“Let’s Keep it Real” A Series by Clinton Anderson with Tracy Wager
So how Honest do you want your Horse Trainer to be? At first glance that is a stupid question, of course I want my horse trainer to be honest with me! But my question is, having been in the industry for 25 years, is that I am not sure that people really do want their horse trainer to be THAT honest with them. You might say, why not? So, in my 25 years, I have been a trainer, I have been an owner and I have been a breeder. I have been all 3 at different times. I have seen the industry from every perspective. From the guy getting paid, from the guy spending the money and from the guy breeding horses. So, I have a pretty good feel for everyone’s side of the team.
At first glance, you may say, that is a stupid question, of course I want my trainer to be honest. But, in my experience I will say that at least 50% of owners do not want their trainer to be honest. Because, when a trainer calls a customer and says, your horse is not good enough to compete on, or your horse is not good enough minded, or lacks athletic ability, or whatever it is, for me to continue training him. It seems like owners fall into two categories; 50% of the owners say, “Thank You very much, I appreciate it, where do you think I can go with the horse, where can we sell it, what do you think he would be good for? Maybe he is good for Level 1, or maybe he can be a Ranch Riding horse? What would he suit, where can we put this horse in the industry that he might excel at?” So, instead of trying to pound a square peg into a round hole, let’s find the horse a place where he is good at. That is what 50% of the owners will do, because the trainer was being extremely honest with them. Remember, trainers have NO incentive to send a horse home. They lose money by sending a horse home. So, other than him being honest with you and not wanting to waste your money and his time (his time gets paid for whether your horse is there or somebody else’s). There is no incentive to call you up and tell you potentially bad news. So, then the other half of the owners, they kind of get butt hurt 28
EXCLUSIVE
about it. They do not want to hear the truth. They think their baby is special, they raised it, they think the trainer is wrong! So, what those 50% of owners do is they will go thru a typical cycle where they will send that horse to the next trainer. He will milk it out 6 months to a year, tell them the horse is great. Then after about 9 or 10 months, they will call and say, “Well, he is not doing as well.” So, then he says your horse is not good enough. Then they get upset again and send it to the next guy. Typically, it takes between 2 and 3 horse trainers of each milking the bills for another year apiece for the owners to finally realize that now they are into this horses training for 3 or almost 4 years and they still have the same average to below average horse that they had when the original guy tried to fire it halfway thru its 2-year-old year. But, instead of accepting their horse wasn’t very good, they blamed every trainer along the way. Now, there is some blame for some of the trainers, because most trainers, if they are really paying attention to their 2-year-olds, they know what they got. Within 6 months of you riding a 2-year-old, if that trainer is actually paying attention or he sees them ridden by an assistant every day, (he may not be riding them all, just watching them get ridden) he knows whether you have a below average horse, and average horse, and above average horse to a great horse. He may not be exact, but there are only 4 categories that they will fall into. Now, when that trainer starts riding that horse, in the fall of his 2-year-old year he will have a much better idea. So, yes, every horse needs a good 6 months of Reining foundation. No matter whether this will be a Rope horse, trail horse - good reining training for 6 months, 6 days a week, for any 2-yearold, will make a good foundation for any horse, no matter what the discipline. Even if it is a below average horse, it still has to be a productive citizen. So, basically, the original trainer that fired the horse, he gets the blame. He fired my horse; he is the problem. So, when I say to you…..ask yourself honestly, what kind of an owner are you? Are you a logical, unemotional, fact driven owner that can accept average to bad news? Or are you emotional, illogical and want to blame everybody else when your horse is just plain crappy? Sometimes we have good kids, sometimes we just have crappy kids. That is just the way it is. They are good parents, but they are crappy kids. OK, that is just the way it is. It doesn’t make anyone right or wrong. It is what it is. Me personally, I loved it when trainers fired my horses when I was an owner. Because it meant they were being honest with me. But see, I never let them have a chance to be dishonest. Because I personally flew and saw my horses every 6 weeks. Wherever
APRIL 2024