12/04/2025
This so hits home. Unfortunately, I mostly stopped my travel training for the same exact reasons Luke listed, and then some.
The horse industry is hard, very hard.
I am glad to still be perusing it, and helping horses with saddle fitting (& maybe the occasional Mustang to train). But the horses are the real passion, and the people (especially in the days of social media) can make it damn near impossible to enjoy that passion; so there are many days I want to give it all up.
I really hope things do change, or there will be few of us horse professionals left.
Why I No Longer Take Horses For Training?
When my career began twenty years ago, everything was different. I enjoyed riding horses and soon found a way I could get paid to do it. Fast forward a bit and I was working a steady job to pay the bills as I was building my business, and in the meantime was learning a lot, about horses certainly, but as much about people.
Horses are the easy part, people are not. Quite frankly, people are hard to please and at the same time are often unreasonable. I have met some great people because of horses, many were clients, but people are still the hardest part.
Here is a situation that played out enough that I have it memorized by word.
Client-I have a horse I need started.
Me-how old is it?
C-5 or 6, I really wanted it to mature before it was started and now I dont have the time.
Me-what will be changing in your schedule so that you can keep riding the horse when it comes home?
C-oh I will find the time. I just can't afford to get hurt right now.
Me-I can't either
Me- here is what I charge...per month, and I require 90 days
C-oh I can't afford that! What can I get for 30 days?
Me-........
C-and I want to be there everyday so that I can watch you and learn what you do. Can you work it everyday on my schedule?
If life was only this simple. The truth is that training horses is a very tough business. I have recently had numerous aspiring trainers reach out to me, which is great. But everyone needs to realize that that the industry needs to fix some things. If we dont do some things soon, I fear no one will be training horses in a decade, especially starting colts. And that is where I want to focus on.
We have too many people that have trained one or two and think they know everything and want to throw stones at everyone else that might do things differently. Then, what realistically needs to be charged to make the finances work is much more than most will pay. So why would a young person want to start something that takes considerable time to learn, doesn't pay much, and has a high risk of a short career?
So here is what I believe can be done. Take it or leave it.
Be reasonable, despite what you may think, ALL young, uneducated horses can have their moments. I know in the YouTube, TikTok age that doesnt happen, but in the real world it does.
Don't be cheap. It isn't the trainers responsibility to make horses affordable for you.
Understand that the process of training a horse is a VERY time consuming, thought out process filled with immense intentionality in everything and that doesn't end when you pick them up from the trainers.
And finally and most importantly, understand that horses are not programmable. Just because a trainer spends tons of time teaching a horse to do all the things, but you do everything differently they they did. You will get a different result. That wasnt and isn't the trainers fault. Ask the same way they did or expect something different.
I have just scratched the surface of the topic. Much more could, and maybe should be talked about. And to be fair the horror stories can be told from both the client and trainers perspective by many of you. So lets see if we can communicate better with each other and do our best to look at life from potentially others perspectives, not just our own, just like when we are working with our horses.
Pc Tracey Buyce Photography
