The Competitive Advantage of Training Average Horses
Horse people spend a lot of time looking for, talking about, watching, and obsessing over extraordinary horses. And let me tell you, as a professional, that obsession gets heightened. Nearly every professional is looking for “the next big thing” either for themselves, or to sell to a client, or if you really hit the sweet spot, both. The problem is you will spend the beginning of your career, or your whole career, never riding those superstar horses. And I am here to tell you, finding those horses should not be the goal.
Hear me out. Many of the top professionals DO have the luxury choosing only the best horses to ride. They have a sponsor that financially backs them so they can go about finding THE horse, because that is their job. Now, the trials, tribulations, headaches, and difficultly of finding, keeping, and dealing with sponsors, is a different topic for another time. You see, even though those situations do exist, the vast majority of professionals that get there, did not start there. To get to that point requires sacrifice, uncommon skill, significant work ethic, and honestly, a lot of luck. Beyond that, getting there requires riding a lot of average horses. Not only do you need to ride average horses, but you have to ride average horses so well that they are no longer average. THAT should be the point of a professional career.
16 year old me and my first horse, Dale. A very average 15.2 Quarter Horse jumping a 1.20m triple bar.
At its core, the job of a professional trainer is not to find their client a better horse, but rather to improve the horse they have. The trouble of course is that improving a horse takes a lot more time than finding a “better” one, and frankly, a lot more skill. There are cases where horse and rider are not suited to each other, sometimes that is based on skill and experience and other times that is based on performance goals. However, I often see horses that are sold or replaced without being given the time or opportunity to improve. And here is where the competitive advantage of working with average horses really comes into play. I myself do not have a superstar horse. He is a normal mover, an average jumper, has his share of physical issues, and as a baby, had more than a few “undesirable” behaviors. And despite all that, I absolutely love him. And you know what? Every single one of my clients benefits from my raising, starting, and training my very own average horse. If I had been blessed with the money to have my own superstar horse, or if I had incredible karma and had only ridden horses that were easy, or naturally gifted jumpers, or always sound with perfect conformation, then helping anyone who didn’t have that would be much much harder for me. Luckily for everyone (myself included), I have ridden easy horses, stubborn horses, hard horses, big horses, stiff horses, crooked horses, spicy horses, scared horses, fat horses and green horses. In other words, I have ridden a lot of average horses.
The real luck here is not that I have ridden those average horses, most people are riding average horses, but the luck was that I was given the tools to improve them. Perhaps “given” is too passive of a word here. What really happened is I learned from the best, and because of my literal blood-sweat-and-tear equity, I was taught, schooled, given, and forced into the tools I now have. I have been fortunate to sit on a few of those extraordinary horses everyone is looking for, but for me, that is just the cherry on top. The mark of an incredible trainer is not riding the best horses every day, it’s the ability to ride and train in such a way that you significantly improve every horse, no matter how ordinary. That should be the goal of every professional, and even more importantly, that should be the goal of every young professional coming up in the world. The goal should not be to find the extraordinary horse that “makes” your career, your goal should be learning to “make” the next extraordinary horse.