Teaching Horses
There are other trainers that can train a horse a lot quicker than I can, but I think that my horses will last longer because they have been ridden consistently, six days a wekk for almost two years. There are no shortcuts in training a horse if you want your horse to be solid in the end.
Knowing what kind of horse you're on is very important in training. By that, I mean that you have to know what type of mind your horse has when you start training in order to be able to get your horse to their highest potential. On a lazier horse, you'll have to push them harder to get them to realize what they're capable of doing, but on a sensitive horse you have to be more careful. From my years of experience, I can usually tell the mind of the horse in the first couple of rides, but I know no two horses are alike and I try to keep an open mind everytime I get on a new horse. There is nothing as rewarding for me as when I can feel that my horse is understanding totally what I want and that they are giving me their all.
Teaching horses is what I have done for the majority of my life and I genuinely enjoy every day that I get to train horses. There is something that makes me feel proud in being able to teach horses that are extremely different from one another, especially if I can teach him to do it better than other guys can. I try to get everything out of my horses and I push them very hard, but through it all I have a lot of respect for them and carefully manage the degree of work that I put them through.
I love a horse that comes out every day and wants to please you, however I get even more satisfaction in training a horse that is a little more challenging. I think that in training horses, one of the most important things to keep in mind is that every horse is an individual and that you have to start from "0" on every horse you ride. By that I mean that we as trainers get to ride many horses a day and sometimes are quick to forget that it's up to us to "show" them what we want them to do. They don't know that you have been doing it all day and almost do it automatically. We get really used to doing our program horse after horse, but in order to do a good job training your horses, you need to start from the beginning with every horse. One of the most challenging things to accomplish when training a horse is to get them really broke on every speed of the maneuvers without burning them out. A good reiner is a horse that knows 100% of the time what he's supposed to do and never refuses to do anything for you, and more importantly is still happy to do his job.
