“Let’s Keep it Real”with Clinton Anderson

A Series by Clinton Anderson with Tracy Wager

So how Honest do you want your Horse Trainer to be?

At first glance that is a stupid question, of course I want my horse trainer to be honest with me! But my question is, having been in the industry for 25 years, is that I am not sure that people really do want their horse trainer to be THAT honest with them. You might say, why not? So, in my 25 years, I have been a trainer, I have been an owner and I have been a breeder. I have been all 3 at different times. I have seen the industry from every perspective. From the guy getting paid, from the guy spending the money and from the guy breeding horses. So, I have a pretty good feel for everyone’s side of the team.

At first glance, you may say, that is a stupid question, of course I want my trainer to be honest. But, in my experience I will say that at least 50% of owners do not want their trainer to be honest. Because, when a trainer calls a customer and says, your horse is not good enough to compete on, or your horse is not good enough minded, or lacks athletic ability, or whatever it is, for me to continue training him. It seems like owners fall into two categories; 50% of the owners say, “Thank You very much, I appreciate it, where do you think I can go with the horse, where can we sell it, what do you think he would be good for? Maybe he is good for Level 1, or maybe he can be a Ranch Riding horse? What would he suit, where can we put this horse in the industry that he might excel at?” So, instead of trying to pound a square peg into a round hole, let’s find the horse a place where he is good at. That is what 50% of the owners will do, because the trainer was being extremely honest with them. Remember, trainers have NO incentive to send a horse home. They lose money by sending a horse home. So, other than him being honest with you and not wanting to waste your money and his time (his time gets paid for whether your horse is there or somebody else’s). There is no incentive to call you up and tell you potentially bad news.

So, then the other half of the owners, they kind of get butt hurt

about it. They do not want to hear the truth. They think their baby is special, they raised it, they think the trainer is wrong! So, what those 50% of owners do is they will go thru a typical cycle where they will send that horse to the next trainer. He will milk it out 6 months to a year, tell them the horse is great. Then after about 9 or 10 months, they will call and say, “Well, he is not doing as well.”

So, then he says your horse is not good enough. Then they get upset again and send it to the next guy. Typically, it takes between 2 and 3 horse trainers of each milking the bills for another year apiece for the owners to finally realize that now they are into this horses training for 3 or almost 4 years and they still have the same average to below average horse that they had when the original guy tried to fire it halfway thru its 2-year-old year. But, instead of accepting their horse wasn’t very good, they blamed every trainer along the way. Now, there is some blame for some of the trainers, because most trainers, if they are really paying attention to their 2-year-olds, they know what they got. Within 6 months of you riding a 2-year-old, if that trainer is actually paying attention or he sees them ridden by an assistant every day, (he may not be riding them all, just watching them get ridden) he knows whether you have a below average horse, and average horse, and above average horse to a great horse. He may not be exact, but there are only 4 categories that they will fall into.

Now, when that trainer starts riding that horse, in the fall of his 2-year-old year he will have a much better idea. So, yes, every horse needs a good 6 months of Reining foundation. No matter whether this will be a Rope horse, trail horse - good reining training for 6 months, 6 days a week, for any 2-yearold, will make a good foundation for any horse, no matter what the discipline. Even if it is a below average horse, it still has to be a productive citizen. So, basically, the original trainer that fired the horse, he gets the blame. He fired my horse; he is the problem.

So, when I say to you…..ask yourself honestly, what kind of an owner are you? Are you a logical, unemotional, fact driven owner that can accept average to bad news? Or are you emotional, illogical and want to blame everybody else when your horse is just plain crappy? Sometimes we have good kids, sometimes we just have crappy kids. That is just the way it is. They are good parents, but they are crappy kids. OK, that is just the way it is. It doesn’t make anyone right or wrong. It is what it is.

Me personally, I loved it when trainers fired my horses when I was an owner. Because it meant they were being honest with me. But see, I never let them have a chance to be dishonest. Because I personally flew and saw my horses every 6 weeks. Wherever

they were in the Country, right on the dot every 6 weeks I was on a plane. So, they couldn’t fool me even if they tried too because I was there, and they knew I was going to be there every 6 weeks. Now, it may have still been an average horse, but at least an average horse would still keep getting better.

Most people are naive. They put their horse in training, and they might check on it every 6 months! They have no idea what’s going on with the horse. Again, horses and horse trainers are like employees, and employees will do what you inspect, not what you expect. 1 out of 10 employees will do what you expect whether you are on the job or not as a boss. The other 9 will only do what they think you are going to inspect. So, when they know, you are going to inspect their work, they will probably do average or above average work to keep your foot out of their ass. Most horse trainers know if you are an owner that is going to be involved. Now there is a huge difference from being involved and being a pain in the ass. Calling the trainer every day, showing up every week unannounced. That is very unhealthy.

