The Use of Competent Professionals at the Local Level

At some point help will be needed relating to training, horsemanship or related issues. Professionals are no different. They too, come to a point where help is needed. The difference in how a professional attains help versus the way local trainers go about it is very different. I have always had at my disposal, until I moved to the south, friends and fellow colleagues who I relied on and they on me. We knew that help was only a phone call away and we didn’t talk negatively behind each other’s back to make ourselves look superior when talking with others. But this is how many of the local wannabes act and believe “that’s how it is”. This backward mindset could not be further from the truth.

My friend, Shannon Gunn, whom I met after moving here, is from (coincidently) the same area of Colorado my wife and I worked for so long. We are constantly amazed at how fearful folks here are of progress, new training methods and competition.There are many folks here that exhibit all of the trappings of professional trainers, big barns filled with horses belonging to members of the riding club that they own, but don’t do anything other than use forceful tactics to “train” with. Folks believe things to be true, when they hear them over and over again. This is a commonly used tactic in psy-ops in the Army. Telling someone something regardless if it’s true or not, after hearing it for so long, they will soon begin to believe it.

As is the case with many inexperienced trainers and those who abuse horses for the desire of any certain gait. Being able to hang ribbons on your wall stemming from the abusive training tactics you place on horses is not the mark of a professional or anything indicative of a winner. The real kicker here is, the many folks who buy into these idiots’ ramblings. Horse owners have a responsibility to their horses for the manner in which they are trained and handled by others. If they take their horse to anyone who uses force & fear based “training” tactics, and they know this prior to allowing their horse to be “trained” by these folks, then they are not doing their horse any favors by allowing someone to beat it under saddle.

Association by ignorance isn’t an excuse here either. Locals know who is “rough on horses” and until the attitudes are changed as to who folks take their horse to, this will be an on going problem. One problem is the mis-belief that forceful tactics train a horse faster or that one cannot be easy on a horse. This in itself is a backwards statement.

Forceful tactics do nothing but reinforce to the horse, a prey animal; that the human, a predator, is to be feared. The horse is ingrained with this instinctual reaction at birth and is an aspect that many trainers, some well known, do not address or incorporate into their training programs. The good ‘ol boys who train with submissive and fear based tactics because they know no better way, only create an animal that is a danger to it’s self and to it’s owner. The horse that is “trained” thru forceful tactics is always looking for an escape or an out. Yet, the owner is the one who will pay for this form of “training” when things go wrong and they end up in the hospital or worse, and it has happened that way before! Training animals that rely on their instinctual processes, and some folks don’t like this statement and that’s fine, should be a regulated industry.

There would be many problems in the world of equine training alleviated by doing so. Many of the idiots who beat horses under saddle, chase horses with no reason around in round pens with a whip, using drugs to train or load, slap a horse in the face with the lead rope when it does not follow them, hits a horse with a rasp when it doesn’t stand for a trim, uses a piece of rubber hose for “correction”, would no longer be in the training industry….oh what a wonderful world it would be!!