...but you should do it anyway." - Ghandi

Somehow this makes me feel better!  It's okay, I DO NOT have to be a world famous horse trainer with a DVD series and special expensive equipment to sell.  Whew! 

What this means to me is that although you will very much want what you do to be oh so significant, don't count on it and don't do things just to be significant, do them because you must.  Or because you are driven to... Write even if NO ONE reads it.  Train horses, if only the horses notice it.  Clean house, cook dinner, do the laundry though you will never be recognized for these things... however you must do them anyway.  We are not all Ghandi, after all.  We cannot ALL change the world, everyday.  Not all of us have the personality and courage to teach large clinics and go on tv.  I certainly don't.  I wish I did, and to my great dissappointment I know I could never do it, really. 

The thing is, whatever it is we do we should do for ourselves.  If it helps someone else or affects them, great.  Or if you are given the opportunity to make a difference, this is your opening and you should take it.  I think, too, that we think that we must do something really big in order to be successful.  We must make a lot of money, or get to the top of something or invent something and if not we have failed.  We haven't failed, we just aren't famous.  Everything we do, no matter how small or how unappreciated by others is still important to US. We do it for us and for others and should expect no return.  Only then are you truly doing something for it's own sake and that makes it a real and honest experience.  Love what you do, do what you love, and don't expect any applause. 

1/23/11 - I just finished a search of Anky Van Grunsven on the web, trying to find out how long she had been riding but instead found a lot of negative comments about Anky, Pat Parelli and finally Isabel Werth.  I stopped there, feeling so disappointed and disgusted with the anger coming from people.  It seems that there is never a voice of reason, someone who can write criticism not filled with vitriol and mud-slinging.  It's not intelligent nor well-written, and NO ONE seems to know the difference between "your" - it belongs to you, and "you're" - a contraction for "you are".  Is it really that complicated?  And while no one is ever above criticism, neither is anyone completely evil, either. 

Those who become clinicians, like Pat Parelli, John Lyons, and the rest, have become adept at teaching people.  They are successful because they are confident and knowledgeable and communicate well.  They have put themselves way out there, however, into the general public.  One complaint about Pat Parelli is that he refuses to see when he is wrong.  I am not sure what people think he is wrong about because the postings assumed the readers would know. I would not put it above him to have said or done something wrong.  But these postings also claimed that everything he did was just flat-out wrong, and that is not true!  The postings started with Anky Van Grunsven and the debate about Rollkur. This was a training method that came under a lot of fire as being damaging for the horse, and intelligent trainers have debated the issue intelligently - watch the video "Classical Versus Classique" for a complete recap of the argument. Intelligent argument is so much more persuasive and in this day and age, shows much more class.

Another point is that if you really study what each of these trainers (I am referring to the American clinicians like John Lyons, Pat Parelli, Clinton Anderson, etc) is teaching you will see that the real differences are in how they teach what they know.  What they know is the same as the next guy - the exercises are sometimes identical although they have different names, the methods are the same, the underlying training is IDENTICAL.  For that reason I would choose someone to follow based on how they teach and how you feel about listening to them. For example I once heard Richard Shrake give a clinic at the Rocky Mountain Horse Expo a few years back.  I also heard Pat Parelli give a talk.  I would MUCH rather listen to Mr. Parelli - Mr. Shrake was incredibly boring and dry.  I could hardly keep my attention on him.  However, he is a very knowledgeable horseman and those who have worked closely with him really like him.  I would never put someone down for buying his products or going to his clinics.

I think that people who get so defensive about following this or that trainer are really just as insecure as the person clinging to their chosen celebrity trainer.  If you start to feel that your particular trainer is more like your religion than someone giving horse training advice, then you are getting a little too obsessed with this person.  Keep your distance and keep everything in perspective.  They are human, they also have biases.  Here is one of mine - which I had to revise!

I bought my first horse about 18 years ago, a mustang that I had "trained" at the prison in Canyon City, Colorado.
For a lot of reasons she was there about 8 months and kind of fell through the training cracks.  I ended up taking her out of the program before she was trained.  So I ended up with this half-trained wild horse.  I hired a trainer who was unequipped to break a horse - she was a dressage instructor that I had lined up before this happened.  The horse should have been green-broke when I brought her home.  So I embarked on my first training odyssey. I went out and bought a manual written for John Lyon's Symposium.  On the very first page it said that new horse owners should stay away from mustangs.  If I had done that, I wouldn't have a horse at all.  My husband had agreed to my owning a horse because it was so inexpensive.... Plus I loved the fact that she was a mustang.  The purchase price was of no consequence.  I just wanted a horse any way it would happen.  So John Lyon's comment, although quite valid, struck me the wrong way.  He is right, though.  Anyway, that's an example of how one comment, taken the wrong way, can really affect how you view a particular trainer. 

I now live about 20 miles from John Lyons and have seen him at the grocery store.  Since I live right in the same area he used to live and where he purchased Zip, I read some more of his books and discovered that he really is the father of modern horse clinicians.  I also discovered that he uses many of the same exercises as Clinton Anderson and others.  The bottom line is that if you really dislike a certain trainer, that's your right but what is it based on?  A disciple-like following of someone else?  There is NOTHING that says you can only buy one particular trainer's DVDs or books.

I would encourage anyone who is really wanting to become a trainer to open their mind and study all trainers.  You should be looking for how they teach both horses and people.  If you start to think that only ONE of them is "right", you aren't really studying their methods.  That's a subject for another posting, but perhaps it can be food for thought for now...

Welcome to my blog!  If you are interested in horses and especially horse training, this blog is for you!  I am by no means the ultimate expert in the field (lol), but I strive to better myself and would like to share about the process here.  There are so many aspects of training that no one talks about at clinics, in books or even when they are trying to help you.  There are a lot of people calling themselves "experts" as well.  Some are and some aren't.  In my experience the best of the best never call themselves an "expert" though others may introduce them that way. 

For me learning to train is a process in which I am constantly learning new things.  I am also constantly being reminded of just who I am what I (don't) know.  If you have seriously worked with horses, you know that they have a way of knocking down your ego from time to time, even as they boost it to untold heights on other days.
I love that this experience goes on and on and has no real "end".  True, honest trainers tell you that they are still learning.