But as a good rule of thumb, so see your horse every 6 to 8 weeks. Be respectful, let the horse trainer know you are coming. Pick a time that works for you both. So, it is not a time where he has 5 other customers there. Try and be respectful and not take up the trainer’s entire day. Remember, he is not there to please you, he is there to ride horses. If you get half an hour or an hour of his time you are lucky. If he spends half a day hanging out with you, there is a half a day that everybody’s horse did not get ridden either. So, understand that you might be the most important person in your world, you might have center of the universe disease, but there are 40 other horses there in training and those owners’ horses deserve to be ridden as well! Yes, most horse owners have center of the universe disease!

So, getting back to the original question. How honest do you want your horse trainer to be? I loved it when horse trainers were honest and fired horses. Because what I did when they fired them, I said, “What level do you think they can play at?” He might be a Level 2 horse and one might put that horse with a Level 2 rider. It does not mean I have to sell the horse; it does not mean I have to junk it. I just find where he will excel at.

The bottom line is this. Unless the trainer is going to show your horse, or you are a non-pro and you’ve got 2 or 3 horses with that guy. Your horse is not going to get the most attention. Let’s just knock it down to what it is. Training a Non-Pro Futurity horse, for a trainer, is the most losing profitable part of the business. Because he gets zero percent of the prize money. When that non-pro wins, he gets none of it! At least when he wins in the Open, he gets 50% of the prize money. So, for him to train a Non-Pro Futurity horse, and they are soooo good now, (these Futurity Non-Pro horses) you basically must have an Open horse to compete at that level. That Non-Pro Futurity horse actually takes more time to train than an Open horse. Because the non-pro horse must be idiot proof! It has to be button proof; it must be able to put up with some bad cues and still do his job.

So, most trainers have zero incentive to train a Non-Pro Futurity horse for you, unless there is something in the pie for them. Which is that you are going to buy them an Open horse! Or maybe you are a good enough customer that sends them 10 or 15 colts every year? You have to sweeten the pot some way. For him to just take 1 Non-Pro Futurity horse and train it for you, there is nothing in it for him. Now, if he thinks he will do a really good job for you and

Me personally, I think horse trainers need to charge more. If somebody is just going to say to you, “I’m just going to send you the colt for 90 days to start.” They need to be charged a higher rate. What’s the incentive there for a trainer to do it? He doesn’t get to show it, but he does get to put up with all the dangerous stuff, which is the first 90 days. The first 90 days is the most important that it gets done well, so what incentive does he have to do it? I think that the less time that the horse is in training, the more the bill should be. The longer the horse stays in training, the cheaper the bill should be. You go to a dealership and buy ten cars, the better the deal will be, compared to if you walk into a dealership and want to buy one car.

Back to the original question is: How honest do you want your horse trainer to be? I found that a lot of trainers have told me over the years that honesty does not pay. It is sad to actually say that, because when I ask them why, 9 out of 10 of them will say that “I have lost more good customers by telling them the truth then whenever I did B-Sing and lying to them. Because when I tell them the truth, they get upset with me, they blame me and take it personal. It’s not personal, if anything I am trying to save them money! Basically, and unfortunately in the horse show world, the reining and cow-horse world there is a general stigma that honesty does not pay. Sad, but it’s kinda true. Because owners have really screwed that up. That is insane, yes insane! And when you get done reading this, you may hate me too. You may say after reading this, well that’s stupid, I want my trainer to be honest. But really! Ask yourself in a quiet place with nobody around, “How honest do you want somebody to be?”

It’s kinda like if you have an ugly kid. Do you want to believe he is good looking, or do you want to believe he’s ugly? You may love that little ugly guy, he could be as ugly as a heifer’s butt, that’s a fact! It doesn’t mean that you don’t love him, or you don’t care for him, but he ain’t no Brad Pitt. That is a fact of life! It’s easy for me to be objective about people’s kids, because I don’t have any! So, I can be really objective.

Me, even writing this article will anger half the people. The people that are emotional about their horses, will hate this article. Because it basically calls them out. The people that are logical, fact driven and honest and like honesty, will love this article. Most trainers will like this article. Because I am basically saying that, if you are willing to be an owner and can handle good honest news, that’s your trainer! You should be thanking your trainer for firing your horse. Thanking him! What you don’t want to do is get that call in September of his 3-year-old year and hearing that he is just not making it. Now you just wasted 20 months of training and money, when that horse could have been 5 or 6 months into his 2-year-old year.

So, ask yourself, how honest do you want your horse trainer to be?