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ABOUT ME

I grew up watching my Mom run her own training facility, she mainly started colts and did restarts. So, I was always around the training barn, of course, usually on a horse or watching Mom and attempting to imitate her starting colts with my little pony Emma. From a young age I loved the horses and working with them in my free time. After I finished my schoolwork for the day I would head out to the barn to work on my horsemanship skills. Often times doing my best to imitate Ray Hunt, Buck Brannaman and what I had learned from their videos and clinics. Although never having rode with Ray Hunt, Mom was always playing his videos and recordings in the house. I was also fascinated with the stories of the great Tom Dorrance, and what he could accomplish with the young horses.​ I didn't really decide I wanted to be a trainer till I was 16yrs old. That's when I got really serious about trying to truly understand the ''why'' behind what I already knew about horsemanship. Since then, I have been working every day to better understand both the horse and the human in order to become the best teacher I can be for both. ​I may have seen and heard many of the words of the men that where the founders of horsemanship and learned from a few in real time, but I will not say I claim to ride like any of them. You may hear or see some similarities now and then or at least that's my hope. I am always trying my best to keep the philosophies of horsemanship in mind when I am training and teaching.​ Working with the mind to get to the feet and sometimes working with the feet to get to the mind, it really just depends on the moment, the horse, and that situation.

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My Greatest Teacher Will Always Be The Horse

One of my favorite parts about being a trainer is those days when I question who's the better teacher, me or the horse? As a trainer, I am always working on the basics of horsemanship with every horse that comes into training. These basics uncover so many little problems with the horses and help me figure out why a horse is inconsistent with their leads, won't lead up 100% of the time, have issues getting into a trailer, going over obstacles and many more issues. But my basics are just the tools in my toolbox, using them is what takes skill and skill is somethings that is learned. This is where I feel the horse becomes the teacher, I can apply my tools to figure out what he does and does not know but teaching him things he doesn't know takes skill and when I say skill, I am referring to the feel and timing, I am applying to create a more prompt and correct foot placements. But this is the part where I question who is teaching who, because how and when I apply one of my basics is just as important if not more important than the basic itself. Horses are more willing than we think sometimes, but they also understand what is, and is not fair. My application will determine how quickly the horse learns a topic, my application will also determine that horses state of mind. If the horse is worried and frustrated and I ignore this, and go in too fast and firm with him, this may take a horse that was already worried and frustrated, to scared or angry. I also need to take in to account this horses state of mind before making my approach, he will be more likely to become calmer and more focused. This will set the tone for a quality training session and minimize the amount of frustration, and sweat we both would've had to go through. Now that is not to say there will not be some sweat coming from both of us somedays. My goal is that it's from putting both our efforts into trying to work together, and putting in the reptation that the horse needs to create that mind to muscle connection and truly learn and memorize the exercise's I am teaching him. A lot of the time I have to question myself first when the horse is not responding how I would like him to. Say I am working on a soft feel with one and he's feeling a bit heavy in my hands. I have to ask myself why before deciding on a course of action, because a horse is rarely going to have no reason. Sometimes it's me, and my hand's just needed to be about 3 oz softer, and my seat could be about 2lb lighter, then he will soften and round right up. Maybe he doesn't understand how to properly engage himself yet, so I need to work on that before I ask for the soft feel. If that was the case then he simply didn't have the balance or coordination to give me a soft feel in the first place, so I was asking to soon. Each horse I work helps me work the next, better than I did the last, I am so thankful for those horses that have put up with me so I could learn. Because those are the ones that will save my life when I meet the horses that are troubled and insecure. Those are the horses that taught me to work with patience and feel to be fair and have good timing, but also to think about where that horse is mentally before any action is applied.

Feel And Timing Go Hand In Hand

Feel and timing can be subjective to each individual, my goal is that by the time you get done reading this you will better understand how I have learned to interpret the subject. As a trainer, feel and timing is what I use to convey information to the horse as we are working on a new topic or breaking old habits. Another important thing that must be kept in mind is that the horse is a master, scientist so to speak. They will form many experiments and assess them many times running the same experiments before they form a hypothesis to decide what does, and does not work. When you think about it this way, they are not trying to be bad or disagreeable, but are working through their experiments to sort out what works, and what doesn't. My job as the trainer is to answer each question in a consistent manner, with feel and timing. I sometimes think of myself as a salesman or a tour guide in a way. My job is to convince them that what I want them to do is going to work better than what has previously worked for them. I have to encourage the idea that working for me is the better deal. In order to do that, I not only have to be a good leader, that can be trusted, but I have to be a fair leader as well. The horse is under our control and sometimes we are asking them to do things you don't see horses doing a whole lot naturally. For example, backing up, holding a soft feel, working on perfect circles, and other things you don't see your horses doing on their own normally, but we ask for daily. You are probably not going to find your horse backing perfect circles just for the fun of it, it is not something that they are natural practiced at. So, when we start asking the horse to perform this exercise for us it is a little scary for them. Think about it this way, you have never backed down a staircase before. I am going to ask you to hold my hand, turn the lights off and I am going to guide you backwards down six flights of stairs with me for the first time. Every person will handle this differently as well as every horse, I am sure everyone can imagine the person that is very trusting will trip a couple of times and carry on. Or maybe they have a lot of try and go way too fast having no quality and only speed. My job is to tell this person you don't have to try so hard you can slow down and trust me.

I would prefer that you navigate the stairs with quality over speed but that doesn't mean they are going to agree with me. Instead of fighting with them I will simply continue to guide them as they go fast because I know they will get tired sooner than later. When they decide to slow down on their own, I will start to work on the quality. By doing this, I have eliminated the fight and slowing down becomes their idea not mine. Who does not love when their own ideas are the right ones? Also, you can imagine the people that are more emotional, some people may see a horse that is stubborn or fighty, which is more likely to be fear and lack of trust in the handler. With this in mind think of the person that tends to be more emotional when faced with a challenge, you may need to slow things down, maybe even break things down for them and really talk them through the order of operations. Now with this being said I think there is a point in time with everyone when learning, that your teachers will put some heat on you and maybe push you to do what you think you can't do, but at the end you end up being surprised at what you can do. That's not to say that you have full faith in yourself or your teacher after that. It may take several more challenging and harder try's that probably look less than perfect, but eventually you start to figure things out and start to get better. It is the same with the horses, the feel and timing is just as much about what you are offering with your hands as it is about how you are assessing and what technique you are using for that horse at that moment. It makes all the difference to that horse and how well they progress, it also affects the trust they put in you as their trainer and every person and trainer after you.

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