She reminds me of a trainer I used last summer. No clear progress with either of the two horses she was working with, but I stupidly thought she was doing no harm and heck, it was getting the horses out and handled and groomed when I had other horses and obligations to deal with. There were some warning signs that I should have heeded, in retrospect, but she was fairly inexpensive, she came to my farm, and she was consistent, at least about showing up. Guess that’s not quite enough to go on.
Dismayed when two months had gone by without her getting onto my 4yo mare (she was supposed to be starting her), I took said mare to a colt starting clinic with a well-respected cowboy TYPE trainer. A friend took my 2yo gelding to be started at the same clinic. Everything the clinician said that was good was my trainer’s doing, or referred to something SHE had taught them (um, she had barely even touched the gelding). Everything negative was mean or not true.
That night after Day 1 of the clinic I got a long rambling phone message about how she was looking forward to riding both of the horses once they got home, and how well she had prepared them. Well the gelding had nothing to do with her, and the mare ended up flunking out. She had let the mare set the agenda (why I was wrong about it being good to have them worked even if nothing was getting done) and made the mare’s general obstinacy that much worse. Oh, but the trainer didn’t get to SEE the mare flunk out. She came on Day 2 of the clinic (I was PAYING her to attend the clinic to identify training holes) and I wasn’t giving her enough attention or credit, I don’t know, she left in a huff and didn’t come back for Day 3 or 4. More money down the drain.
The sad thing was that she was riding yet another horse of mine, and they got along pretty nicely (mare 2 was green broke). And she was giving me lessons and it was clicking quite well (more stretching and exercises than horsemanship but that’s what I needed). When I called her to tell her that she wouldn’t be riding either mare 1 or the gelding, I said I’d be happy to have her keep riding mare 2 and teaching me. But she quit in a big snit, not returning my phone call and telling a mutual acquaintance how ungrateful and wrong I was – and I later heard she gave up all her training gigs and disappeared.
Perhaps she went to live near Blind Alter!! :eek: