We’ve been learning about the wild horse population in the Bighorn Basin. After learning about them and observing them in the field we spoke to a ranch employee about their overpopulation issue. He had lived with herds of wild horses to give mares birth control in efforts to control their reproduction. One of the strategies for controlling their population is capturing and sending them to feed lots and hoping they’re adopted. I asked him if they’re difficult to “break,” or train. He stopped me and said he didn’t like the term break because he would never want to break an animal. Instead he uses the term “start,” to start them on a new life. This moment was eye-opening as I ignorantly used the word I was taught to use, rather than thinking about how it conveyed training horses. This allowed me to understand how general terms perceive, and offend the people they refer to. While I didn’t like the term either, I hadn’t thought about it another way. I love being able to talk to people with perspectives close to the ecological issues we are learning about.