+ App

   Thank you for your listening!

5. When the Bridle Comes Off, the Truth Comes Out | A Letter to Lady (Unbridled)

   6 oktober 2026 · 16 min

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   I wrote my mare a letter the day she came to me. Out in the field with her, with G grazing nearby, I read it to her out loud for the first time. It is the most honest thing I have said about horsemanship in fourteen years. Lees meer

   Fourteen years I spent interviewing the horse world's best — the trainers and riders everyone turns to for answers. Then Lady arrived, more wild than tame, and I stepped in front of the camera to say the one thing the interviewer's chair never let me say: I don't know.

   That admission is where Unbridled begins.

   This is the solo letter underneath the whole series — the private writing that became the reason I made it. Lady came to me more questioning than compliant, unwilling to perform a smaller version of herself for anyone's comfort. Loving her made it impossible to stay safely behind the microphone. She asked me harder questions than any guest ever had. Not "can you make me do this," but "how can you meet me if you will not meet yourself?"

   Somewhere in there my horsemanship began to change, and so did I. I call it rewilding — taking the bridle off my horse and the invisible one off myself at once. Fit in. Obey. Be manageable. Do not become too much. Lady answers every one of those instructions by simply being who she is.

   When the bridle comes off, the truth comes out. Without the equipment and the familiar measures of success, what remains? Two bodies. Two nervous systems. Two living beings trying to understand each other across the line between species.

   This letter is about worthiness — and how Lady taught me it was never a thing I earn by knowing enough. It lives in the willingness to listen, to repair, to begin again.

   If you have ever loved a horse who would not let you hide, this one is for you.

   Unbridled is a six-part series following me and my horses across North America, asking whether partnership can go somewhere freer than control. Lady is the reason it exists.

   ▶️ Watch Unbridled — Catch the SEASON PREMIERE on Youtube MONDAY, …

6. The Horse Husband: How Evan Went From Terrified to the Barn Every Day ] No Stupid Questions with Evan the Groom

   29 september 2026 · 56 min

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   The same patience it takes to earn a horse's trust is the patience Evan the Groom brings to teaching the rest of us. He came to horses the way most people never do — from the outside, with no background, terrified of the biggest one in the barn — and turned that beginner's-eye view into an education. Today he does the horse grooming and horse care in his wife's dressage business, and the horse world knows him as the viral comedian who makes the barn make sense to people who have never touched a horse. Lees meer

   This is a No Stupid Questions episode, and it is one of my favorites we have done. Evan explains horses the way he once needed them explained to him — no jargon, no ego, just plain answers to the things beginners are too embarrassed to ask out loud.

   He was an engineer turning algae into protein. Then marketing. Then the pandemic took his job, his wife Ashley needed help at the barn, and he picked up a camera. The videos were meant to make his own family laugh — people who knew nothing about horses. Instead they built a following, and somewhere in there Evan became something he never trained to be: an educator.

   We get into the skill he rates above all others and hears discussed least — observation, watching for the thing that is off today — and how six years of it on the ground is only now showing up in the saddle. His advice for every "horse husband" and non-horse partner out there: just support that. Why he would rather make a video so ridiculous you remember it than one only horse people understand, and how a loogie teaches you the word "hock." The groom's real job when no one is watching: being the horse's constant. And the mare who taught him the most — a year to earn her trust, and then, he says, she gives you everything.

   There is also a talking pony named Piper, a children's book about a lost little bird, and — as of last week — his first ride off the lunge line.

   If someone in your life doesn't understand the horse thing — or if you're the one at the rail —…

7. How Steffen Peters Trains a Horse: Self-Carriage, Groundwork & a New Stallion (Part 2)

   22 september 2026 · 54 min

   Afspelen
   A horse has two choices. Learn to accept the bit, or fight it for the rest of its life. Lees meer

   That's Steffen Peters, and this is the half where his hands are on the reins. If you heard Part 1, you met the man — six Olympics, the dark place, the way back. This one is the horse training — the groundwork up through Grand Prix. Forty years of it, distilled into the way he starts a five-year-old and the way he brought a brand-new stallion into the ring after two weeks together.

   Here's the thing that runs through all of it: he doesn't push a horse into the bridle. Ever. He thinks ninety-five percent of horses are ridden with too much contact, and he'll tell you why "more hind legs, more into the hand" was never the answer for him. What he wants is suppleness, self-carriage, lightness — a soft rein you can see, and a horse that carries itself instead of leaning on your hand.

   We get into where that starts, and it is earlier than you would think. The groundwork — on a lead rope, in a halter — the horse that stops when you stop without a pull on the rope. He calls it cooperation, not submission, and he means the difference exactly. From there it's the walk work most riders rush past, the half halt that becomes a reflex, the spur as a reminder and never a crutch, and the three aids he says are the only tools you really have.

   There's the new stallion — fourteen, extremely smart, the horse that trained his rider to say "don't quit." There's Totilas, and what it takes to watch someone beat you and mean it when you call it good. And there's the compliment two vets paid him without knowing he could hear: at Steffen's barn, they can't make any money — because of the walk breaks, and what they save.

   If Part 1 was how he learned to manage himself, this is how he manages the conversation with the horse. Same man. Now the method.

