Unqualified "Trainers"

[BatCoach]

@Feliz

Question - does anyone have any good strategies for helping friends see that they are wasting their time and money with one of these people?

Most have to learn the hard way. Sometimes it is pure ignorance or being a beginner, so this is the only trainer they have ever known. Or maybe the bad trainer helped with one element of the person’s riding ( trainer X helped me learn flying changes! she is so amazing! no one else could do this!) Its hard to see the forest for the trees when you are ingrained in a program. What helped me leave a bad trainer is a friend who I respected started to board at the same stable and was able to lift the wool and point out all the inconsistencies and issues that I had been unwilling to see.

I think the easiest way would be to take your friend to audit with a GOOD clinician, where they can see what a good teacher looks like. Exposing them to as much education and other trainers as possible takes the blinders off and removes tunnel vision.

[SuzieQNutter]

@Feliz

Question - does anyone have any good strategies for helping friends see that they are wasting their time and money with one of these people?

What worked for me -

I was a teenager and I am Taurus and very loyal. I rode to the ponyclub with my Mum for our weekly lesson. There was quite a few of us, so she came there for an afternoon to give us lessons in our own timeslots.

When I arrived I can not tell you how upset I was that there was another instructor there instead. It turned out my instructor had broken her leg, so she had arranged the other instructor.

I was so loyal that if I had found this out in advance I would have stopped taking lessons and waited for my instructor, of course my mum probably wouldn’t have let me do that but I digress.

WELL I can tell you. One lesson with this instructor and not one rider went back to the first instructor. The new instructor was gold, took me to winning after a year and supported me to become an instructor.

[Alex_and_Bodie_s_Mom]

@Feliz

Question - does anyone have any good strategies for helping friends see that they are wasting their time and money with one of these people?

I’m not sure there is one. A cult is a cult.

I had a riding instructor along these lines. She started out as a good person, but gradually, over years, became something else entirely - narcissistic, a drama queen, paranoid. Still trying to parse out exactly where/what/why it all changed. Either way, it wasn’t until she announced that she was focusing on her own riding and we were all on our own that a fellow student and I went to another instructor and suddenly found out what we’d been missing all along. In one hour, she had Alex and I going better than we’d EVER gone, and it was just a few tiny changes in my position.

It suddenly dawned on me - on us both - that either our instructor wasn’t as good as we’d thought, or she was purposely sabotaging us. For me, I think the second one was true.

Our instructor watched videos, audited clinics, wanted us to show and wanted to know what the comments said, even lessoned when she could, so it’s not like she didn’t want more education - but there was definitely an element of “I’m the only person who really knows what they’re talking about.” But in three years, Alex and I never progressed past Training Level. Meanwhile, I watched other students go on to First Level, school Second, buy schoolmasters and compete at Third. I was a working student, too. I think there was something in there that made her hold me back, for whatever reason.

I think it’s like any horrible relationship - you have to get out of the situation before you can see it clearly.

[BigMama1]

It’s so hard to tell when you’re watching for just a short time without knowing any of the back story. Sometimes a horse that has been allowed to be lazy or dull really does need to be ridden at a fast pace a few times until that idea of leg = GO is really established. And sometimes you have to prioritize what to fix first. So if a horse tends to be dull and also likes to curl up BTV, fixing the forward first makes sense, and will make it easier to create a better self carriage.

[eightpondfarm]

@SuzieQNutter

A red flag is your trainer giving you a 2 hour block. Unless this is riding 2 horses with you untacking and tacking in the middle yes

2 hours for one horse when you have said you are a beginner rider no. 2 hours of mainly walking and sitting talking. No.

i’m not a beginner rider though. I am a beginner with dressage however.
i have a LOT of horses. First lesson is with my mare that shows such talent, next comes whoever or whoever**s** i also bring. I’ll be rotating them through… For a little bit it’s my Standardbred gelding that i’m just starting under saddle. i rode him for about 10 minutes, twice last lesson. First in the beginning, then my mare, then him again. I quit my lesson a half hour early because…well, we were done.

My coach is going train this owner on her mare. She is lucky …my coach hasn’t taken a new student in a few months. This is an older quiet mare. Smallish…15h or so. From the looks of her, she is a slowish agreeable horse. Anyhooo…i suppose i should mind my own business. i just was wondering about things.

[TheDBYC]

@cardinale

Oh yeah, this IME is the primary reason unqualified “trainers” can make a go of it:

exvet: they are masters of manipulation and mind control and not so much of riding/training.

Just about every one of these folks I’ve encountered is superficially personable, with an engaging personality and the gift of gab.

In yoga we talk a lot about teaching as the act of showing up in service to the student. People are willing to forgive a lot of such a teacher. That teacher can look like the kind, well-intentioned trainer who just doesn’t know what they’re doing. Bizarrely, they can also look like the snarky rail bird “only me and Carl Hester know how to care for a horse properly & he’s marginal” type.

The latter is still showing up in service to the student in a twisted way. They’re making it about the student. The successful ones rarely ride much themselves. It works because people ultimately care more about what you the teacher can do for them the student.

