Beware of Horse Gurus

                                    by Laura Crum

            And especially beware of horse trainers who think they are gurus. You know, the sort that imply that somehow their wonderfully in depth understanding of a horse (in their own opinion) makes them enlightened in all aspects of life. If you study these folks closely, by the way, their own lives are usually a train wreck. And the biggest red flag of all? It’s when the horse trainer/guru states oh-so-publicly that ego has nothing to do with what said trainer is proclaiming/doing. These folks are the most ego-driven of the lot.

            This is so obvious that I would think it would go without saying, and yet over and over again people are sucked in and deceived by these self-proclaimed “gurus,” whether in the horse world or the spiritual world. People, wake up! Those who know don’t talk much, and those who are busy telling everybody how wise they are don’t usually know much. This is a good rule of life, in any discipline.

            So the other night I went to a party at which several horse people were present. There is a reason I don’t often go to parties, and it was demonstrated to me this particular evening. I was just returning from the bar with a weak gin and tonic in my hand, when I got sucked into a conversation with a friend. And before I quite knew what happened, several other people joined the group and I found myself listening to a local horse trainer expound about a recent disaster.

            I’ve known this horse trainer for years—let’s call her Trainer Jane (not her real name). At this point she’s a somewhat stout middle-aged woman (like me), who has her assistants do most of the riding—and all of the difficult riding. Jane mostly gives lessons to beginners these days. And even in her prime, she was not quite the great hand with a horse that she would have you think. She has no particular claim to have done well in the show ring, or really, anywhere at all. But to hear her tell it she is a horse guru. A completely egoless horse guru. Yeah, right.

            There wasn’t as easy route out of this group, so I listened to Jane’s story. All about a horse she supposedly broke and trained and made a nice riding horse out of, then sold to someone who essentially got bucked off and hurt badly. Jane’s take on this was just enthralling some of her fans, who stood near her.

            Jane was oh-so-nobly blaming herself for this catastrophe, but not in the obvious way. Oh no. It was not that Jane had failed to get the horse properly broke…of course not. It was that only Jane had the skills to work with this hot horse. The new owner, his trainer, his friends (all competent horsemen), were just not up to the task. Jane blamed herself for selling the horse to people who clearly weren’t horse guru enough to handle the critter. Only Jane was competent to deal with this horse.

            At this point I was rolling my eyes...but I kept my mouth shut. What I would have liked to have said was this: “It’s a common problem. Horse trainer essentially steals a ride on a difficult horse, and the horse looks pretty broke, but it isn’t. Horse trainer sells the horse to someone who isn’t expecting to have to steal a ride (and in western horse lingo “stealing a ride” means doing everything just-so in order to prevent a difficult horse from acting up), and the horse comes unglued and does something violent. One of the first things I learned when I worked as an assistant to some pretty effective horse trainers is that you don’t steal a ride. Good horse trainers sort out what a horse has really got—they don’t just ‘get by’ the horse. That’s asking for exactly the kind of disaster that actually happened.”

            But of course, if I had said this, Jane would have become unglued and totally defensive. In her view it was not that she had failed to train the horse effectively—it was rather that others (including quite competent trainers) just didn’t have Jane’s horse guru skills. In the past I have seen exactly how hostile so-enlightened Jane becomes when her methods or thinking, or her all-wise guru stance is questioned in any way. So I didn’t say anything. And I rather quickly found a way to wiggle out of that group and rejoin my husband and son for a game of pool. Problem solved.

            Except it bugs me. The horse world is so full of these people who are constantly posturing about their amazing horse training prowess—in the same breath in which they proclaim themselves free of ego. Does anybody else see the huge contradiction in this? The basic underlying message is always “I know more about horses than anyone around me…and by the way, there is no ego involved here.” To top it off, usually the individual’s actual track record with horses (let alone people) isn’t all that great. I find this both irritating and a huge disservice to all the beginners that get taken in by these “horse gurus.” Pose as wise and knowledgeable, and hey, presto, the naïve newcomers to the horse world who honestly want to learn will assume that you ARE wise and knowledgeable, and never stop to take a look at what this so knowledgeable trainer has actually managed to accomplish with horses in his/her lifetime. Or even consider what a train wreck this person’s life has been. These horse gurus are feeding their egos and their pocketbooks on the admiration of those who are relatively ignorant about horses, without really doing much to deserve it. Believe me, I have seen this over and over again.

            I know, it’s no skin off my own back. I’ve been around the block, and I’m not going to have my chain jerked by a guru of any sort, horse themed or otherwise. I imagine many of you who are reading this feel the same. But do you, like me, find it just a tad bit offensive when you are faced with this particular brand of hypocrisy?

            

A Wreck in the Making

                                                by Laura Crum

           

            I ride several times a week with a group of horsemen at my uncle’s roping arena. Some of these folks rope; some, like me, are there just to gather and move cattle and ride and generally help out. There are four or five older (70’s and 80’s) ropers who have roped all their lives and some younger folks. My son is twelve and there is another teenage boy. Some of these people are pretty good horsemen, others not so much.

            I bring my son there because I want him to grow up knowing the camaraderie of cowboys on horseback working cattle, something that was very important and inspirational to me in my own childhood. And this has definitely happened and it’s been a good thing.

Getting ready to gather the cattle on Henry (you can see the herd if you look past Henry’s ears).

            Bringing the cattle up the alley.

            Herding a recalcitrant steer into the stripping chute with the gang.

            We have experienced a lot of very positive fun here. As I did when I was a child and a young woman, riding (and later roping) with this same group. But…there is a dark side. Sometimes people give advice—pretty forcefully. And sometimes this advice is not so good. In fact, sometimes it is downright detrimental. I suffered, due to this cause, as a young person, and I have pretty darn effectively prevented this crap from being visited on my son. But it’s still happening around us.

            Advice is a tricky thing. Lately I have bitten my tongue, both in real life and on the internet, on some advice I would like to give. I think the advice might save a kid’s life. But I also think perhaps the parent of said kid doesn’t want my advice. The other day at the arena, I did break down and shout some much needed advice. And that got me thinking about other situations, about advice in general, and the dilemma of whether to speak or not. So here’s my story.

           

            There is one individual at our local roping arena who often poses as a trainer and gives advice. Not just on horses, but on life in general. I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when this happens, because this individual’s track record with both horses and life events is not one that most of us would want to emulate. And yet the sage advice (in a rather self-congratulatory tone) just keeps on coming. It’s hard to resist the comment “Don’t hurt your arm patting yourself on the back.”

            This person really likes to advise the one teenage boy who is learning to rope. The advice (and not particularly good advice, to be frank) comes thick and fast. It’s hard for me to keep my mouth shut, because I like this kid a lot, and the “trainer’s” advice is messing the kid’s horse up big time.

