I met a fellow rider at a competition event one day. This rider made this statement “I paid big money to send my horse to Clinton Anderson.’” “ When I got my horse back, after just a month or two, my horse had the same problems before I sent him to be trained!” As we all know, Clinton is a world class trainer. So my unfiltered response to my disgruntled friend was…”Next time, leave your horse at home and YOU go spend some time with Clinton.”
I my early years of training, I did what most any trainer does and take on the horse for the proverbial thirty, sixty or ninety days, achieve whatever goals were set or fix any issues, return the horse to the owner where occasionally I would get the same response as my aforementioned friend.
I learned that it is not enough to just train the horse. If you don’t train the human, then time and money may be simply wasted. Also, theoretically, If I can get the human to learn a certain skill set, they should never need a trainer again for that level.
I am not a horse trainer. Can I train a horse? … Yes, I can, but I feel that training the horse and, more importantly, training the human to develop good communication skills and a good relationship with their horse is my definition of true horsemanship!