Spin off....mean (not ok) things trainers have said. ..

[Perfect10]

Oh, where to begin…

I once had a trainer tell both me (at about 11) and my mom about my 4 year old green large pony “I’d get rid of him, but he’s unsaleable. He will never amount to anything, if you want to ride him ever again it will not be at my barn.” I still have said pony, and he wins every class he enters. She was the same person who stood by the jump with a crop when my pony developed a stopping habit. After screaming, “Jump the d*mn jump!” while at her post and my pony running in the other direction, I proceeded to tell her (in tears), “He won’t jump it because he hates you!” It was demanded that I apologize. My mom told me I wasn’t allowed to apologize for what I said, just for taking that tone with an adult. We left shortly after, of course. To this day you can’t stand by a jump and have the pony jump it.

“You’re a fantastic rider, but you need a new horse. This one is cr*p.” Said by a well-respected clinician when I was around 13 after my horse had come back from a tendon injury. I cried, and he personally came to try to make me feel better by telling me how good of a rider I was… but still told me he hated my horse.

[MightyBobbyMagee]

[QUOTE=MunchkinsMom;5535898]
“Nice saddle, too bad she didn’t buy a horse good enough to wear it”.[/QUOTE]

I got one of those too. “That’s a nice saddle for THAT horse.”

[bumknees]

In 79 with first horsre in hand( under saddle) the no name trainer I had said to me " It is a good thing you got this particular horse as neither you nor she will ever amount to any thing in riding, though if you were to pick up under water basket weaving Im sure you would achieve wonderous things."
From that moent on( I switched trainers) almost every time after that when wenchy mare would be on her best behavor we would soundly beat her students.
almost 30 years later she approched me at a horse show and apologized to me. Im still not sure if I should be frightened that 1)Iapparently had not changed in all those years in appearance or2) that she remembered me…

[Graymaresrule]

After 6 days of trying to follow a certain clinician’s instruction she said “you need to go home and figure this out on your own. If you can’t even do this there is no point in bringing your mare back”

I was devastated but that didn’t stop me from replying “I had already figured THAT out”

But you know what?

I did go home(crying) and eventually I DID figure it out but certainly didn’t see a need to go back to that clinician

[FlashGordon]

Now I’m remembering why I’ve been trainer-less for 10+ years!

[Blue_Yonder]

[QUOTE=pixietrix;5536058]
“I’d be crying if I were riding like that,too. Now do it again”.

KOC, back when she was practicing for her ICP certification.[/QUOTE]

I must confess, I sort of like that one.

[Hampton_Bay]

“Your mare needs to canter more circles but you’re not a good enough rider to do it!” I had been riding for 15 years, on trained horses, and this was my first retraining project. I was later told she is a very very difficult horse to ride correctly, by someone who has ridden to GP on many horses he trained himself. She’s now solid at second and schooling third, and I’ve done almost all of her training myself.

[CDE_Driver]

This is sort of the other end of the spectrum, but…

I was taking a clinic from a guy that was a BNT/BNR at the time. My horse was a confirmed 4th level horse and we were schooling all the PSG stuff at home and it was coming along well.

This guy had me doing line after line of 4, 3 and 2x changes and they were getting worse and worse. (This was a horse for whom clean changes to 1’s came easy!) He kept yelling “Good, Good” and nothing else. I finally stopped, nearly in tears and said “It’s NOT good, it’s getting worse and worse and I am finished”.

My trainer was both mortified and proud. She said she was dying to tell me to stop and what to do to fix the problem! Come to find out the clinician had been chatting to someone on the rail the whole time and didn’t have a clue WHAT I was actually doing!

The thing that made me the most angry was that it took weeks to fix the changes after that, my poor horse was so confused!

[msj]

[QUOTE=FlashGordon;5536556]
Now I’m remembering why I’ve been trainer-less for 10+ years![/QUOTE]

Oh Flash, in spite of what is being remembered and printed here, there are some really wonderful trainers out there. In the 50 yrs I’ve been riding, I can honestly say, I’ve probably really only come across less than 5 poor ones. I’ve ridden with several that were mediocre but really only 3 bad ones come to mind. But I will admit that there were a number of yrs that I didn’t school with any trainers either and competed very successfully!

[hundredacres]

When I took my then 5 year old daughter to a barn to get her first official lesson she was terrified to be in a big barn, new instructor, and on a tall TB (even the horse was 100 years old)…she was so nervous she couldn’t think when the trainer would give her directions like, “Left rein! Right leg!” (she was 5 afterall and anyway that’s stupid advice)…and the trainer said to me: “You have a LOT of work to do with this child.”, rolling her eyes…sometimes I wonder if that wasn’t a defining moment for my daughter who has had to work tremendously hard to feel safe and relax on a horse, and she’s almost 12. Maybe it has nothing to do with it but to this day it pisses me off that she said that to me in front of my daughter.

[danceronice]

[QUOTE=Perfect10;5536346]

She was the same person who stood by the jump with a crop when my pony developed a stopping habit. After screaming, “Jump the d*mn jump!” while at her post and my pony running in the other direction.[/QUOTE]

:eek: I think I know her, or equally-evil spiritual twin.