            The thing is, I am (to put it bluntly) as good or better at reading a horse and getting along with a horse than this “trainer.” My track record when it comes to having happy, healthy horses that worked well for me and lived on into a contented old age is MUCH better than this trainer individual’s particular history. I at one time allowed this person to dictate to me, and believe me, it didn’t work out to my advantage. Nowadays I no longer pay much attention to what this individual advises or thinks, and guess what? I pretty much have no problems with any of my horses.

            “Been there, done that” is what goes through my mind when the “trainer” begins to pontificate. And “You’re not going to mess me or my horse up ever again.”  But the teenage kid doesn’t have this background. He listens to the “trainer” and tries to do what the trainer tells him. And it is totally not working.

            I usually don’t give unsolicited advice. The exception is when I see someone headed for a wreck—I’ll try to help. I figure that if it saves their life it’s worth the fact that they might resent me. I don’t pose as an expert—ever. I’m just a sedate, middle-aged rider on a gentle horse, riding along with my kid on his gentle horse. I have spent most of my life with horses, and done a fair bit of training and competing, so I do know more than you might guess to look at me. But it’s fine with me if most horse people I meet just look right past me (in my Ugg boots and cargo pants, with my horse in his mechanical hackamore). I don’t look very impressive.

            Still, the other day I saved this teenage kid from what might have been a serious wreck. I only did what any experienced horseman could do—the thing was that I stepped up and did it. Essentially I shouted some much needed advice at the right moment.

            This teenage boy does need help. He’s learning to rope on a not very suitable horse—too hot and not very cooperative, willing to bolt and scatter. And though the boy is a good kid, he doesn’t really have a good intuitive understanding of his horse—he is apt to think the horse is rebelling or defiant when the horse is just upset and confused. I was the same way myself at his age. It is the commonest problem in the horse world. Rider gives cues that are confusing to the horse, horse doesn’t do what rider wants and rider punishes horse, convinced that horse is defiant. This makes the problem worse—horse is now MORE confused (not sure exactly what the punishment was for) and upset, and being confused and upset makes the horse almost unable to attend to even clear cues—which rider (also upset) is completely unable to give. A recipe for disaster.

            Anyway, the advice from the trainer person is actually making the kid and his horse more confused and upset than ever. Then “trainer” starts yelling at the kid, because things are getting worse. Everything is going backwards. It’s very frustrating to watch.

            So this teenager is giving his horse confusing cues in the box, due to bad advice. Rope horses find the box very stressful, anyway. It takes a good horseman to get along with a horse in the box. Despite the fact that the young boy is trying hard, what I can easily see is that he is more confusing his horse than helping him. So the horse either starts too soon or too late—because he doesn’t understand what is wanted. And then the horse is upset, and doesn’t check easily when the kid pulls on him, just basically runs through the bridle. The kid gets angry and begins jerking on the horse. The horse gets more upset—and everything just gets worse and worse, while the trainer keeps giving advice that isn’t helping. I can hardly stand it.

            Anyway, for about the tenth time the horse gets out late, runs hell for leather to catch the steer, and won’t rate off when the boy pulls on him. The boy starts jerking on the horse and backing him up to punish him. Relentlessly. The horse starts scrambling backward, with the boy still jerking. And all of a sudden I feel the wreck coming. Nobody is saying anything to the kid. Trainer guy is muttering to himself about the boy screwing up, but nobody says a word to the kid.

            I see the horse go down to his hocks, still scrambling backward—and I yell as loud as I can “Stop pulling on him!”

            The kid hears me (as he told me later) and gives the horse some slack. The horse staggers backward another stride, catches his balance and stops, still standing up. I am 100% sure if the kid had kept on pulling the horse would have gone over backward. The horse’s hocks were scraped up and bloody from being buried in the sand.

            Everybody looks at me—because I don’t usually yell at people. I shrug. “I didn’t want him to get hurt.”

            Inwardly I’m thinking, what the hell is wrong with these people? I know they’re mostly tough old cowboys, but why wait for the kid’s horse to go over backward? They give a lot of advice when it isn’t helpful and then just sit here watching as a wreck is about to happen?

            Anyway, the wreck was avoided, and the kid is fine—though still struggling with his horse, I’m afraid. For those who wonder why a thoughtful adult isn’t helping with this situation, it is because the kid’s dad is unequal to the task, and the person who poses as a trainer (with the less than helpful advice) is dominating everything to such a degree that the rest of us are mostly keeping our mouths shut because we don’t want to get into a shouting match with the “trainer.”. And no, it’s not a good situation. But I’ve sure seen it before.

            This got me thinking about other wrecks in the making that I’ve seen with other people’s kids and kept my mouth shut about (because I thought my advice wasn’t wanted), and I thought I’d put said advice here in this post. Ignore it if you aren’t interested. Maybe it will save someone’s life.

            1) Children under five years old should not be leading horses around without an adult right by their side, ready to take over if needed. Even saintly horses can spook, get stung…etc. A small child is very vulnerable to being knocked down or stepped on. And even saintly horses will learn to take advantage. It’s just not a smart thing to do.

            2) It is safer to put small children in the saddle in front of you while riding a gentle horse than it is to put them up on the horse and lead them around. I learned this many years ago with my young niece. The horse only has to spook a tiny bit, or stumble, or shake, and these little kids will come right off. Contrary to what some say, riding in the saddle in front of a competent rider on a gentle horse is the safest for the very young child.

            If you are not a competent rider or don’t have a gentle, reliable horse that will carry you and a child, the safest thing for the young child is to let him/her ride on a reliable small horse or pony and be led by one adult while another adult walks beside the horse ready to grab the kid (this won’t work with a big horse). Overkill, you say? I have personally known three very small children who tumbled off gentle horses while being led around. One horse spooked (a tiny little one step spook) and the other two shook themselves. The horses meant no harm. All three of these very young (less than 5 years) children were pretty traumatized by hitting the ground. (And yes, one of these three times it was my mistake—I was in my 20’s—leading my 3 year old niece around on a very sweet horse. I never made that mistake again.)

            If you don’t have a truly reliable horse of any kind, do NOT put a kid up on your horse (in any way shape or form)—no matter how hard the kid begs. It’s not worth the risk.

            3) Even competent teenagers need a LOT of supervision with horses. Trust me on this one. If you value your horses and your kids, keep an eye on them. Make sure things are done right. I have known SO many kids and horses that were hurt due to the teenager’s errors in judgment (my own teenage errors are large in my mind). It’s just not worth it. It sounds so wonderful to turn the horse and kid loose together, but it is not worth a dead kid or horse. And yes, I have known this to happen—more than once.

