12/28/2024
Everyone is starting to get those 2 years olds started for the year, then there’s the ones who don’t show but waited to have their older horses started and I often get asked about what do I prefer younger horses? Older? What about the 8/9 year olds? I always have the same answer to me they all start the same…. Each horse is of course and individual but a clean slate is a clean slate whether it be a 2 or 9 year old.
Every horse of course has a unique personality and will all have different learning curves, different strong areas, and different weak areas. I don’t ever have an age preference but I do prefer that if I’m starting one to be the first trainer handling them because the problem typically isn’t age but bad habits formed by inexperienced handling. Often time 2 year olds “seem” easier because they hadn’t had a group of handlers inconsistently putting training on them.
C**t starting is often a very misunderstood title. It has different meanings form being someone’s crash test dummy, to a person who gets on and “yee haws” one around to a person putting a foundational handle on a untrained/unhandled horse. Then you have these c**t starting competitions that give people a false impression of horses can be safe in just a few hours. Not every rider has the same horse goals so there are many different ideas about what a person wants for a training and expects to pay. Some people are just looking to get that young horse safe for them to climb on and trail ride, some are looking for a horse ready to handle performance horse training, and others are looking to see if the horse is going to buck everyone off. I always get a few messages about someone having a c**t with all the ground work done and they are looking to see what it costs for 30 days and my answer is the same, I don’t take anything in for 30 days, it’s not long enough for anything human or animal to learn to build good habits.
Think about it this way, when a horse arrives it takes it a couple days just to get settled in the barn and learn the new schedule, take in its new environment, and learn it’s starting a new curriculum in order to form muscle memory and build good habits. The horse will be starting a program to build that muscle memory and the muscle memory will be what creates good habits. That is not an over night process. Some horses learn quickly and then there’s the ones that could be named “50 first dates” because day after day it’s almost like they start from scratch. Then you have the ones with “ground work” using what ever hotshot clinician of the hours methods the owner may have tried using that has bad habits that will need to be undone. Undoing bad habits and retracting the good ones takes more time. Then you have horses that arrive that need feet done because they have not ever been handled, or under weight, over weight, need teeth floated, or what ever it is they weren’t prepped for before going to the trainer. All of these things are things that slow down progress. You wouldn’t want to take an out of shape human needing training and medical attention and throw them into the Boston Marathon and expect them preform at the top. Yes! There are the few anomalies but that is not the norm and rarely happens! So don’t expect to throw a horse that is not in shape into a full work load.
30 days is honestly about 30 hours of work. If a person works a horse 30 days straight with no days off (which horse and trainer deserve at least 1 day to recover), and for the very least one hour every day that is not enough to build any type of a physical or mental foundation. When I work a young horse I find breaking up sessions helps them mentally absorb the lesson better. A typical session with one c**t maybe, I will get them out and groom, saddle if they are already in that stage. If not we do the prep work, we’ll move their feet around and do all the work to get them saddled, and tie them up. We will come back out and do more prep work to teach them to safely saddle. If they are ready to be saddled we typically groom, saddle and tie them up. That is about 15-20 mins if the horse is cooperative. They will stand tied while I work a couple other horses, then we will put that horse to work. I’ll work the young horse if he is physically capable 45 mins to 1:30 of good physical work. If the horse gets the lesson and things go good we finish sooner than an hour and a half, if they need longer to process we will work with them to be able to understand and end on a good note. Typically most horses get an hour of hard work time. That is not a lot of time on a young horse when you look at it in hours. 30 hours is just not enough for a horse to build a good foundation. Heck I find most horses will go along for the first 3 weeks easy and then right about week 4 or 5 is when they decide they want to try and find ways to not do the work. That is when the real foundation really starts because all the training prior to that was starting to form a habit. It takes a minimum of 60 days for a smart, agreeable, in shape horse to start understanding and retain their training. 90 days is the average time with shorter or longer being an exception.
30 days is a waste of time and money for all involved. Now, let’s talk about what it cost… most do not want to pay for quality. There is a big lack in understanding between most owners and trainers in what it should cost for 30 days and what a person should get for their money. I see people wanting to pay 350.00/30 days for a person to start their c**t. You can not pay a dog trainer to take a dog for a week for that, horse boarding cost more than that at good boarding barns, feed cost more then that for 30 days, people will pay 350.00 for a night out. So why would a person want to basically pay their own money to train your horse? 350.00 wouldn’t even cover feeding a horse in a good work program for 30 days let alone pay for the trainers time so in the long run at a rate of 350.00 per month it costs the trainer money if they are doing the job. A good quality trainer has spent a lot of years and money getting the experience to train a horse, most people use a c**t starter as an insurance policy that they won’t end up in the hospital with broken bones so at the very least they should be worth the cost of the insurance deductible. A good quality trainer in today’s market should cost between 1000.00 to 1500.00 a month. So be ready to pay that because anything less you should definitely look good and hard at the person training and hope they don’t hurt the horse, the owner, or both. If you find a trainer who does a great job, brings along a horse that is soft, kept sound physically and mentally, and cost less than 800.00 send them my way, I’ll definitely utilize them. Again for those who say I used so and so… it’s a rare find to find one who will do what I describe as a good foundation.
