By Will Clinging

Some time ago I wrote an article about giving your horse a break from training. I talked, if I recall correctly, about too much work over time becoming detrimental to the horse’s progress. Mental and physical breaks are needed to refresh the mind and the body.

I have reached the point where mental and physical fatigue has taken its toll on me personally. Some of you have seen my advertisement in this magazine over the last couple of months. I have had calls and emails from people thinking it is a mistake in the text because it says I am not accepting bookings or horses to ride. The ad is correct. I am no longer taking horses on for training and I am not booking any new clinics for the foreseeable future.

The horse world has been an interesting place to be for the past eight or so years. I have met and worked with many wonderful trainers and I thank them for sharing their knowledge with me. I have worked with many enthusiastic horse people wanting to learn more about their horses and how to handle them. But I have spent more time than I care to recall dealing with the uglier side of the horse world: the problem horses. I never started out in this business to work with problem horses and difficult behaviour but for some reason unknown to me that is what I am good at, so that is where I ended up. I do like to think that I had more success than failure when it comes to these horses, but I know I have not always been successful in changing what was going wrong. Some of these horses never really had a chance. We have all heard the saying there are no problem horses, only problem owners and riders. I don’t entirely agree. I have met a few horses that were just plain bad.

Not too many thankfully, but there are a few. Most of them, though, are taught to be problems, not intentionally but through poor handling caused by misinterpretation.

Over the years I have seen a lot of different horse training programs, videos, books, magazines, clinics, and demonstrations. I have found that most of what I have seen is missing the point behind why we work with our horses. People have so much bad information at the click of their mouse that they have become dangerous to their horses and how they behave. I do not blame the horse owner but rather the industry. The catch words “natural horsemanship” have become a joke. There is nothing natural about it. I know that there are many conscientious trainers out there who are doing very good work, but most natural horsemanship trainers are just scratching the surface when it comes to actually understanding what is going on inside the horse’s head. They are only interpreting actions but not the intention behind those actions.

Horse owners have no chance to correctly understand what’s happening because they have been taught to only see superficial movement. Or they are taught to work through so much repetitious work that the horse becomes brainwashed to behave in a very unnatural state of dullness.

I do apologize for ranting like this but if you had seen the volume of human created, preventable problems that I have seen, you would be as frustrated as I am.

This though is not the only reason I have decided to hang up my shingle as a horse trainer. As a trainer living in Merritt, I have to spend the winter working away from home in order to call myself a horse trainer. This has gotten harder and harder on me each winter. I have been looking to get out of this business for some time. I was away working all winter and as spring got closer the thought of having to ride other peoples’ horses all summer became depressing to me. I wanted to ride my own horses for a change and I wanted to be at home.

I am still making my living with horses but I have taken a step back in time. I started my career with horses as a working cowboy, and I have now returned to that. The fame and fortune I hoped to make as a horse trainer eluded me and the physical and mental cost to continue has become too much for me to pay. For those I have worked with, I thank you for your help. For those I have worked for, I thank you for your patronage. For those I have learned from, I thank you for your knowledge. For those special few who have been there behind the scenes, I owe much to you. I bid you farewell. One day I may return to this crazy horse world. I do hope that those of you still in it try to make it a more sincere place.