My cousin and I crippled one of the nicest horses I ever knew when we were about fourteen—catching him one day without adult supervision. We left the corral gate open when we went to get the horse and he ran from us, tried to make the hard turn to get out that open gate at a dead run, and hit his hip on the gatepost. He never really recovered from the resulting knocked down hip. Any horseman worth his salt would have seen that the horse meant to evade capture and made sure to shut the damn gate. But we were young and dumb and didn’t think of it.

            4) Its great to teach a kid to saddle and bridle and tie up his horse. But don’t assume he’s done it right. Check. Because the horse that gets away and out on the road because he wasn’t tied correctly, and the saddle that slips under the horse’s belly, and the sore back or sore mouth from the incorrectly adjusted tack are just too much of a downside.

            5) Don’t allow another person, trainer or not, advise/teach your kid unless you believe (with good reason) the trainer to be truly capable and kind and has your child’s best interests at heart. If you are not a horseman yourself, get an opinion from a knowledgeable horseman you trust on any given “trainer.” Try to remember that ANYONE, absolutely anyone, can call themselves a horse trainer. Many of them do not have much to offer. This goes for people who call themselves horse trainers on the internet, too. And for folks who give clinics. Including folks with a “big name.” It is really important to make a thoughtful judgment on whether any given “trainer” has knowledge and/or a teaching style that would benefit you/your child.  So much harm can be done by a poor trainer whose motivation is not the best. Horse trainers are motivated by ego and the desire for ego gratification just as often as they are motivated by the desire to do some real good. Many so-called horse trainers have never really had much success training horses. Others have found very cruel ways to become “successful.” This is sad, but absolutely true. Oftentimes a knowledgeable horseman who does not pose as a “trainer” will be far more helpful and far less motivated by ego when it comes to giving needed advice. See my post above.

If you have no knowledgeable horseman that you trust to help you choose a trainer--and sometimes we all need help from a trainer--here are some simple guidelines.

Do you feel comfortable talking to the trainer? Does he/she treat you like an equal? Or do you feel patronized and/or manipulated? Trust me, this is key. It will not work out in the end if the trainer has no respect for you as a person.

Are the trainer's own horses happy, healthy, mostly sound, mostly working well into old age? Does the trainer find good forever homes for or keep his retired horses? If you can't answer yes to all of this, avoid the trainer.

Does the trainer have clients who have been with him/her for years and who are happy and relaxed around the trainer and will give their good opinion of him/her readily? Again, if the answer is not yes, avoid the trainer.

Finally, does the trainer have clients like you? If you just want your child to learn to ride well in a supportive atmosphere and every other client is someone who competes avidly at reined cowhorse, say (insert other disciplines here), it is unlikely in the extreme that the trainer is a good match.

            6) Just because someone calls themselves a trainer or has a riding school or gives lessons doesn’t mean they have any real ability with horses. Nor does it mean they are trustworthy or have good judgment. Nor does it mean that their horses are reliably good kid’s horses. Do not allow anyone to put your child on any horse that you do not absolutely know is a reliable horse unless you have a good reason to trust this person (as in you actually know them, not because they have some sort of “trainer” title). The number of kids who I have known to be seriously injured (and yes once, killed) on “school riding horses” is significant. It is a very real danger.

            7) And finally, do NOT buy into the notion that helmets keep you safe. They don’t. Helmets protect your head in the case of a fall (sometimes). There are great many other ways besides a traumatic head injury to get injured or dead when you fall off a horse. Helmets are a good thing—don’t get me wrong. My kid wears one. So do I. But by far the most important thing you can do to keep a child safe while riding is to be sure he is mounted on a reliable horse and that the person supervising uses good judgment.

            The biggest problem I have seen lately concerns a local riding school where the ill broke horses have bucked off and injured numerous kids. But the parents still send their kids there to ride, thinking the kids are “safe” because they are wearing helmets. It really upsets me. (See my above point.) 

            I could think of lots more, but these are the ones I’ve seen lately—and kept my mouth shut in the interests of not offending. So I’m putting my advice out there in this post in the hope that it might help somebody. Everybody is welcome to ignore said advice. Please add your own thoughts/advice in the comments.

           

           

            

Worst Wreck of my Life (and an Encounter with the Queen of England)

                        by Laura Crum

            True story. Well, maybe not the worst wreck of my entire life, but if not, close to it. I remember it perfectly, because it happened the day Queen Elizabeth waved at me. That’s right, the queen of England waved at me. I’ve never forgotten. And I never forgot the wreck that followed, either.

            This would be thirty years ago on the outskirts of a foggy town in California’s Central Valley, right about this time of year. I’d been working all winter for a well known reined cowhorse trainer as his assistant, mostly in the chilly (40 degrees), gray fog that is so typical of the Valley in winter. This particular trainer had won the prestigious Snaffle Bit Futurity a couple of years ago and was a BIG player in the reined cowhorse game. He probably had 50 horses in training. And he had three assistants to ride them—myself, another young woman, and an equally young guy. All three of us were in our twenties and were paid minimum wage. We were all working there because we wanted to learn how to train horses.

            All of us could ride pretty well, and we were given the greener horses and the retrain projects—the trainer rode the horses that were scheduled to be shown. As a matter of fact, the trainer didn’t ride all that often. Mostly he watched us ride and yelled at us. He had a huge voice and as someone else said of him, “He could be abrasive, to say the least.” Most assistants lasted only a few months. He frequently reduced me to tears, still I kept sticking it out. I wanted to learn to ride cowhorses in the worst way, as did the other two kids working for the trainer. The three of us had all been there six months on this particular March day, and we were friends, of a sort. At the very least, we were comrades.

            The trainer had gone to town for the morning, as he often did, and the three of us were working our way through our respective “strings” when the neighbor came driving in the yard, very excited. Apparently Queen Elizabeth had been visiting Yosemite Valley and was on her way to the airport. And the neighbor had just heard (via police scanner—which everybody seemed to have in those parts) that the queen’s convoy would be going down the road in front of our ranches. In ten minutes from now.

            This was big news. As we understood it, the queen’s route was kept secret until the last minute, for fear of snipers. So there was no crowd lining the roadway. We three training assistants had the bright idea to saddle the most “western looking” horses we had and wave at the queen—who we all knew was a horsewoman. I grabbed a loud-colored paint, the other gal took a blanket Appie and the guy saddled a buckskin. We put our cowboy hats and chaps on and lined the three horses up at the end of the driveway, on the shoulder of the road, facing the street, right under the wooden crossbar that marked the ranch driveway. We looked western as hell.

            And shortly thereafter the police convoy came down the road, with a big black limo sandwiched in the middle. We took off our hats and waved and waved and I distinctly saw the queen’s face peering at us through the back window and she gave her signature wave back. So, the queen has waved at me (!)