Now what you should get for your money. That is also something that is often miscommunicated. I’m going to presuppose that a person did their home work and vetted the trainer to ensure they will be paying a knowledgeable quality trainer. A trainer should have a quality feed program, offer safe shelter, and a minimum of 5 days a week of work, with the horse being handled/worked a minimum of 1 hour each of those days. When I start a never handled horse in a good physical condition my goal is to have that horse saddled and the beginning stages of mounting in the first week. Some may go faster but some may take longer. My goal is to have that horse in 30 days understand manners, how to accept the basic ground work, accepting a saddle, accepting a person to mount, and the beginning concept of understanding reining, while keeping correct biomechanics. I will not let a horse move out incorrectly. By that I mean they are not to be allowed to move out on the wrong lead, cross firing, arced incorrectly, yanking on hands, etcetera. We will work on each thing and will not move to the next until it’s correctly preformed by the horse. If I’m ground working a horse and he can not travel to the left on the correct lead, we will work on that lead before we move on to the next stage in training. We DO NOT BUILD BAD HABITS or incorrect muscle memory. It is things that have to be undone and undoing bad things to build good habits takes more time. We train using the most minimal pressure it takes to reach the horse, we can work them to inspiration or desperation and I can tell you that desperation never turns out good for anyone involved. Traning should be a slow and often boring process. Drama is for TV sitcoms (I don’t dare say the name of the show) and teenage girls, not in the training pen. Slow doesn’t mean not riding the horse for 6 months, it means teaching the horse at the rate that is best for the individual horse to learn to be soft, safe, and confident. The saying that slow is fast is a true statement. I often say the first 60 days of work seems to be slow but at the end of 90 days a person typically will have a horse that can do what most other horses hadn’t learned in a year. By 90 days I’m looking for a horse to confidently understand ground manners, saddling, warming up, walk, trot, and lope on the correct lead, upward and downward transitions, stop, back, start of a turn around, and learning body positions to start setting them up for more advanced maneuvers all with nice contract on a rein. The horse should start to have the understanding of confidence out away from the barn, herd, arena. That is for the average horse that came in good physical shape, and no bad habits. I have had them learn quickly just as I have had the ones take more time but the average horse can learn from an experienced trainer the good basic foundation in 90 days.
Starting a c**t is a dying art because most people want to pay crash test dummy prices but expect horses ready to go into a show pen in only 30 days. If a trainer offers or promises that, run!
Most performance horse trainers will start and train the horses that come in. We do it so we know the horse has a good foundation and doesn’t come in hard mouthed with bad biomechanics. Most people’s first questions is how much? The next one is how many rides will he have in 30, 60, 90 days? How long will you ride each day? When will I get to come ride? Well, I can’t answer that. Training by good trainers isn’t a the hourly thing, it’s not a calculated planning thing. Trainers train horses through repetition and we move on when we feel the horse has a good understanding of what it is they are learning. Feel is not something we can put a time frame on because every horse will have a different feel. I have honestly had horses I had to work for hours, sure I give them small breaks to air back up but it’s has taken hours for them to get the simplest thing, then I have had the ones that pick up the most advance task in minutes. I cannot tell you which horse you have until I have worked with it for at the very least a couple weeks. I can not guarantee you that your horse will pick every task up daily the same way they did the day before. Horse training is not something a person just gets up and does one day, horse training is something a person learns to feel through time. Feel is a talent but a talent developed over time.
So I’m going to say this and make a few people mad most 15 year old kids do not have the necessary experience to understand the timing and feel needed to train a horse. Yes they may have ridden their whole life, they might stick good but most do not have nice soft horses. Another thing is people can not watch videos and then one day become a horse trainer. Feel comes through spending years learning how to understand feeling the horse and knowing how to recognize when to feel the right thing and feel the wrong thing, and knowing how to give reward or make the correction. Having experienced
trainers helping you learn how to do the right thing and recognize how to feel the horse is essential for a person to become a good trainer. Years of learning from other advanced trainers, years learning from mistakes, learning to recognize the mistakes to not make them again, years of hard work, years of experience builds talent. Yes there is the extremely rare person born with a gift of being able to just pick up doing any task, those people are extremely rare. Most of the extremely talented people in anything will tell you they were not born gifted they worked hard to develop their talent. Talent isn’t given it’s earned! I spent years learning, years working, years making mistakes, years of discipline, hard work, years being humble, years having more failures than accomplishments, lots of tears, lots of sacrifices. Many nights missing out on social events, early mornings, late nights, stepped on toes, eating dirt, having equipment that I had to McGiver together to keep going, paying my own money, and ignoring all the haters. I have worked for years to be able to know how to keep your horse physically and mentally safe in order to lay the foundation to keep you safe and build a horse with foundation to have a good handle in 90 +/- hours. Most people expect to pay their trainers less than what a plumber makes, less than the guy at subway for a job that means life or death for all parties involved. Client’s are paying a trainer because they don’t want to get bucked off and hurt, well where we don’t either there’s always a risk. Good trainers typically will have the experience to be able to handle training the horse in order to stay safe. If your trainer tells you a horse needs more time then remember they are the ones who spent years learning to listen to the horse so you should trust your trainer and listen to them. I’m talking about good quality trainers because you already did your homework and your horse is with the correct trainer. The beginning of your horse’s education is the most important steps, it’s the foundation layer in order to build a horse into the perfect team mate for whatever discipline it will move on to. For those who say in just want a trail horse so I don’t need a fancy trainer. Remember this, trail riding horses need to have the best handle of any discipline because those horses don’t have the safety of the arena and the gates. They have the most extreme environment to navigate and anything can pop out at anytime. The trees, cliffs, holes, can be just a run off away. Trail horses need to whoa faster than a reining horse. All horses need to have the ability to understand how to properly use all 5 body parts on the slightest touch from the rider in order to be safe. That ability begins from the first time that a horse is touched by human hands and that is why a good c**t starter/trainr needs to be experienced, appreciated, and trusted.
**tstarting
Written By: Michelle Gilles
Photo: extra groundwork with 2 yr old Boujee by Design.
