Am I a trainer? Doubts, delusions, and desires in horse riders and handlers

Many posts in social media groups dedicated to horses and horsemanship are made by people who question whether they can or should call themselves a horse trainer. Some even bring up imposter syndrome, or the belief that any success they may have is a fluke and that any moment they will be exposed as a fraud. These people have often been made to feel insecure by ungenerous people or circumstance. Then there are those who are not so much asking “Am I a trainer?” as they are saying, “How can I prove to people that I am a horse trainer?”

These comment threads always remind me of one of the repeated mini-conversations I have with my partner. Every couple has these–one person states something, the other disagrees, neither really tries to convince the other because they know nobody’s going to change their mind. This one always starts with me saying “I am not a horse trainer” and Jerry saying “Yes you are.”

This post is for all those horse people who have wondered “Am I a trainer?” (And for others who may have wondered if someone else deserved to call her- or himself a trainer.)

The “I am not/yes you are” horse trainer conversation:

In its current state (it used to get more involved), the gist of it goes more or less like this:

You get the idea. Years ago, I used to have a very similar conversation with an ex-boyfriend I had on the racetrack in Spain. Me: No soy entrenadora. (I’m not a trainer.) Gustavo: Porque tú no quieres. (Because you don’t want to be.)

Bingo.

Gustavo never really tried to convince me to train horses. (He did encourage me to race and tried to make me the best rider I could be.) Jerry has no interest in me hanging out a shingle. They simply wanted to point out what to them is obvious: I am a trainer of horses.

What makes someone a horse trainer?

First, let’s define horse trainer as a person who teaches a horse to do things and/or conditions a horse physically and mentally to perform an activity. If you have a better definition, please leave it in the comments!

Second, I’m going to propose some criteria. The list will include things I believe are essential, things that would be nice to have, and things that other people seem to think are part of being a horse trainer. There are good trainers and bad trainers… and not good yet trainers. I am not going to offer a definition of bad horse trainer. What defines a good horse trainer is the willingness to learn. All good trainers are still learning.

Horse trainer criteria

• Ability to care for horses.
• Desire to teach and/or condition horses.
• Experience teaching and/or conditioning horses.
• Willingness to deal with horse owners.
• Capacity to navigate the world of competition.
• Ability to go without creature comforts.
• Enough humility to ask for help and listen to advice when needed.
• Sufficient confidence to take risks.

Qualities that may make a person a good horse trainer

• Resistance to being trained by horses.
• Patience. (This might be the single most important characteristic of the successful horse handler.)
• Ability to listen to the horse…. feel.
• Willingness to question oneself.
• Stubbornness.
• Courage.
• Lots and lots of experience.

The one thing I would advise anyone interested in training horses to do: Work with as many horse trainers as you can. You can learn from all of them. I can’t remember the names of all the trainers I have ridden for. (Though I could tell you the names of my favorite of their horses…) But I know I learned from all of them, even those whom I really only spoke with in the paddock before a race.

Of course, I’ve also learned from all the other people associated with training horses: grooms, jockeys, exercise riders, vets, farriers, everyone. More than anything, I’ve learned from horses.

Read my interview with an amazing horse trainer: Cowboy Dressage founder Eitan Beth-Halachmy.

What am I missing?

Please contribute to the conversation! Feel free to comment here, or in social media where you find this post.

Evidence that I am a horse trainer

Most of the reasons anyone trains horses boil down to wanting to train them. You’ve got to want to do it in the beginning. Then you’ve got to want to keep training when it gets tough. It always gets tough. You get hurt. You get poor (or poorer). People tell you not to do it. People tell you you can’t do it. You can’t do it (there’s always one). Horses get hurt. Horses go out of your life. Life happens, with all its sh*t.

The only reason anyone trains more than one horse is that they really want to. And possibly that first horse threw them on their head hard enough to break something. (That’s a joke. Mainly.)

Above: Showing my mother’s mare Abacus Fiona at 4H Achievement Day. Fiona was four or five, I was thirteen. This was the first horse I trained by myself.

I trained my first horse when I was twelve

Abacus Fiona was the first Morgan filly my mom bred. I trained her as part of the 4-H horse project. I even showed her at Achievement Day. Fiona was very tolerant. She stood still after winding herself up in the long lines. She became trained to walk, trot, canter, all at high speeds. Collection was something neither of us embraced. By the end of the year she would back, turn on the haunches and forehand, side pass, open and close gates… All with rather sporadic attention.

