11/26/2025
Riding this c**t tonight, a rumor I heard a few months ago rang in my head as he loped around. A rumor about myself. An assumption really, made by a local trainer who I've never met. One who was apparently threatened when their clients asked about taking their horse to my program.
"She's heavy handed," they told their client.
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When I was a young teen, I begged to have a riding lesson with a reining trainer I looked up to. I spent my hard earned money from pushing cattle and selling horses I'd trained to local 4-H kids.
"She's too heavy handed." I over heard the trainer tell my mother as I rode my three year old gelding (that I'd paid for and broke out at 13 by myself) around their fancy arena. They had implied to my mother that I wouldn't make a good rider.
I cried the entire 2 1/2 hour drive home from that trainers place. That was when I vowed I would never make another rider feel the way I did that day; defeated and hopeless on the back of their own animal. Especially from the person who they went to for help and education.
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So there I was at a fun show, helping my 13 year old client get through her nerves, and I overhear a bitter trainer spreading a rumor about my abilities.
Over the years, I've dedicated myself to being as soft as possible with these athletes. And throughout all the years of college equine education, clinics, lessons, internships, self lived experience, etc. You know what I've learned about "heavy handedness"?
It's lack of feel. If you focus less on trying to be soft, and more of trying to feel the right timing with your horse, the "heaviness" goes away on its own.
At 13 years old, I probably didn't have good feel. And if that trainer would have decided to be kind and helpful, maybe I would have found it a lot sooner. But what matters is that I did find it.
Tonight, loping around this c**t that I started last fall, who's with me again for a winter tune up; I have to think: I'd rather be a "heavy handed" trainer than have an ugly attitude. Because if I do ever chose to be heavy handed, it's fixable. Unlike bad personality traits of some of these trainers. Trainers' who's cycle of immature bullying pushes more and more kids out of our sport.
So if this reaches you or your child who's been told they can't do it by a bully; I promise you, they can.
I might be a small program, but my program will continue to try to break the cycle one child and horse at a time. Regardless of the attempted besmirching from others.
