How much contact do you have with your trainer?
If you have a horse in their barn and it’s not right around the corner, what is your normal level of communication? Is it via text, calls what?
Thanks,
Emily
No news is good news.
So that’s it? My horse is away and it’s accepted to not hear anything?
~Emily
Funny this thread should be next to the “attracting new owners” thread.
Yes, that’s right, your expectation should be to write checks and not expect to hear any updates unless there is a minor/major catastrophe or your horse is getting entered in a race. If you go to visit your horse, be prepared to be (at some subtle level) to be received as an inconvenience.
I think it is reasonable to make a periodic phone call or text to check in, but don’t have expectations of detailed updates.
See this is not at all how we treated owners at the barns where I galloped and was an assistant.
This is depressing.
Emily
You are well within your rights as a paying owner to dictate the level of communication you would like but you asked about the norm. You have to remember that you aren’t the average owner either. Many owners wouldn’t know what end to feed so they would have to either dumb it down so much that it would be a waste of time or spend a ton of time educating the owner so they understood what the heck they are talking about. It does sound to me like you haven’t been happy with this trainer pretty much since the start, you might want to think about making a change to someone who respects your knowledge and has the time to share the day to day stuff with you.
Not everybody gets treated that poorly, Emily. Though your expectations about communication are something that should be hashed out ahead of time. And you should probably realize that you’ll be told to expect better communication than you end up getting.
We’ve had trainers who figured that if they talked to us once a month they were doing us a big favor. We didn’t last there long. Minimally we want to hear from our trainer (or the assistant) once a week or so. And immediately if something goes wrong.
Our current trainer calls us every couple of days if we don’t show up in the morning which we are are fortunate to be able to do 2-3 times a week.
FWIW, my opinion is that the way to attract new owners to horse racing is to give them access to their horses and make them feel like they’re part of the process, rather than just a debit card.
In my partnership, I’m lucky if I get communication once a week. Usually it’s more like once a month. “Oh yeah… I’m paying for these race horses…”
I am in a partnership and local to my horse so I run into the partnership manager and the trainer pretty often. Whenever I do, I get a quick update from them. I also try and go out to see him once a month or so so I obviously get updates then as well. But there’s no set time frame on when I get those updates.
Some friends I know who own horses only hear about their horses when they’re ready to run and/or once a month. Others get updates a few times a week. I think it depends on what the trainer knows the owner expects.
I don’t know that not communicating with an owner regularly is necessarily treating them poorly, it is just not what you and many others want. It IS what a lot of other owners want so it is just a matter of finding a trainer who meets your needs as well as your horse’s.
So here’s the thing I wouldn’t have considered myself unhappy with either the trainer or the training as a whole had there been the communication levels that we spoke about early were maintained. The whole thing is tough because it was supposed to be a short term thing just to get the gate card. Her regular trainer and I get along VERY well. This was a necessary move due to the inability to get a gate card with the first trainer. (Trains off the farm, big time assistant for a HOF trainer and a thriving jump jockey career)
At the beginning the communication was there, to a lesser extent than was preferred but not awful. An issue came up, and no one told me until 2.5 weeks later, the lack of communication started to act as a mild annoyance to me. Here the filly had an issue (training not health) and I wanted to be able to be in on the knowledge at least.
I would agree I’m not a typical owner but this person knew that going in. And certainly knew it when I showed up and rode my own horse during the training issues to be able to feel out the best path forward.
I don’t question their training abilities, but I think the lack of a gate card in a now extended period of time (3 months) combined with a lack of communication and understanding has made it a point where I will make a change. To what I am not fully sure of yet but I know I am not willing to pay anymore towards what has gotten to feel like a situation where the problems were prolonged to get more day rate. Probably not true but that’s how my husband and I feel.
~Emily
[QUOTE=Xctrygirl;8894691]
So here’s the thing I wouldn’t have considered myself unhappy with either the trainer or the training as a whole had there been the communication levels that we spoke about early were maintained. The whole thing is tough because it was supposed to be a short term thing just to get the gate card. Her regular trainer and I get along VERY well. This was a necessary move due to the inability to get a gate card with the first trainer. (Trains off the farm, big time assistant for a HOF trainer and a thriving jump jockey career)
At the beginning the communication was there, to a lesser extent than was preferred but not awful. An issue came up, and no one told me until 2.5 weeks later, the lack of communication started to act as a mild annoyance to me. Here the filly had an issue (training not health) and I wanted to be able to be in on the knowledge at least.