            Anyway, after that excitement, it was back to business as usual. The trainer came back from town and decided to have me work all the upcoming snaffle bit prospects “checked up” in the round pen. Not the real round pen, because that was a lake, after a rainy winter. But a makeshift round pen had been set up in the covered arena—rusty old portable panels baling wired together. Not ideal.

            The sort of “checking up” the trainer had me do is kind of touchy. The reins are run from the snaffle bit down between the horses front legs and then up to the horn, one on each side. The reins are then tied around the horn.  When the horse walks or trots, the movement of his front legs works the reins in an effect that is similar to a rider scissoring the reins. The horse must bring his head down, and/or break at the poll to get relief from the pressure. If he raises his head or throws it, the reins, tied fast at the horn, will give him a harsh jerk in the mouth. There is no escape. If the person doing the checking up is not skilled, it’s common for a colt to flip over backward. This event is not for the faint-hearted, and it CAN be very abusive. Every single reined cowhorse trainer I ever knew used it at least occasionally. I had used it before and knew how to do it. But I tended to err on the side of kindness and caution.

            I usually started with the reins pretty loose and gave the colt a lot of space to figure out what was wanted. If he seemed upset, I loosened the reins further. Only when I was sure that the colt had figured out the desired response and was comfortable with it, did I drive him into the bridle—which was the goal of this exercise. It is, to be frank, a little like rollkur (sp?).

            Anyway, I was working my way through the three-year-olds, one at a time. Most understood the exercise and didn’t struggle with it. I worked them for fifteen-twenty minutes or so at the trot, as I had been told to do. And I finally got around to Lynn’s filly.

            Lynn was a non-pro with very little money, but she had a three-year-old she wanted to show at the Snaffle Bit Futurity in the Non-Pro class and had put the filly in training. Think about this for a minute. She had very little money, she wasn’t going to have the trainer show the horse, she was going to show it herself. The trainer had at least a dozen Futurity prospects in training that he WAS going to show himself. Take a guess how much Lynn’s filly got ridden. Yep. If you guessed almost never, you’re right.

            The trainer didn’t ride her because he wasn’t interested in her. The assistants didn’t ride her much because we all had plenty of horses we were assigned to ride and the filly was a flighty, goosey little critter, afraid of everything. Lynn rode her occasionally. The filly was WAY behind the other horses in her training.

            I got her out and saddled her and checked her up with some trepidation. I wasn’t sure she’d ever done this before. And sure enough, she reacted by being  freaked out. I had the reins adjusted so they were very loose and I was just sort of babying her along, hoping she would relax and get the idea. But she kept throwing her head against the pressure and running backward. I was worried she would flip over and I soothed her and loosened the reins further. At this point, if I had been in charge, I would have been happy to have her take a few calm steps forward at the walk and I would have put her up.

            But I was not in charge. And the trainer chose just this moment to come lean on the fence and observe what I was doing. In no time at all he was yelling at me to tighten the reins and drive the filly forward into the bridle. I protested, saying that I thought she’d freak out. He yelled louder, telling me that he was the boss here and if I wouldn’t do it he would, and to get my ass in gear and do as he said.

            Well, I should have quit him right there. But I was young and he was a big name, and yep, he was in charge. So I did as he said.

            I shortened the reins under his direction—much shorter than I would ever have chosen to do with this filly. With the trainer yelling at me every second to drive her harder, I used the whip to force her to trot, despite her wildly rolling eyes and attempts to throw her head in the air and run backwards.

“Drive her harder!” screamed the trainer.

            I understood the point. She couldn’t flip over backwards if I could keep her moving forwards. So I drove her hard. And the filly, out of her mind with panic, tried to jump out of the round pen, with her head virtually tied down to her chest.

            She didn’t make it. She landed on top of one of the old rusty panels, which fell apart. The filly impaled herself on an upright. Blood poured out of a gaping hole in her chest.

            The trainer dove into this mess, and got the horse untangled and out of the panels. The vet was called, the filly survived, though she was out of commission for a couple of months. I felt terrible. And the worst part was that I absolutely knew that the trainer would tell Lynn that I was to blame for the wreck. He would say my inexperience caused the problem.

            Lynn was a nice gal. I told her I was sorry, and I very softly said that I had been doing exactly what the trainer told me to do. I did not add that I never would have driven her horse like that by my own choice, and that I had warned the trainer that I thought it would be too much for the filly. Lynn said she didn’t blame me. But she didn’t have much money and now she had a huge vet bill, and her horse, already behind in her training, was going to be even further behind. As I said, I felt terrible.

            Three months after that, and after witnessing many more very abusive things, I quit that sorry son of a bitch of a trainer and finished training my horse, Gunner, for the Snaffle Bit Futurity on my own. We placed in both the Non-Pro and the Ladies, and I was happy with the results. But I never became a star at reined cowhorse, and shortly thereafter I switched to cutting, which was (in my opinion) easier on the horse. And one thing I can tell you for sure. Though I checked up other colts in my life, I was always very careful how I did it, and I never again had a wreck of any sort in the process.

            If you’d like to hear more adventures from my past life training horses, there are many woven into “Hoofprints,” the second book in my mystery series. Hoofprints is on special right now as a Kindle edition. Only 99 cents. Here is the link, if you’re interested.

Choosing a Horse Trainer

by Laura Crum


Today I have a tricky question and I hope you’ll chime in with your thoughts. Cause I, for one, am majorly confused.

Last week I was asked by a casual friend who is a novice horseperson with a green horse (not the best combination, I know) if I would recommend a particular horse trainer she is considering working with. I know this trainer—lets call her Jane Doe. I never rode with her, but I’ve known her for many years, bought a couple of horses that at one time were in her barn; long ago we showed against each other in the local cuttings. We’ve always had a friendly “talking” relationship. And I was absolutely stymied as to what to say in answer to the question.

Here’s the problem. Jane Doe is a competent horseman, she’s been in the horse training business a long time. She has the same cowhorse background I do, and like me, she is now middle-aged and stout—unlike me, she has a bad back. She does not get on colts any more, she has her assistants do it. Jane doesn’t actually ride much at all any more. But she can talk the good talk.

OK, nothing wrong with that, necessarily. Except that I happen to know that Jane put her assistant (and best friend) on a colt that had some major issues and said assistant got bucked off hard and put in the ICU for several days—and of course Jane had no insurance and no money to help with the bills.

Well, OK, a lot of trainers are in this position, I know. But I didn’t think it was too responsible of Jane. Nor did it argue that she had very good judgement when it came to reading horses.