   Steffen Peters is a German-born American dressage rider, a six-time Olympian and multiple Olympic medalist, and one of the most decorated dressage athletes in…

8. Steffen Peters: The Six-Time Olympian on the Dark Place Behind the Medals (Part 1)

   17 september 2026 · 51 min

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   When did you make it? Lees meer

   Ask most riders that question and they'll point to a medal. Steffen Peters points somewhere else — to the darkest place he has ever been, and the way back out of it.

   This is Part 1 of my conversation with a six-time Olympian, and we barely touch a rein. Forty years of horse training sit behind this man, and the first thing he wants to talk about isn't a horse. It's the thing underneath the ribbons.

   The neuropathy in his hands and feet after Paris that twenty-five doctors couldn't explain. The cold plunge and the vagus nerve, and the natural experiment that gave him relief when the medications didn't. The one ride in Tokyo — September 27th, 2018, a date he can still name — that sent him spiraling, and what it taught him about himself that no arena ever did.

   He says you cannot manage stress. You can only manage yourself. He learned it, in his own words, way too late. The quality of your thoughts becomes the quality of your life, and for a while his thoughts were trying to take him under.

   We get into the ego leaving, and the pride that stays. Why he loves that strangers in an airport call him "the rave horse" and never say his name. Why exposing weakness became the strength he's known for. What radical acceptance looks like at a Grand Prix, standing at the gate. And how the same sensitivity that can tip a person toward anxiety is the exact instrument that reads a horse — the sensitivity that is the whole art of his horse training, and also the thing that nearly broke him.

   Dr. Reiner Klimke is here too, in a story Steffen didn't learn the truth of until five years after it had already set the course of his career.

   If you have ever carried a bad day home and let it live in you overnight, this hour is for you. It is a rider telling you what the podium doesn't show.

   Steffen Peters is a German-born American dressage rider, a six-time Olympian and multiple Olympic medalist, and one of the most decorated dressage athletes in United States histor…

9. She Remade Black Beauty. Now She's Fighting to Save America's Wild Horses | Ashley Avis

   2 september 2026 · 49 min

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   There's one horse you would cross the country for. Lees meer

   You know the one. The horse who found you when you had the least to give and somehow handed you back to yourself.

   Now hold that horse in your mind, and sit with this: roughly 20,000 of them a year get loaded onto trailers bound for Canada and Mexico, and it reaches every kind of horse — the show jumper, the Thoroughbred who ran too slow, the lesson pony grown old, the wild horses rounded up off land that was meant to protect them.

   Ashley Avis has looked straight at it. She sewed a button cam into her shirt and walked into the Texas auctions where kill buyers wait. She founded the Wild Beauty Foundation, directed the mustang documentary Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West, and remade Black Beauty for Disney+. And she has turned all of it toward one aim: passing the SAFE Act in the year of the horse.

   This conversation goes to the place most people flinch from. Ashley and I talk about why horse people, of all people, find horse slaughter the hardest thing to watch — and how she makes you look anyway, through ninety-second films voiced by Mackenzie Foy, Jessica Springsteen, and Diane Lane, and scored by Billie Eilish's "What Was I Made For?"

   We talk about my mare Lady, one of those wild horses herself, who ran feral for fifteen years before she came to me, and who could have ridden that same truck to Mexico.

   We talk about the black colt with pneumonia that Ashley coaxed out of a kill buyer's pasture, and the economics that let a man triple his price on a horse's life.

   And we talk about Black Beauty — what Anna Sewell did in 1877 by writing from a horse's point of view, and why it still rearranges the people who meet it.

   Then Ashley tells you exactly what two minutes of your day can do. A microsite. Your zip code. A pre-written letter your member of Congress will read.

   If you have ever been remade by a single horse, this is the reason to pull the car over.

   Ashley Avis is a filmmaker and the founder of the …

10. What this Dressage Rider Learned From a Cowboy - Kasey Perry-Glass

    26 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 22 min

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    You get the thing you chased for five years. Lees meer

    And the ride is the worst one you've ever put down.

    Kasey Perry-Glass reached the Olympic Games on the horse she bought to take her there — Doublé — and came home into a depression that blindsided her. This is the conversation under the medal photo. What it costs to want something that badly, and what she found on the far side of it.

    She married a cowboy. Dana Glass starts colts and takes in the horses other people gave up on — the rearers, the buckers, the bolters, carrying baggage nobody unpacked. Two worlds under one roof: her classical dressage, his groundwork. What one taught the other is most of this hour.

    We get into the perfectionism that dressage rewards and then punishes — a score out of 100 that stays out of reach, a sport where the best mark is a C or a D on a good day. Why she stopped posting to social media. The line Martin Black uses, let them cook, and why ending a ride a little early beats grinding it into the ground. Pain versus behavior, and the checklist she taught Dana: clear the ulcers, the hindgut, the teeth, before anyone calls it attitude.

    Then the mental game she learned the hard way. Finding her number with Annette Paterakis — the exact pitch of nerves and calm that lets her ride her best. The work with Dr. Jenny Susser. Blacking out in the saddle, ten minutes gone, grinding the same movement. Boundaries. Getting told she was "too nice" for this sport, and what she kept anyway.

    Behind the vertical, point of balance, throughness without a single draw rein — she explains the dressage the way she explained it to Dana, the sport he first met through her.

    This one is for anyone who has wanted something so badly it made them small, and found their way back to the size they actually are.

    Kasey Perry-Glass is a US Olympic dressage rider — team bronze at Rio 2016 (America's first Olympic dressage medal since 2004) and team silver at the 2018 World Equestrian Games — who competes as Kasey Perry. …

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