What Does a "Horse Trainer" Do?

May 16, 2015
3 min read

Most people when they first meet me and ask what I do for a living always have a great follow up question similar to this: "Oh, so you just ride horses all day huh? I smile politely and answer "pretty much", because unless you've ever been around me or my fellow "trainers." It's just a little more complicated than that.

You see, every morning when I get up, I start the day by fixing my beautiful wife coffee and breakfast. Then, on the way to the ranch, I get to spend a precious 10 minutes talking to my almost teenage daughter on the way to school hopefully while spotting a "slug bug" before she can. Then the real work begins. Until you reach the top of the horse training world and you can afford a staff to assist you, you get spend every day completing a long list of chores. Usually beginning with feeding, watering and cleaning stalls. This doesn't sound bad for a few horses, but a barn-full can take a little time (especially on Mondays)! Once you get this done it's time to work your ground. Why would you hop on a tractor everyday and plow dirt if you're not farming? Well, unless you want to have an injury (think a sink hole in a soccer field while playing soccer) then it needs to happen. Plus, you don't want to be breathing dust all day.

Now that it's probably noon, it's time to get on one! Well, maybe not yet, you may have just got a colt in and it needs to start with some solid ground work, or maybe you have an impatient four year old who needs to stand a little while longer without digging a hole you could swim in. Either way, it's a great day when you can just catch, saddle and ride. Even then though, I'm not just loping circles. 70-80% of my horses have less then 30 days of riding on them so we are still working on the basics of lunging, moving them where I want them to move and of course not blowing up and running off. On my older show horses, today might be a good day to try a new bit or put a little more pressure on them. In the reining I'm always working on lead changes, stops, turn-arounds and circles, the herdwork I've got working the flag then progressing to working a cow, for the fence work, well it's just a totally different animal of combined training and practice

.....NO day is the same!

These are the great days...when nothing breaks and must be fixed, the tractor doesn't need maintenance, the automatic water floats don't get stuck, the cows don't need doctored, my wife and I don't have to haul and stack hay, the Ferrier doesn't show up and need help, well mostly we just visit, but I tell my wife I really do help him.

I love my job as a "horse trainer" and take pride in the quality of training I put into every horse, but when you hear me tell someone that "I ride horses for a living," now you can grin a long with me knowing that it's just a little more than that.