Jane has made some decent horses over the years. And she’s had some colossal failures. I think this can be said of most horse trainers. By and large, I don’t disagree with her methods. She’s well intentioned towards horses and people, I believe, but perhaps a bit blinded by her need to be the “expert”. Again, something that can be said of a lot of trainers.

And then, I was at a party with Jane not too long ago. Privately she confided to me about her bad back, and how she could hardly climb on the horses any more, even broke horses. She described trying to ride her old (broke to death) show horse when the mare was fresh and how this was a “harrowing” experience. I understood, of course; I would be in the same boat. But I’m not calling myself a horse trainer. (And I also happened to know that Jane is currently trying to sell the old show horse and is representing the mare as gentle for kids…uhmm, you can’t have it both ways. A horse that is gentle for kids should not be “harrowing” for an experienced rider to cruise around the pasture when the mare is fresh.)

At this same party, when a group of folks were gathered around, Jane proceeded to make fun of a young man who is just starting out as a horse trainer in this county. Granted, the guy is young and has a lot less experience than Jane. And Jane’s way of making fun of him was subtle. She just kept telling stories about things he’d done with horses and letting her audience infer how clueless he was compared to oh-so-knowledgable her. The other people had a fun time laughing about the young trainer. I wasn’t particularly amused.

I kept my mouth shut (for once), but I thought to myself that said young guy (who I know) isn’t afraid to climb on a colt, unlike Jane these days. He doesn’t put his assistants on to take the falls. A broke horse acting up would not scare him. Unlike Jane, he still rides the horses that are put in training with him. This guy is well intentioned and pretty handy. He may not have Jane’s experience, but he rides a lot better than she does now.

Jane’s main event nowadays is giving lessons and clinics. She’s good at this—very patient with beginners and kids. Jane feels very comfortable with people who clearly know less than she does about horses. She loves standing safely on the ground instructing other folks in “Horsemanship 101”. And she’s very respectful of big name trainers who have achieved far more than she has in the showhorse world. But anyone who might remotely be considered an equal renders Jane defensive and wary, eager to prove that she is the knowledgable horse guru in these parts.

Now this isn’t an uncommon trait in horse trainers. And Jane is never boastful. No, she’s quiet and seems humble; she just makes the occasional pointed comment or tells the occasional quasi-humorous story that essentially puts down the opinions of her peers. Like many people with fragile egos, Jane takes a lot of pride in keeping her mouth shut. She told me once that when she went to clinics with bigger name trainers she never asked questions or gave her opinion, she just listened. This was meant to show how humble and what a a good student she was. Of course, what this said to me was that she was too invested in her own ego to take a chance on looking silly. Because the way a person learns most is to ask questions and be willing to discuss ideas. But one can’t do this if one is afraid of looking less than knowledgable.

Jane and I have always gotten along pretty well over the years we’ve known each other. Nonetheless, I’m aware that Jane isn’t very comfortable around me. I think she can tell that I don’t buy her oh-so-much-more-knowledgable-than-thou pose and it bothers her. I have pretty much the same background in the horse biz that she does, though I never hung out my shingle as a trainer. I think she finds this threatening. I’m willing to bet that when I’m not around, she tells slighting stories about me, too. I can’t say that I really like Jane.

So, where does this leave me when it comes to recommending Jane as a trainer? I’m not sure. If my friend (lets call her Mary) just meant to take lessons, I could honestly say that Jane is very good at giving lessons to novices. Many of her students part company with her as they get more experience—I think because of some of the issues I’ve described here. But Mary also wants to put her green horse in training with Jane.

Should I tell Mary that Jane is very unlikely to ride the horse herself? (Except, perhaps, when Mary is around.) That it will be Jane’s assistants who will ride the horse day in and day out. Mary doesn’t know this. Again, this situation is not unique to Jane—when I worked for a well known cowhorse trainer, there was one little Appy mare in his barn in whom he was not much interested. I was the one who broke and trained this mare. For six months no other human being rode her besides me. (Of course, the trainer collected his big monthly training bill.) The owners never knew about this (partly because they did not come around). This mare turned out fine, I did a good job on her…but you see my point. Should I tell Mary that this will happen in Jane’s barn? Should I tell Mary that I think Jane has a few, shall we say, personal issues? The number of former clients who are not on speaking terms with Jane is considerable. Mary is a forthright person, just like I am. Shall I warn her that Jane seems threatened by people who do not act properly subservient?

And if I do, and Mary says, “Who would be better?” then I’m stumped. Because I don’t actually know who would be better. That young guy Jane was making fun of in her subtle way…he is lacking experience and he doesn’t have a very good facility. The best known cowhorse trainer in these parts is very hard on horses. You see, I know all these guys. Jane is far from the worst of them.

So, I remain puzzled. When Mary called me up and asked me the question, I blurted out something inane. I think I said, “Jane’s fine, if you don’t expect too much.” When Mary said, “Would you recommend her?” I just said, “She’s OK.” Typical horse trainer talk. But later I went round and round with myself. Was I doing Mary a diservice? I wouldn’t put a horse in training with Jane. Not just because I know she doesn’t ride them (and isn’t actually a very good rider any more), but because I know that at bottom, I don’t really think I could get along with her and her too fragile ego. But I’m not sure if this would be a problem for Mary.

I do know a horse trainer or two that I really like, but none of them happen to be in this county. My friend and boarder sent his young horse to one of these guys, but it’s a three hour drive from here. Mary wants someone local, where she can show up once a week and take lessons.

I wish I knew the perfect horse trainer to recommend in this area, but I don’t. So, what do you think? What should I say, or not say? How do you guys evaluate a horse trainer? Do you run across this “trainer ego” problem, too? Should I let Mary work out if she can get along with Jane and not predjudice her against the woman? Is this more my issue than a real problem with Jane as a trainer? I’m confused. Those of you who are trainers feel free to tell me your views, too. I’ve never been a horse trainer (despite the fact that I was assistant to half a dozen) and am perhaps too willing to take a negative view of something a trainer may believe is no big deal. What do you think?

Winning

by Laura Crum


Last week I did a post on the reasons I gave up showing horses and looking back on it I find it very incomplete. I mentioned the political aspect of it as a judged event and the cost. These things did have a lot to do with why I quit, but there were other reasons, too.

Kate mentioned seeing too many “servicably sound” horses in her hunter/jumper world, and I had to agree. Competition of all sorts in the horse world seems to result in so many horses pushed to keep working despite being sore, and then thrown away like used sporting equipment when they just can’t go any more. I think all of us have seen this and been affected by it. Some of us quit competing because we don’t want to be around it any more or support it in any way. However, I didn’t get to that place until I quit competing at team roping, the last competitive event I practiced.

