'Always' Come Out With A Happy Horse?

http://medford.craigslist.org/grd/1337516332.html

At first glance, this is a nice ad. Personally, I would like to see pics but the overall tone is one of a gentle, nice person with horses.

The part I have a problem with is when ANYone states that, no matter what, they ALWAYS get so-and-so out of a horse. My first thought would be that this person needs to deal with WAY more horses.

I don't care who you are, if you've never had a horse that won't play ball the correct way, you need to deal with a lot more horses. I've found that about 3-5% of horses are actually hardwired wrong in the brain and can't be fixed. Just like people. There are the horsie loons out there that shouldn't have been born in the first place!

Now I know of trainers who only deal with certain breeds or even bloodlines. Hell, the older I get, I'm nearly to that point myself! That's fine. If you specialize in, say, hunt seat, you only want a certain type/kind of horse. To try to make a square horse fit into a round hole is defeating, big time! So, if you have any sense, you look for a certain type.

My problem is when someone says, 'come one, come all' with any type of horse and the horse will be a 'happy' one after the training. In the law of averages, just doesn't happen. If you're a trainer, you should have been on literally hundreds, if not thousands, of horses and have dealt with any and everything the horse can throw at you. Just because someone has trained even 25 head, doesn't mean much. Especially in this day and age of quickie training and people buying rank 4 year olds with nary a bit of handling or very little (actual case mentioned here).

So, I'd say go out and watch this poster and get in depth info about what he/she has done. If you have a fairly complacent horse and just want to plunk around an arena, then this may be the deal for you.

Forgot to say, even highly successful trainers have failures. The difference is that they know how to cover it up and keep the duds out of the limelight and never admit to it. No trainer is 100%. No one.