Sometimes the Best Trainers Are Not the Best Teachers

You may remember that in a previous post or two, I mentioned about a trainer that I was learning from. She's a great horse trainer, but in the end, it wasn't to be. Sometimes the best trainers cannot teach. You see, my daughter was even taking riding lessons from this woman, but that too has stopped. There's a moral here, but let's hear the story first.

I went out nearly everyday to this woman's place to learn from her. I was highly motivated, and more than happy to help her try and get started with a business to help people with their horses. Now generally I'm a quick learner, but something wasn't right here from the start. So here's how things went. I believed that this lady would be a great person to learn from. After all, she's an excellent trainer, and she taught another girl who is now working with show horses, and excelling at it. Working for big barns with national show horse winners. Surely I had hit the jackpot for a teacher...but...she'd "taught" this girl since she was young. Preteens or earlier. And she never failed to mention this one student, this sole star pupil. Which is fine and dandy, I wasn't the best musician in my middle school, high school, or college band. I can take being in someone's shadow. I cannot take being compared to someone though, for I am not them. I began to wonder about my lessons very early on. My first lesson I was lunging, great place to start. I wasn't sure I was doing the best I could, but I certainly learned a better way to lunge a horse. But my very next lesson, I was long lining a horse while it pulled a tire. Surely some steps had been missed here. The next lesson wasn't any better, I was lunging again. And then the next one I was riding a horse who is not a lesson horse, and I hadn't ridden a horse in about 5 years. (Since I got pregnant with my first child). The worst part is, she just walked away almost as soon as I got on the horse. I didn't complain. Surely this would all make itself apparent later on. How it all wen't together that is. But then things got hectic as life does. I spent about a week and half just running around for errands and taking me and my girls to various doctors appointments. When you live in the country, nothing is close, and every appointment and most errands can be an all day event. I tried to keep in contact with my teacher, and told her once it was all said and done with, that I was wanting to come back out and work some more with her. Her mother fell sick though, and she was out of two for two weeks. Several times throughout that though, I expressed my eagerness to go back out and learn....and then nothing.

A week after she had returned to town, I was at my parent's place working on the garden. In the high heat and humidity, I had a sheen of sweat going as my mom came out and sat next to the garden to chat. I wasn't expecting the subject of Jenn to come up. My mother sat there and told me how Jenn apparently felt that I had given up on helping her with her business. I figured this was maybe why she had seemed to have lost interest in teaching me, but this still bugged me. I told my mom I had expressed interest on going back to see her, but that she would never reply to any of my messages. Not only that though, as much as this lady claimed to have wanted my help, she didn't listen to a single piece of advice I gave her. Apparently she didn't need my help quite as much as she claimed. At least, that's how I felt. But it's her business, she has final say. That I understood. But months went by and I was left to simmer in my own disappointment. Not only had she stopped teaching me, she had picked up another person here or there over the months to teach. Why had she just randomly given up on me and replaced me? That's what I was left to constantly wonder about for months... I ended up finding out why one day when Jenn upset my mother. Apparently, for the hundredth time, Jenn had complained about me to my mother. (Mind you, while I was left to simmer, my daughter was taking "riding lessons" from this woman every week. They were just as unstructured as my training lessons had been. So I saw her weekly, although I didn't say much...That's just being an adult. Learning to just bite your tongue)

I didn't know it, but this woman apparently took issue with many things I did. HOWEVER, instead of being a good and proper teacher and bringing these things up to me, she wouldn't say anything and just complain to my mother about it later. (I'm 24, I can handle some criticism) And this is where everything began to fall into place. And here was what really happened. Jennifer was and likely is, only good at teaching people who have grown up with horses. Unlike me, who too lessons on and off over my childhood and took the occasional trail ride at the local stables when able. I don't have that inherent horse sense that you get when you're raised with horses, which apparently this woman could not train me without. Jenn's method of teaching for training or riding was very much, "Go fiddle with the horse until something clicks, or until I feel like you're ruining my horse in which case I'll take over and you just try and figure out what I'm doing with no explanation."

So when I messed up, or didn't understand what I was supposed to be doing, Jenn wouldn't explain anything or correct me. She would later just go and complain to my mom that I simply just didn't listen to her, which couldn't have been further from the truth. When she saw me playing in the field with my horses, a game of chase and jumping, she would later tell my mother that what I was doing could cause me a lot of issues later (it hasn't). If I tried to explain why I had done something a certain way, she would interrupt me and tell me I was wrong without ever allowing me the chance to explain myself or my reasoning. And so, I just wasn't listening to her....but she never talked to me about anything either. It was never a conversation. I could not listen to her because she wasn't speaking to me. She was speaking to my mother. And finally, my mother got fed up with it. After all of this came to light, I stopped taking my daughter to lessons with her. She'd do well with a program that has more structure anyways.

Moral of the Story

Sometimes the most savvy people can't teach you anything. Usually the best teachers out there are the ones who have struggled and had to figure things out on their own. I didn't walk away from all this without learning anything either. I learned 3 very important and helpful things from all this.

1) I learned a better way to lunge a horse. Really it makes so much sense once you think about it too.

2) I learned to watch the trainers, and not the horses, when looking to others to help me to solve a problem. It's easy to get wrapped up in watching the horse, but the trainer is who you should be watching. This has helped me realize that just about everyone trains the same. From Clinton, to Parelli, to Carson James, to Klaus Ferdinand. There is almost no difference between any of them once you start really watching them all.

3) Make things fun for you and the horse. Whipping my Shire won't make her more eager to work. Going for a walk and teaching her new things constantly does though.

And you know what? Just keeping these three things in mind, I've been able to make massive amounts of progress completely on my own this year. Without even going out regularly to work with my horses, not daily or even weekly, I've been able to get to this point with my girl. All without the help of anyone else. She's great while lunging, I can cinch her up in the most ridiculous get ups, we can go for walks, we can go swimming, she leads excellently, loves baths, ponys the kids around, and picked up neck reigning in about 30 minutes. She doesn't really know to go forward yet with me on her, but she's got turning and backing down easy. And she's not the only one making great progress. Eclipse, her pasture buddy who is a whole lot more reactionary than her is making amazing progress as well. Over this summer she went from a horse who hadn't been handled since she was a weanling and was underweight to a horse who is wanting to please. She can be brushed and touched anywhere. She stands to have her feet cleaned and doesn't even mind the ferrier. She now will follow me around the pasture over her pasture buddy. Something that only took about 45 minutes to achieve. With or without a trainer to help me, I'm making great progress on my own, and I really hope soon to get a camera and mic so that I can share my trials and errors with everyone. A teacher is great to have, but sometimes it's better to simply go without instead of sticking with a bad one.

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