Today I want to revisit cutting, particularly the last cutting where I competed. This would be our local county fair, twenty years ago this past fall. My horse, Gunner, was nine, and I had been competing on him at cuttings since he was four. I'd gotten a little jaded on the political element and the whole horse trainer shtick (see my post “Once Upon A Time”), and was starting to go team roping and liking it. But I decided to show Gunner one more time at the fair. I didn’t know it would be my last show, but I wondered.

In order to get ready for the cutting I practiced a bit and then hauled my horse over to a friend of mine, who was a local trainer.

“I want you to watch me cut a cow and tell me what you see,” I said. “I want to know what I should work on.”

So I walked Gunner into the herd and cut a cow. The cow tried him hard and Gunner worked well. Clean and crisp, not too long or too short, he was spot on; I never had to touch his face; he held that tough cow right in the middle and never missed a beat. I was very proud of him. When the cow turned away I touched Gunner’s withers to let him know we were done and walked back out of the herd and said to Bob, “Well?”

“He did fine,” he said.

Now even for trainer speak that was pretty laconic. I’m not particularly patient with trainer speak, anyway.“What do you mean he did fine? Is he as good as the horses that win?”

Bob shrugged.

“How is he different? What are they doing he isn’t doing?"

Bob shrugged again. “They’re a little fancier. He’s not doing anything wrong. They’re just flashier.”

Well, OK then. I knew what he meant. I was down to the root problem. There were two reasons that Gunner was not as fancy as the horses that won a lot. One was that he was big for a cutter. Gunner was 15.3, with good solid bone. He probably weighed 1200. Most successful cutting horses are smaller and lighter, which makes it easier for them to be quick and catty. I still remembered the initial reaction of the first cutting trainer I worked for when I unloaded Gunner from my trailer. This guy took one look at the horse, shrugged, and said, “Sell him and get another one.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “You haven’t even seen him work. He’s a nice horse.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “You want one that’s little and cute and catty. He’s too big. He looks like a rope horse.”

However, Gunner really was a good horse. He was quick and cowy and moved well and he had a lot of intensity and snap. He made a pretty darn good cutter. And now we came to problem number two, and it was the real stopper.

I had trained Gunner to be an effective cutter. What I had not done was train him to be flashy. So, what did this mean?

In the cutting horse world at that time, the horses that won regularly did a lot of “extra stuff”. If a cow moved slowly to the left and then paused, these horses did not mirror the cow, moving to the left and pausing, as I had taught Gunner to do. Nope. These horses did a whole lot more. They jumped to the left, to the right, back to the middle, pattered their front feet and back to the left, even if the cow was just hesitating there, doing nothing much. It was very flashy.
So what’s wrong with that, you ask. That’s what’s cool about cutting horses, all those fancy moves. Well, yeah. And again, not so much. Because these horses weren’t dancing around because they wanted to, nor was there much point in it. They were dancing like this because they had been spurred good and hard, over and over again, and they knew better than to simply mirror the cow and do what a cutting horse is supposed to do. No, they needed to move and dance constantly, and be “over the top” in every way, or they’d be punished.

Don’t get me wrong. Good cowhorses do some of this “dancing” on their own, because they love to work cows. Gunner did it, to some degree. It is part of what’s cool about cutters and all cowhorses. But these winning horses did it every time a cow slowed down enough to let them, and I knew very few (well, I personally didn’t know any) who were not taught to do this with an awful lot of spur.

I’m not saying I didn’t spur Gunner to teach him to be a cutter. I did. I don’t know anyone who trains cutting horses and never uses spurs. But I wasn’t willing to spur him over and over again when, by my lights, he was doing his job correctly, holding his cow, moving crisply, mirroring the cow’s every move, and working exactly as I had taught him to work. I wasn’t willing to torture him to make him fancier.

I also wasn’t willing to sell him and get one who was more the right “type”. At that time, I could have sold Gunner for a lot of money (by my standards, anyway). Even though he wasn’t ultra fancy, he was a solid, reliable cutting horse who was completely gentle and sound and he would pack anyone. Many trainers looked at him and thought they could “tune him up” and he’d be perfect for their beginning non-pro. I was offered ten thousand for him several times, which was a good price for an entry level cutting horse (at that time).

But I didn’t want to sell Gunner. I’d trained him myself, and I was proud of him. More than that, I loved him. I wasn’t going to dump him and get something I could win more on. And that was that.

As for the option of letting an accomplished trainer keep Gunner in training and make him flashier, well, I knew just what that would entail. I’d been around long enough to be sure that I didn’t want anyone else beating up my good horse. So many “horse stories” look very pretty when you see the horse placing at the big show with rider and trainer grinning at each other. Its only when you know the true underpinnings of such a story, all the abuse dealt out to horses and all the hatefulness between people, that you realize that the fairytale façade that’s presented is a very long way from reality. Unfortunately abusive treatment of horses, and trainers who start out charming and humble only to reveal themselves as passive aggressive sociopaths only interested in protecting their fragile egos—this is pretty much a routine tale in the professional horse business. Such trainers are often talented at training and winning—its compassion towards horses and forgiveness towards people that’s lacking. I’d learned enough by now to want nothing to do with all that. Also, for me, part of the point was that I wanted to be the one riding, training, and showing my horse. I didn’t own a horse for someone else to be riding him. Let alone that I couldn’t afford to keep Gunner in training, I had no interest in that idea.

I left Bob’s place feeling that I’d made a pretty nice horse and if I couldn’t succeed under the system, well, I’d leave that system behind.

So, I showed Gunner at the fair, feeling it would be my last show. It wasn’t a big class, maybe fifteen horses. I drew up fourth. Watching the first three go, I saw right away that the whole pen of cattle seemed to be runners. Nobody was able to cut some nice little pup that set up in the center and allowed their horse to “play”. Nope. Every cow wanted to run hard, driving across the pen in a strong attempt to get back to the herd.

This is actually the most challenging type of cow for a horse to hold, and, unfortunately, a horse doesn’t usually get marked for doing a good job of it. Judges wanted to see a cow set up in the middle and a horse get “fancy”. Running cattle were a big negative.

However, Gunner was quite good with tough cattle. He could run and stop and he stayed honest. When my turn came, I cut some cattle that ran (I couldn’t find a pup either) and Gunner held them really well. I didn’t make any mistakes. It was a solid go, but not very flashy. As I rode out, Bob, who was turning back for me, said, “Your horse ran across the pen real well.”

I knew just what he meant. We’d done a workmanlike job, but it wasn’t by any means a spectacular run. The judge marked me a 71, which was a fair mark for what I’d done.

