GOT TRAINING PROBLEMS? ASK THE HORSE FIXER! © 2002 by JP Giacomini
Copyright ©2002, PUBLISHED 2002
If horses could sign checks, life would be much easier for the competent horse trainers (and hopefully harder for the ones who need to change jobs). Horses are much better judges of the education they receive than their owners. Just like children, they usually like the person who gives them clear boundaries, keeps their body exercised, their mind entertained and their emotions at peace. Unfortunately, only a new version of Gulliver’s Travels would have horses show their appreciation for good training with generous financial rewards. So far, we have no such luck in real life. Let’s talk instead about a few pointers that can encourage owners to invest in a makeover of their horsemanship approach.
A legitimate aspiration when buying any kind of horse, is to eventually be able to “ride the horse in public”. This means s/he should be safe and obedient enough to perform whichever job s/he was bought for in the company of others, without fear of endangering the owner’s health, compromising his/her dignity or the safety of the group. The King D. Duarte of Portugal wrote: “Honors on horseback cannot be achieved without effort, without courage and without expense” and, I will add, without the uncomfortable honesty that prevents delusions. Not much has changed since 1434. All of us involved with horses for a long time and have learned, sometimes painfully, that we cannot escape these eternal truths. Why? Because horse ownership comes with problems and the place to start when searching for their potential causes or the sources of their cure is in oneself. What follows is addressed to trainers, but it naturally concerns owners just as well:. Their apparently opposing problems are just two sides of the same coin.
Ill-advised first time owners will often go through relationships with would-be trainers before they realize how big of a mess they are in. If they are passionate enough (addicted to loving horses), they will hang in there, desperate for solutions and hopeful to find the right help. That’s when they come to you, searching more discriminately for someone who can fix their problem.
You, the competent horse trainer, are now faced with a horse needing a psychological, physical and mental “makeover” and a queasy owner barely over his/her previous bad experience. YOU know that they either created the problem, bought it, or endorsed the system responsible for it. A “Band-Aid” is not going to cut it, so how do you help the owner to accept a radical training plan, usually the opposite from what got them into trouble in the first place? They are asking you, “Please, fix my horse and use the approach I liked so much (again)”. It usually doesn’t work! Yet it is rarely the OWNER who is to blame for the mess, but rather the SYSTEM (or lack thereof), used in blind faith.
That’s when you have to give your new client a different plan they may apparently agree to, while their subconscious may resist ‘tooth and nail’ to the “problem fixing” process they are now engaged in along with their horse. It is rehabilitation. Neither the patient nor the family enjoys it very much. The success will reside entirely in the delivery of the “bad news”, the marketing and delivery of your solution. Owners may not see the small progress you are accomplishing quite as quickly as you will because of their lack of experience combined with unrealistic expectations. Remember that the completion of any element of training usually takes at least 3 days.
So the first step to a long lasting relationship is to get the client committed to no less than 3 (or better 5) sessions that will permit the ‘makeover’ to stick in the horse’s mind and body. Over time, I have kept 80% of the students who took 5 lessons to begin with, but lost 80% of my one-timers. To enroll the owner’s support further, avoid criticizing the professional who preceded you, whatever they say, new clients are still emotionally attached to their previous trainer and they will resent you blaming him/her. Rather, keep explaining, kindly, the whole of the horse’s basic training and the problem at hand.
More importantly, DEMONSTRATE the relevance of your solution to the specific goal they so badly want to achieve. Example: you have to fix a trail horse who spooks and you decide to lunge it around a few of the usual “bogeymen” (ditch, water, pasture with other horses, etc.). It may not be obvious to anyone but you that this is going to improve how the horse will walk out with you/owner on a loose rein, so after your lungeing, hop on the horse and show SOMETHING s/he may now be doing better. If you fail to stress these connections (at least until the client trusts you enough to progressively engage into longer programs without question), s/he will not build faith in your approach. Remember that most owners “don’t know what they don’t know”. An informed owner who stops practicing the problematic movement “ad nauseam” and works the basics consistently, knows enough to train the horse him/herself and is not at your barn paying for help.
Considering that remedial “fixing” training sessions can often be more taxing to the OWNER than to the horse, allying the owners worries on how their darling horse is coping with the stress of repatterning old habits is a fundamental element of demonstrating your caring attitude. Here are 3 true tests by which you can judge (and help the owner understand). If their horse was overly stressed during work: 1. did the horse cool down, ‘poop’, urinate, eat and drink after his lesson? (stress colics for instance are clear results of ineffective training) 2. Is the horse moving better the next day? 3. Does the horse pick up the next lesson where s/he finished the
previous { day? If the answer is yes to all 3, you can reassure the owner and yourself that it all went great and the horse is ready to go onto your next step! If the answer is no, YOU need to go back to school!
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