Of course, Fiona trained me too. Every horse I have trained has taught me something new.

I have trained Morgans, Thoroughbreds, and Arabians from zero to hero. (Zero meaning everything from nearly impossible to halter to pretty darn tame, just never ridden.) Those were–for the most part–the easy ones.

I paid my dues

Of course, it did not all go smoothly. My first “failure” was another horse my mom had bred. Abacus Mad Max was one of the four foals my mom bred during her stallion Carlyle Command’s second year at stud. I decided to ride all of them as three-year-olds. The others were fine. I showed Max’s half-brother Hulk at our Regional Championship show after only a few months of training–as a three-year-old stallion. The filly had been driven, but had never seen a rider; I showed her too. The third was so squirrelly I decided to put him out to pasture for a year, but he was a decent sort.

Max had always been a bit wild. I didn’t really do anything wrong with him, but I was not careful enough. If I had half the experience that I do now, he would have been no trouble. At the time, I didn’t have enough experience to recognize his fear. He deposited me twice on the ground, the second time spinning me through the air so I landed in a ball and banged my chin against my knee (you can get a concussion that way). After that my mom sent him to a trainer to be fixed.

And that’s how I learned

Most of the horses I have trained over the years have been easy. Problems arose because of user error; luckily I usually learned from my mistakes. I learned the most from the tough ones. First, I learned how to keep a leg on each side of the horse, no matter what happened. Slowly I started to get smarter, figuring out how to prevent the fireworks.

Yes, I paid my dues by making a lot of mistakes.

I’m good at fixing problem horses

The hard ones have been all those horses that needed fixing.

In the process of paying my dues, I learned to be very good at difficult horses. I have frequently ended up “fixing” horses that people had given up on. Of course, sometimes I failed to fix them. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become wiser about risk. Used to be the mere challenge made me want to take a horse on. I rode impossible horses just to see if I could.

Ironically, it took learning how to deal with almost anything to teach me how to say, “No, I am not going to fix that horse.”

Above: Riding one of my fixer-upper horses, Pancanal, in Nicaragua. I bought Pancanal off the racetrack in Panama. I was hoodwinked to a certain degree. He had anhidrosis (undisclosed) and behavioral issues (disclosed, but not the root, which I am sure was the anhidrosis). I fixed him for me fairly easily. It was much more difficult to fix him so others could ride him.

To this day I train all my own horses (and sometimes other people’s)

The last horse I trained from zero to hero was my friend Bill Givens’ filly WSG My Girl. When Bill dropped Maya off with me in 2018, she barely knew how to lead. Little over a year later, I showed her in Working Equitation Ease of Handling.

Above: WSG My Girl completing her first (and only) show in Working Equitation. She could have done very well if someone had chosen to keep riding her!

My next zero to hero project will be my yearling Scheherazade. She’s smart and confident and will be easy to train. Although I did not start her mother Fantazia, I did start Fantazia’s full sister, Lady. You can see pictures of Lady in my blog post about Sweeney Shoulder.

Just last summer I worked with my friend Anne’s gelding Dillon. (Read about Dillon’s first six days.) Turns out he was more complicated that that post implies, and then, just when I was starting to take him up in the hills, he lost a fight with a fly sheet. Then I took on Ron: not a problem horse, just one who needed an experienced rider. (Meet Ron the National Show Horse with Personality+).

I have a lot of blog posts about training horses

You can access them here: Training Idea Posts. My most viewed ever has been the Clover-leaf exercise for a round arena, with over 8,500 views when I published it in 2021… I must give Jerry credit for the idea though! Equine bone maturity: When can I start training a horse? has had a more enduring appeal, with steady traffic ever since I posted it.

I raced horses with an amateur trainer’s license on the track in Spain

The clincher might be that I have actually been licensed to train horses. To train a horse on the track in Spain, you need a license. Getting a license is not difficult. You just have to take a test. Everyone has to take the same test–professionals and amateurs. I took it alongside the Marques de Cuellar (Duque de Albuquerque) and a few genuine would-be professionals. I think we were all a bit boggled at the part about telling horse ages from teeth.

The license allowed me to figure as the trainer of my own horses when they raced on Spanish tracks. My “own horses” included those I owned myself, those I leased, and those I owned jointly with partners. The rule was that they had to race in my colors.