I led Gunner away from the ring, feeling proud of him for a job well done, and mildly disgusted with the whole deal. Cuttings are, in case you don’t know, a long drawn out business, with lots of warm up and time spent settling the herd, and all of it, except one’s own run, and the occasional moments when one’s competition is doing something cool, is about like watching paint dry. I was pretty jaded by this time, as I said in my last post. I didn’t even watch the rest of the class.
I unsaddled Gunner and brushed him, completely sure that some of my fancy competition would outscore me. I hadn’t marked very high. I couldn’t hear the loudspeaker from where I was, so I had no idea how things were going.

It was only when a friend came dashing up to my trailer saying, “They’re looking for you,” that I found out.

I’d won the class. Apparently the fancy horses hadn’t been able to cut any easy cattle either, and everybody had either lost a cow and/or gotten out of shape. My 71 was the highest score.

Back I went, leading Gunner, to get my silver buckle and have my photo taken. It wasn’t the biggest show I ever won, or the highest score I ever marked, or my best run. Not even close. It was, however, my last show, and our local county fair, and for some reason it remains one of my favorite memories. I still have the buckle and the photo, which remind me of that happy moment. In an odd way, the fact that I won that last cutting seemed to validate all the time and money I’d spent on training Gunner to be a cutting horse.

I never regretted giving up cutting. I trained Gunner to be a team roping head horse and roped on him until he was fourteen. At fifteen I retired him to the pasture, and he is living a happy turned out life, sound, if peggy, at thirty years old this spring. He is still my horse, and I still love him and take care of him.

As for me, I competed at team roping for almost ten years, first on Gunner, and then on Flanigan, until the point where I realized I simply did not care about winning. I enjoyed roping, but I had gotten completely to the end of my tolerance for seeing horses crippled and people be unkind to each other, all in the interests of winning. Don’t get me wrong, lots of people were good to their horses and nice to each other, but plenty were not. At the end of my team roping career I would get to a roping and find myself fervently praying, “Don’t let any horses or people or cattle get hurt (yes, I cared about the cattle—so laugh at me), and let whoever needs to win, win.” It didn’t take too long after that for me to be sure I never wanted to see another horse get hurt again in pursuit of the almighty win. I never wanted to watch some poor mostly lame critter struggle on or see someone beat up a horse who had somehow failed to please the rider (though often the fault lay with the rider rather than the horse). All because people wanted to win. I didn’t even want to be around it.

For those of you who read this blog and who like to compete in some horse discipline, I am not suggesting that you don’t treat your horses well. It is totally possible to treat your horse well and compete on him, too—I know that. You cannot change the behavior of those around you, but you can decide what you yourself will do and not do. This blog post (and my previous post “Once Upon A Time”) were suggested to me by reading some blogs where it seemed to me that winning was glorified a bit and the path by which that win was achieved was not portrayed very honestly. When horses get trashed and there is much hatefulness between people along the way, winning isn’t worth it—not in my opinion.

The other reason I wanted to address this subject is that I think it is truly worth bringing up and talking about. I competed for many years and for a lot of that time I was really enjoying myself. Training my horse, improving, testing myself…all this meant a lot to me. When I got to the place where I was ready to leave it behind, well, I had got to that place, as this blog describes. One of my best friends, a woman who is a much more competitive team roper than I ever was, recently got to the same place and gave up competition. She and I trail ride together and we have a talked a lot (as you might imagine) about this process of letting go of the need to compete and why we needed to leave that world and how it has been for us. I don’t mean to suggest that I know some single answer that is right for all horse people. I just know that my friend and I have discussed this subject a lot lately as we mosey down the trail, and it is much on my mind.

Competition, and the desire to win, is driven by several factors. Money is one of them, and I haven’t even touched on this. But people who are in the horse business to make money need to win. To prove their stallion, or their training barn...etc. The need to make mony fuels the drive to win, in many cases. And a lot of abuse springs from this root. But many of us compete in order to prove ourselves…we’re not in it to make money. We train, and try to improve, and then compete to test ourselves. And in some cases this testing and proving of oneself can become an intense ego driven need to win that results in the sort of abuse that I have described. In the discussion following my last blog post several people, including Terri and stillearning, talked about what we can do to change this. I freely admit that I have no idea, though Terri had some great suggestions. Its true that I have just opted out, and I don’t know if this is an honorable solution or not. The bottom line is that I couldn’t stand to be around it any more.

I do know that horses and people get hurt trail riding, too. But in my experience the pressure we put on ourselves and our horses in the interests of competition is far more likely to lead to injury and breakdown than a relaxed ride “outside”, where winning is not a factor. So now I trail ride in the hills and on the beach with my son and my friends. And I visit Gunner in his pasture and pet him and tell him what a good horse he is. I’m having just as much fun as I did when I was cutting and team roping, somewhat to my own surprise.

That’s what I call a happy ending.

Feel free to tell me I’m nuts and competition is a good thing. My team roping friends who are still out there trying to win tell me this all the time. Cheers--Laura

Once Upon A Time

by Laura Crum


Awhile ago, reading some interesting horse blogs, I came upon some opinions about horse trainers and showing horses, and it made me think about the days when I was very involved with professional trainers and horseshows. In my twenties I worked for half a dozen trainers as an assistant (these were all cowhorse and cutting horse trainers), took lessons from many more, and practiced and competed with bunches of them. I learned a lot about this part of the horse training business, and I thought it would be fun to do a post on this subject and get your opinions.

I would like to point out, first off, that this era in my life is very much in the past—today I stay home and ride my own horses with my son, mostly on the trail. I don’t train or compete at all—and I’m not interested in going back to it. Funnily enough, I just talked to an old friend the other day, one who went much further in cowhorse competition than I ever did—this gal competed for many years at the national level. Today, like me, she trail rides—that’s it. Says she doesn’t miss going down the fence at all. So I guess there’s a few of us out there.

Anyway, to get back to my subject, back in the days when I was learning, training and competing with the pros, I found something out. You can learn something from everybody. There wasn’t one trainer I was ever involved with who didn’t teach me some useful tricks. I liked some trainers better than others, some I grew to actively dislike and thought they were cruel to the horses, but they all taught me something. I used what I learned from these guys to put together my own approach, which involved bits and pieces that I got from all of them—the stuff that worked for me-- and years later, when I was training rope horses for myself and my friends, I would often remember that old Joe had taught me this, or Sonny had taught me that.

The second thing I learned was that trainers rarely agree. I can count on one hand the times I heard a trainer praise another trainer’s method. No, invariably, trainers thought their own approach superior and were often quite hostile to the idea that another trainer had a good method. Trainers at the top of the pile were respected and spoke well of—because they won. However any trainer who could remotely be considered to be on the level of another trainer was competition—and each trainer considered him or herself to have a better “way”.