[ex-racer_owner]

[QUOTE=Perfect10;5536346]
“He won’t jump it because he hates you!” [/QUOTE]

I’m sorry, but I think this is hilarious!:lol: Oh, out of the mouths of babes…

[Rel6]

[QUOTE=ladybugred;5536170]
I just hope all of you took your money elsewhere when spoken to that way. I certainly would have, after giving said trainer a large piece of my mind.

LBR[/QUOTE]

much easier said than done. for me, it was the only barn in the area I could afford to keep a horse at. I did stop taking lessons with that trainer though.

[PebblesNana]

Not to my child nor their trainer:

Trainer #1
*"The pony won’t jump "(as she throws a rock at the pony’s butt WHILE THE KID IS ON HIM doing a Xrails class. At a show.

Trainer #2
*“What are you doing out there you are a complete idiot.” Yes, at a different local show.

Trainer #3 and we did ride here for a brief time:
My favorite. This trainer would have the kids pull up in the middle of a lesson (for 10-20 min) to discuss how many vertebrae are in a horse, cat etc; or why her dogs like to eat poo…It wasn’t to distract them from a bad ride, it was just what the trainer DID.

Which is why I drive 30 minutes to a trainer who can train both kid and horse and understands boundries. I have no problem with yelling, hard work, or an occasional swear word; but do not throw rocks at my horse nor call them an idiot.

[randomequine]

[QUOTE=hundredacres;5536703]
When I took my then 5 year old daughter to a barn to get her first official lesson she was terrified to be in a big barn, new instructor, and on a tall TB (even the horse was 100 years old)…she was so nervous she couldn’t think when the trainer would give her directions like, “Left rein! Right leg!” (she was 5 afterall and anyway that’s stupid advice)…and the trainer said to me: “You have a LOT of work to do with this child.”, rolling her eyes…sometimes I wonder if that wasn’t a defining moment for my daughter who has had to work tremendously hard to feel safe and relax on a horse, and she’s almost 12. Maybe it has nothing to do with it but to this day it pisses me off that she said that to me in front of my daughter.[/QUOTE]

Wow, this sounds like the instructor I used to ‘work’ for - there’s a reason we’ve ended our professional relationship! Yikes. :no:

It’s because of trainers like this that my goal is to be one of the best ‘up-down’ instructors in the area…no one is giving these little ones good basics!

[faybe]

I heard this story about an upper level rider who has a reputation for being a little “rough around the edges” in presentation and equitation…

At a [BNT] clinic:

BNT: “You look like a frickin’ truck driver, and you’re riding like one too!”

After the session, a woman approached the rider and said, “I can’t believe you just stood there and took that! I would never have kept it together, I’d have been crying!”

The rider looked the woman dead in the eye and said, “truck drivers don’t cry.”

[Troispony]

“See? Sometimes you just need to be yelled at!”

I did get along with this trainer well though. I guess she was right!

[Cita]

[QUOTE=Troispony;5537670]
“See? Sometimes you just need to be yelled at!”

I did get along with this trainer well though. I guess she was right![/QUOTE]Had a similar experience. I was making lots of mistakes and getting progressively more upset, and instead of slowing the lesson down and working on some more basic things, the trainer started berating me for my mistakes, saying things like I don’t deserve to ride that horse, culminating with, “You need to be yelled at! You don’t get yelled at enough at home!” - I was coming from a verbally abusive home situation, and had spent the 40 minute car ride to the barn getting SCREAMED at for being so selfish as to need a ride somewhere (I was 14 at the time). By the time I got to the barn, I was incredibly upset and anxious, and my riding suffered because of it. For some reason, my instructor saw this as an indication I needed to be screamed at. I was always a very hard-working and obedient student, too. So why exactly did I need to be screamed at? I stopped riding there - well, riding in general - not long thereafter. And that is one of the most vivid moments in my riding life. I now refuse to ride with a “yeller.”

[Renn_aissance]

[QUOTE=faybe;5537486]
I heard this story about an upper level rider who has a reputation for being a little “rough around the edges” in presentation and equitation…

At a [BNT] clinic:

BNT: “You look like a frickin’ truck driver, and you’re riding like one too!”

After the session, a woman approached the rider and said, “I can’t believe you just stood there and took that! I would never have kept it together, I’d have been crying!”

The rider looked the woman dead in the eye and said, “truck drivers don’t cry.”[/QUOTE]

Well played!

“Are you stupid?! You have no motivation!” Diatribe continued for about two minutes on this note.

I must have been, to stay there as long as I did; clearly I had no motivation to leave and find a situation where my horse would be appreciated for what he does well, rather than despised for what he has a hard time with. (This exchange is the only time I’ve cried in a lesson and came after the trainer got utterly fed up with my inability to work my horse on the bit according to the directions given. Using another system he went fine, but he didn’t respond well to that trainer’s way- which worked just great for other horses in that barn, just not for my guy- and trainer was not okay with that…)

[Still_Workingonit]

Trainer 1 (on a school horse -wth the horse in tears, me almost there): In a very very strong german accent “Your legs are shit, your upper body is all over the place, your hands … h your hands!!” I said "well, I may as well give up now! “NO NO NO”, she screamed - your seat is good, we can work on the rest!! With a couple of breaks, I still have the odd coaching from her - she has mellowed and we do laugh about out first lesson

Trainer 2: Nice horse - pity you are both mares! I hate mares! And you dont ride her that well either! (And yes, I did opine my thoughts to him at the time.)