[SuzieQNutter]

Please don’t take offence to being called a beginner in dressage. We all started somewhere and it is a lovely journey. As you said more than one horse, so I did say yes to that as not being a red flag.

Also remember that there is no wrong question to ask, you learn by asking questions. Don’t stop asking.

[xQHDQ]

One thing that cannot be ignored is the social aspect of the barn. It’s human nature to want to belong and if a scam trainer acts like your friend and tells you how wonderful you are, you start to believe it.
On the flip side, a beginner might have heard that an overly loud, strict, berating, etc teacher is all there is in dressage (or just believe that they must know what they’re talking about if they act like that), so they think they are getting good instruction even if they are not enjoying the lessons.

How to fix this? Outing the scammers is one way but beginners may not be on forums like this. Be welcoming to beginners/transplants at shows/at the tack store/etc is another - so they feel they can participate in the larger horse community when they’re ready (eg, join their GMO, go to educational events, etc) and learn there is another way.
Any other ideas?

[eightpondfarm]

@SuzieQNutter

Please don’t take offence to being called a beginner in dressage.

didn’t take offense and that is not what you said. i was correcting you.
This is what you said:

@SuzieQNutter

2 hours for one horse when you have said you are a beginner rider no.

[SuzieQNutter]

I should have said then when you said you are new to dressage.

[eightpondfarm]

yes. and that is why i gave you a correction.

[SuzieQNutter]

No worries.

[eightpondfarm]

yeah, no worries yourself

[tohorse]

Second this. For me walk is by far the hardest gait to master and the one that reaps the most benefits for the rest of the work.
Also I think a lot of this moving the horse forward unnecessarily stems from being taught to “ride the horse into the bit”. Personally, I think it takes some time to understand that for being able to ride the horse into the bit the horse needs to be relaxed and in balance to begin with and you can only achieve that with a horse who is taught the leg to bit connection. For a horse that doesn’t already have this skill and muscles to support it, it means that often at least initially the horse is better off moving slower and lower (“on forehand”) so that once the rhythm and relaxation are achieved and the horse is working on the bit with his back engaged you can start moving the horse forward to engage the hindquarters and shift the balance to the extent the horse can handle it. I think there are people who will disagree with this approach, but these are all subtle things that at least I personally have picked up over years working with younger horses.

[eightpondfarm]

this is like…exactly! how i am being taught to bring along a greenie by my coach.

[B-burg_Dressage]

For the horse being behind the vertical–could be a lot of things. Could be the horse was trained that way and it will take time to correct. Could be lack of fitness/strength. Could be rider was riding a bit defensively on a new horse.

I don’t think there is any way to avoid working at faster paces if you want to advance. Getting a horse to half-pass in the walk is a totally different feel than half-passing at the trot (or canter). Practicing the things in all gaits breeds relaxation, skill/confidence/feel, and strength.

I also have a horse who gets sticky in the connection. We do 10-15 minutes of mostly loose rein walk at the beginning, but then move to trot and canter with a lot of transitions to wake him up and get him in front of my leg. Once he’s forward, he’s soft and lovely. I can do a whole ride in the walk in the winter (and sometimes do), but he needs to be motivated a bit more in the summer. I use transitions and quicker gaits to achieve that. I guess you could see that as a short cut, but we’re both happy with it. He’s a naturally forward horse, but can get tense and sticky if I don’t remind him that I’m not trapping him in a box.

I also do a lot of long and low, swinging trot in the hay field over hills to work on fitness. And let him gallop because he seems to love it.

Walk is essential and sometimes is certainly skipped over. But to say that doing work at a faster gait is arrogance may be a bit of a stretch. But maybe I’m just too youthful.

[Salty]

I had a retired racehorse who warmed up best with a long, slow canter. I had another who ducked being the contact due to weakness. The contact problems were not easy to fix, and it was a long process to fix them. Every horse is different, and it can take awhile to figure out what right for each one.

[eightpondfarm]

what i love about my coach is she is with me from the very raw beginnings of each horse i bring to her. (mine have all been unmounted except two and those were 30 days greenbroke). So she has given tutelage to every little thing a greenie has thrown at me. She has me modifying all those behaviors immediately and kindly. (EG…baaaaaad bad mare decides to shy by backing away from a dog at the gate…so we have a little lesson in backing up… First rein a backward movement bending right…then (NOPE…not go forward yet) back to left, now lets us try to back up straight about a dozen steps “if you don’t mind, please”. Two lessons later in time, zero backing up as a balk. Never has reappeared either. When the mare chooses to stop and gawk out a window because something really really interesting is going on over there… we head towards the wall, the windows, the gate and come and stop. And hold. Taught the mare a really good stop btw. Got her fronts pretty even. My coach is creative and follows-through with misbehaviors and they always become teaching moments.

[AnotherRound]

I love that. That’s a great trainer.

[rulex]

@BigMama1

The idea of a schoolmaster being pushbutton makes me laugh

Agreed! Any of the schoolmasters I’ve ridden have made me feel like I didn’t know how to ride. I can get on a straightforward type with 90 days and off we go w/t/c. But then have spent weeks trying to canter more than 3 strides on a schoolmaster, pushing all the wrong buttons and getting tempi changes and canter pirouettes instead. Lol.