Reasons that I am not a horse trainer

All of the reasons people don’t train horses (or call themselves trainers) boil down to not wanting to be a horse trainer. That’s certainly been my case. This does not mean that I don’t like to train horses. I love to train horses. But I do not call myself a horse trainer for the following reasons.

I have never been paid to train a horse

In the beginning this was because I wasn’t very good at it. No one is, at first.

Thanks to trial and error, observation, fearlessness, and plain old stubbornness, I got better at training horses. At more than one point in my life, I could easily have been paid to train horses. In Spain I was offered an entire stable of racehorses to train. I said no.

Why?

I refused money partly because for years I hung onto the idea of never losing my amateur’s license. Not sure why. Maybe there was a part of me who imagined that someday I would once again show horses. If that happened, I would want to have all classes open to me. (Except gentlemen, of course. And honestly I never fantasized about the day I’d finally qualify for Jack Benny classes. Jack Benny famously claimed to be 39 forever — somehow I got there without noticing.)

Perhaps it was also because I feared that if I started down that road, I’d lock myself into a future I would never be able to fully embrace. There were many reasons I said no to that racehorse owner. Among them was the determination that my time on the track would be temporary, coupled with a reluctance to tempt fate.

I tend to dive into whatever job is in front of me headfirst. Even–especially–if I am not particularly good at it. Horses can be very addictive and though I could never live without them, I did not want to live on them.

I have never wanted to deal with horse owners!

This is also part of the reason I decided against veterinary medicine when I decided to go back to school. The worst thing about being a vet is dealing with owners. (On the stress of being a veterinarian.)

I have never truly wanted to be a horse trainer

When I was young, my dad told me that horse training was one of the best ways to achieve financial ruin. I actually think that applies to breeding horses more than to training them. And it’s not why I haven’t wanted to be a trainer.

I train horses for fun. I don’t know that it would stop being fun if I did it for money. But it might. Also, there are far too many other things I have wanted to do with my life. Horse training is all-consuming. It wouldn’t have left me time for much else. By choice, I am most definitely not a horse trainer.

And thank goodness it was a choice

I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity life gave me to become a trainer of horses. My mother deserves the most credit, for allowing me to live her childhood dream. (She lived her own dream by becoming a successful breeder, but she grew up riding ranch horses that were loaned to her. She never had the benefit of lessons until she was an adult.) My father too always supported me. He chose the fiery Morgan gelding who became my first horse when I was nine.

I am just as grateful that I could choose not to earn my livelihood with horses. There are many people who dream or once dreamt of riding horses. Far fewer had horses and dreamt of escaping that life, but they do exist. I have known many people who felt that the only way they knew how to work was with horses. Most of these wished they had had options–and many did, but sometimes it’s hard to leave a sure thing for a challenge.

Are you a horse trainer?

Reader, do you call yourself a horse trainer?

It’s up to you, really.

If you have or have had doubts, let those doubts start with what you’d be happiest doing. If horses make you happy, would it be better if you had or didn’t have to earn your living with them? Either way, try not to doubt your status as a trainer. I won’t say, “where there’s a will, there’s a way,” because that’s bullshit. Many things in life get in the way, no matter how much will you have. (Mostly the things that get in the way are your own “will” or your lack thereof.)

Of course, it’s not a bad thing to doubt your own knowledge. That’s how you learn. If you find yourself stuck with a horse, go get help. Work for lots of different horse people, riding lots of different horses. (Or driving them or whatever.) Pay your dues. Do it the hard way, that’s how you learn the most. If you are fortunate enough for this to be a possibility, don’t buy your way with money, buy it with blood, sweat, and tears.

The most common delusion of horse people is not that they are a trainer when they are not. (So don’t fall victim to imposter syndrome or vile gossip.) I’m not certain what the most common horse person delusion is, but I’ve got some candidates: (1) Seeing a baby and believing you’re going to win the [insert your discipline’s version of the Kentucky Derby here] with it. (2) Believing people don’t matter. (3) Believing people do matter. (4) Believing you know all you need to know about horses. (5) Believing training is a one-way street.

None of these delusions are incompatible with being a horse trainer. (Though 5 comes fairly close!)

Above: In the first photo, I am leading my mother’s gelding (possibly a stallion there) “Abacus Antares” (aka Hulk) with my brother Brendan around 1992. In the second, I am lunging her gelding Abacus Bebop with my son Ian around 2005. I trained both horses to ride, though Bebop had been harness-trained. For some reason, as soon as I get a horse halfway broke I get the urge to put some kid in the saddle.

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