I would agree I’m not a typical owner but this person knew that going in. And certainly knew it when I showed up and rode my own horse during the training issues to be able to feel out the best path forward.
I don’t question their training abilities, but I think the lack of a gate card in a now extended period of time (3 months) combined with a lack of communication and understanding has made it a point where I will make a change. To what I am not fully sure of yet but I know I am not willing to pay anymore towards what has gotten to feel like a situation where the problems were prolonged to get more day rate. Probably not true but that’s how my husband and I feel.
~Emily[/QUOTE]
Three months should be more than enough time to get a gate card–especially since your horse was already in training. If there’s a legitimate reason why the gate card can’t be achieved in that time, I would hope that the trainer would have told you what it was.
I think it’s a real shame that so many trainers have an attitude that says, “I’m too important to talk to you” which is meant to intimidate owners into not contacting them. In this case, it sounds like you have some legitimate questions about the process.
Just curious. Where are you trying to get gate card ?
She’s at Penn National.
The reasons we went there were that the surface was better at the time of shipping than Delaware and the connections taking her on are good friends of my regular trainer. Regular trainer goes to Penn semi often for work and her husband is a jock there. We felt like we could watch her a bit better there.
That may not have panned out that way with the view of hindsight.
Me personally I wanted to send her to a friend at Belmont, (I was based there 2 winters, love the people and am a huge fan of their gate crew and how well they can handle young fillies) but the concern was that their A gate crew would be at the Spa… so we went to Penn.
Em
My trainer knows my husband well (husband trains out of state) so he knows how I feel about my baby. He calls about once a week or so and I can always call any time and talk to him or his wife. Can’t wait til they move to the fairgrounds and he’s close enough to visit weekly.
He is older and doesn’t text.
Actually, just saw where you posted your location. He’s closer to you than me! Lol. He’s at parx right now. Took this job a month ago.
[QUOTE=Xctrygirl;8895439]
She’s at Penn National.
The reasons we went there were that the surface was better at the time of shipping than Delaware and the connections taking her on are good friends of my regular trainer. Regular trainer goes to Penn semi often for work and her husband is a jock there. We felt like we could watch her a bit better there.
That may not have panned out that way with the view of hindsight.
Me personally I wanted to send her to a friend at Belmont, (I was based there 2 winters, love the people and am a huge fan of their gate crew and how well they can handle young fillies) but the concern was that their A gate crew would be at the Spa… so we went to Penn.
Em[/QUOTE]
I’m wondering what your regular trainer has to say about the delay. Especially since he/she is good friends with the people who currently have your filly. After all this time, I would think your trainer would want your filly back (hopefully w/ gate card) as much as you do.
FWIW, our somewhat challenging 2yo filly got to our trainer 3 months ago. She’s big, she’s immature, and we’ve been taking it slowly. In Aug-Sept I had seen her stand in the gate a couple of times and break once. Last week my trainer said that the filly was “coming along”. I mentioned, “she still needs a gate card.” Trainer said, “oh no, she already has that. You must have missed it.” So barring a real set-back, three months seems like plenty of time to me.
I apologize, I hadn’t been reading your other posts so didn’t know the background. I see things a lot from the POV of newer owners who are trying to navigate TB ownership. Though, I don’t think that being an experienced horse owner always gives you much of an “in” as you would think it would. Some people are just poor communicators. I totally agree with LaurieB, the sport needs to work on treating owners better.
Anyway, I think there is a big difference between “no news is good news” where everything is indeed progressing as it should, versus “no news” but some vague issue/inexplicable lack of progress being made.
Our major owner is in regular contact with our trainers plural, but he’s also a professional bloodstock agent and this is his day job. He passes news on to the partners and keeps us updated on things like when they’re going to run and where or if there are issues. In general, though, especially with the two-year-old, no news is good news and we’ll hear when they’re planning to start him. I would be concerned if we went three months and heard NOTHING, though.
My trainer is pretty good about updates. I text him about twice a week for info. I go down to the barn in the mornings about 2-3 times a month and find this helpful to keep up to date on the horses. He runs a smaller barn and seems not to mind. I would be upset if one of my horses had an issue and I didn’t hear about it.
