The misunderstanding.

Oh the joys of training horses for other people. You get them going really well; they're soft and responsive and relaxed. Then you send them home and tell/show the owners how to ride them to keep them that way only to have the owner say that some other way has worked for them in the past (if they were so good, why are they sending the horse away to train?). Perfect example is a little buckskin horse that a guy sent to my dad to train. It was a 4 year old and they wanted him as a horsemanship/WP/reining type horse for their granddaughter (who shows in 4-H). They had bought him green broke and immediately put the girl on him. She was about 12 years old and "one of the best horsemen to ever live". When they brought the horse here, he carried his head stuck straight up in the air and WOULD NOT stop or turn for anything. If you asked for more than a walk, he would take off at a dead run that was impossible to stop, plus he was about 150 pounds underweight. Anyway, Dad kept him over the winter and worked on his training. By this spring ('09) he was going really REALLY nice. He would walk, jog, and lope with perfect control on a swinging rein. He would stop hard when you softly made contact with the bit, picking up the correct lead and doing flying lead changes all with a level topline. He had put on weight and was healthy. They came to get the horse and Dad spent an afternoon showing the girl how to ride and handle him and the whole time they spent saying things like "JimBob told us to put a tie down on him to get his head lowered", "Isn't Jane such a wonderful rider, she wins every class she enters at all the 4-H shows", "She knows how to handle that horse, SHE IS SO GOOD AT EVERYTHING." Anyway, they pay the last bill and take the horse home. I just saw her riding him at a 4-H show this week and 'lo and behold, he is strung out and hollow with his head up in the air. He won't stop so she goes to yanking on him and that causes him to gape his mouth and rear. He is super skinny again and incredibly arena sour. She has to have someone lead him through the gate to get him in there. It turned my stomach to see what she had turned him into because I know how he rode when he left Dad's house. She entered every single class they had and never took better than 4th (and that was in a class of 4).

MC, I truely hope that somone can see past all the spur marks and white scald scars to see the heart of the horse underneath. It seems that no matter what you tell people like her, HER way is always better, SHE is a better trainer, THAT couldn't possibly work , WHATSHISNAME said that this would work better so SHE wants to try it even if simple common sense screams that it is completely wrong.

You just can't fix stupid.

When you pull the reins tight it puts way too much pressure on the bars and gags at the same time. I may have exagerated when I said torture device but it definately doesn't work well. The funny thing was that if I hadn't said anything he probably would have sent the horse home with me to train and I could havemade a few easy bucks riding his broke horse.

wow! what a story! i thought it was made up! thats so sad! the poor horse!

In the same vein as this thread; I have just hired a trainer to help me with my horse. She is a great gal who goes to vet school with me. Within a half an hour she helped me through three major problems we have been having, all without use of whip, smacks, shouting. Because she used to board at my barn and left for a slightly more upscale place, the manager and in-house trainer got their noses all out of joint. I just found out this morning that they plan to charge me an additional $15 every time I have my trainer out to work with us. When I went out this afternoon I saw the in-house gal working with one of her horses and she actually kicked the mare in the face for trying to get a mouthful of grass as she lead her in from the pasture. When she rides she uses iron hands and beats on the horses with a crop- if she used her seat even half as hard as she screams and whips she'd get a lot further. Just wanted to vent about imbecilic morons who don't have a clue. And yes, I'll be paying the extra $15 a session. The right trainer is worth it to me.

Good for you and your horse!

The horse sounds like an angel, a lot of abused horses will NOT let somebody get on them out of fear, or will rear/buck. I would say the person needs more training than the horse.

That poor horse...He's probably super sweet under all that fear too...such a shame.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were boarding at the same place I just left!!!