Mind you, trainers were not loud or boastful about this (in general). That’s not the cool trainer way. Trainers were mostly quiet and on the surface, perhaps, quite humble. It was only over time, particularly if you mentioned something you’d learned from someone else, that their deep rooted attachment to their own thinking and methods would show. If I ever disagreed, or brought up an idea I thought might be helpful, I was firmly put in my place. I quickly learned never to mention anything I’d learned elsewhere and to, in general, keep my mouth shut when working for or taking lessons from trainers. Overall, they were not open minded. Unless they asked for an opinion, it was best not to give one.

This did not mean that they didn’t have something to teach me, and, in the end, I became very adept at discarding ideas that didn’t work for me and acquiring methods that did. I started out training my horse, Gunner, to be a reined cowhorse, and rather rapidly burned out on the methods used (at that time) to create a competive bridle horse. I won’t go into the details, suffice it to say that after placing at the Snaffle Bit Futurity, I switched to cutting. I trained Gunner to be a decent cutting horse, even though I was pretty ignorant. I took lessons and rode for guys who were competitive and Gunner was just a nice horse. We won quite a bit at the jackpot club cutting level, and, again, placed at some big events. Not one but three professional trainers offered to train Gunner for free if I would allow them to haul him and show him. That’s how nice a horse Gunner was. Trainers do not, in general, offer to keep your horse in training for free.

Of course, what these guys were thinking was “what a nice horse—he could do so much more if I were on him instead of that girl who doesn’t know much.” And, of course, they were right. When I competed on Gunner, virtually every horse I showed against had been trained by a professional trainer. Even if I had wanted to go this route, by the way, which I didn’t, I could not have afforded it. I did not have the money to keep my horse in training. I worked for trainers so I could afford lessons and entry fees. When I pulled into those big cuttings I was frequently the only two horse trailer and old half ton pickup in the entire parking lot. Virtually every other rig was a long shiny multi horse affair pulled by a big dually.

Over time, the ramifications of this began to sink in. I had a good horse and I sometimes managed to get him showed. We placed and won from time to time. But it became clearer and clearer that the people who beat me, over and over, were people on professionally trained horses, either pros or people with a lot of money who kept their horses in training with pros. Were they just better?

A lot of the time they were. No question. And I really didn’t take it too hard whether I won or not; I was pretty focused on turning in a performance that I felt good about. But I couldn’t help but notice that those few folks who, like me, showed their own “homemade” horses, never seemed to get marked as high, even if they had a good run. After several years of this, I was clued in enough to understand.

Horseshows, including cuttings, are, in general, judged by people who are horse trainers. These people all know each other, and they also know all of each other’s wealthy clients. This is their business. They place each other and the wealthy clients far more readily than they place an “outsider”—its just the way it works. This is what puts money in their pockets; this is how they make a living. If Joe places Sonny, next week Sonny will place Joe. If Sonny places Joe’s wealthy client, then Joe is more likely to place Sonny’s wealthy client, and even more crucial, some day Joe’s wealthy client might move on to Sonny (and the clients moved from trainer to trainer all the time). Yes, a judge will place the outsider if he/she has a distinctly superior run. But if the outsider and the insider have similar runs, the insider gets the call every time.

I saw this quite clearly at one of the biggest events I went to. I was watching a class that I wasn’t in and saw a Nevada cowboy I’d never seen before (and neither had anyone else) have a spectacular go. Some very “in” folks showed against him, and did well, but not that well. What happened? The cowboy placed—he did so well they couldn’t ignore him—but he placed fourth, rather than the first he deserved. Its just the way it works.

And again, watching the open class at a big show, I saw a trainer I knew well have a very good go. I watched the whole class and felt sure my buddy would win or place high. He did not place at all. Afterwards I walked over to his rig and asked him, “Did you do something wrong I didn’t see?”

“Not really,” he said.

“Then why didn’t he use you?”

“Oh, he pretty much went with the board of directors.” (This would be the board of directors of the state association, many of whom, big name trainers all, had been showing in the class.)

“Doesn’t it bother you?” I asked him, really wondering.

He shrugged. “I didn’t get marked today when I deserved to be, but somebody will mark me high when I don’t deserve it, and I’ll win the class. It’s just the way it goes.”

I knew what he meant. My friend was a well known trainer and though not quite as “in” as the trainers who had placed, he was plenty in enough. He was also a very talented trainer and eventually became very famous. He could make the system work for him. I was learning.

A year later I showed my horse in a biggish class (forty horses) at a fairly high level show (for me) and won the class. What happened? Well, I managed to get my horse showed, for one thing. And the judge was not a horse trainer. He was an old rancher who had got his judge’s card. He didn’t hang with the in crowd of horse trainers. He placed the horses he liked. It taught me something.

In the end, I burned out on the “political” element. And the cost. I really couldn’t afford this sport, and was spending more money than was appropriate on pursuing it. I could also see that I would never be truly successful if I persisted in training my own horse. I switched to team roping, which is judged only by the clock. And lo and behold, the political element vanished. There were lots of not-so wealthy folks winning, though, of course, the wealthy folks could afford better horses, lots of lessons, practice and entry fees…etc. But, overall, it was definitely much more fair.

Not that team roping was in all ways superior to cutting. I am not saying that at all. I could do a whole nother post on the the abuses I saw during the years I roped (which is why I don’t rope any more). But the political element was (mostly) missing. And horse trainers did not dominate the scene. After almost ten years of a world dominated by horse trainers and their so-strongly held opinions and endless competition with each other, I was ready for a break.

Since then, I’ve continued to value all the good information that I got from various horse trainers, and I’ve added the final piece to the puzzle. It isn’t going to come as any surprise to any of you when I tell you what it is. We’ve often talked about it, both on this blog and others. Listen to your gut. Its that simple. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, listen to your gut. Use your gut, and what knowledge you have, to be discriminating. Realize that no matter what any trainer tells you, there’s more than one way to get something done. If this trainer’s way doesn’t resonate for you, believe me, you can find another way to get the job done. You don’t need to be buffaloed by any given trainer’s opinion. It kind of reminds me of our discussion on this blog about feeding treats. There were hugely varied approachs, and all of them seemed to work for the people who used them. Its best to go with an approach that feels right to you.

Don’t get me wrong—it is absolutely vital and helpful to get the advice of a good trainer, or some sort of experienced horseman, while you are learning. Just don’t believe all you hear. If something doesn’t seem right, go get another “expert’s” opinion. As I started out saying, you can learn something useful from everybody. But hang onto your gut sense of what works for you, and don’t go too far against it. (I guess you could apply this to religion and politics, too.) There’s always another way to do it.

So how about you? Some of you, I know, like to compete, and I’m sure that many of you, like me, have had experiences with professional trainers and judged competition—for good or ill. Some of you are trainers—of many disciplines other than cowhorse and cutting. Has your experience been anything like mine—or has it been vastly different? What’s your take on it?