I somewhat agree, I think the other piece is how effective of a trainer they are. I have a couple friends that became pros in their early 20’s after successful competitive young rider careers. I can confidently say that both of them are MUCH better trainers (both training horses and riders) now 10-15 yrs later than they were when they started. So I agree that young doesn’t equate with unqualified, but I would still expect to see price differentials unless that person is a protégé with a serious natural talent for teaching.
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There is also the sparsity problem. A few places I have lived long term, the average trainer has been decent, sincere, ok for low level riders, but not able to get their students out of 1st level, unless (sometimes) the horse was in full training and/or a schoolmaster. There may be 3-5 of them to pick from. Next step up on quality may be one silver or gold medalist in a 1 hour driving radius. If that one person is not a good fit for you because of harsh method or the good training/bad teaching issue, or does poorly with off breeds, etc, what does one do?
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@YankeeDuchessoh yes absolutely. One of my best Dressage trainers was pretty young, same age as me (this was a few years ago.) But she really pursued her education and progression.
@Rosewatt absolutely! You hit the nail on the head. While I’ve certain met more accomplished trainers with some big egos, I too find that the lower level/backyard trainers have an ego the size of Texas. I think it’s the only way they can often pursue the career.
I have met one or two that seemed honest with what they were. When I asked for information on their background, they simply told me they thought we were probably around the same level and they wouldn’t be able to teach me a lot, but would be happy to work on basics if I wanted. I respected that!
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My current trainer has been a professional trainer for less than 2 years. I was her first customer in full training. There is a price differential— she charges 70% of what I was paying the trainer whose assistant she was 2 years ago.
The previous trainer had been in the business for 10 years and was a nice rider, talked a good game, but the horses she trained never improved. I regret the time I employed her, but it took that long to understand she was not improving the horse at all.
@Rosewatt- Perhaps your arguments would be of more interest if it weren’t for statements such as the above.
There is entirely too much emphasis set on a horses’ outline rather than teaching someone the correct way to have the horse of his own volition engage his hocks, tuck up his tummy and give the rider a place to sit.
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I agree with you @merrygoround. If we are talking about training level, no “frame” is required. Just that the horse is moving forward rhythmically in a good forward tempo. Is being in the bit even required at training level or is that first required at first level?
Worrying about a “frame” before the training level objectives are achieved does more harm than good.
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Agree. There seems to be a trend of young pros who were recently successful at YR on made horses hanging out their shingle and advertising themselves as “FEI trainers.” They be talented riders and 10 years down the road may be excellent trainers and coaches but IME few have enough experience in their early 20s, especially those that have always had the benefit of riding very nice quality, well-trained horses.
On the flip side, I know a couple of lovely young new pros whom I have recommended to friends with a limited training budget. They are the types who learned to ride anything and everything, and have a natural gift for understanding each horse’s different needs.
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Oh, I see how you may have gotten that out of what I said. I don’t disagree with you at all and , in fact, entirely agree. However, I was more talking about people who had little to no understanding of how to “properly” work a horse’s body, so that they relax over their topline and into the bit. Rather, I see the “trainers” I mentioned above riding front to back, resulting in an inconsistent and tense “frame”. They have no real understanding of it and yet are teaching riders the same concepts.
I’d actually respect any trainer that teaches their student how to properly engage a horse’s body without so much emphasis on a frame, which is how it should be. But that is not how the trainers I was referring too are like. They literally have no comprehension of how to do that and will be “training” someone’s horse will seesawing the mouth and telling the owner how “soft” the horse is now.
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Around me, we have a plethora of these type of “trainers” (the wannabe’s) who are so lacking in skills and knowledge that they should’ve stayed Ammies (for the welfare of our sport).
IMO, it’s a bunch of people who desperately need to be respected and seen as authority figures, but who don’t want to put in the hard work of being wrong and failing often.
Add in the Dunning-Kruger effect, and you have the trainer that never has any students above First (or a poor rendition of Second), AND who believes that they STILL have stuff to teach their student even as student flails around at the lowest levels with scores in the 50’s for years.
Just about everything revolving around being a trainer is an opinion. If you project an opinion with enough confidence then enough people will believe your opinion is the right opinion. There aren’t really any hard and fast metrics we can use to prove they are wrong. Scores, levels, etc have so many dependencies (money, time, horse, etc). You can’t even use students success as a metric because there are so many variances in student finances, time, health, abilities.
There’s nothing hard and fast to say “You Suck As a Trainer. Get Out”.
Which means everyone is a success to varying degrees, and therefore there’s no reason NOT to become a trainer and take people’s money, feed off their respect and admiration, and then lead them along for years while the student adjusts their goals downward to compensate for a bad trainer.
Disclaimer: I may be a tad frustrated and fed up with the bad trainers lately.
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Someone up thread remarked on the fact that some inexperienced trainers charge almost as much as experienced and proven trains and wondered why there was not more of a price differential.
If we’re talking about a business person pricing a commodity, even a horse, the person presumably understands that overpricing relative to quality will result in fewer or no sales. Even an inexperienced trainer would probably not try to price a training level horse only slightly less than a FEI horse.
However, in setting their training fees, the trainer is putting a value on themselves!
Part of it is that the announced price could actually influence the perception of value on the part of the customer. If you watched a lesson with a $700 a month (full training) trainer then one who charged $1,000 a month, would your perception of quality be affected at all? Especially if the expensive one did have clients paying that rate?
Even beyond that issue (effect of price on perceived quality), the trainer is putting a dollar figure on her own value as a trainer. She may admit that she not quite as established as colleague X, but wants to think of herself as only 10% less valuable. Discounting down to the rate that makes sense from a purely business point of view may be too hard psychologically.
Years ago I had to deal with a lawyer on a very standard real estate transaction. No need for brilliance or anything beyond routine knowledge of the relevant law and procedure. In this transaction, the role of any lawyer was not much more than that of a clerk with a fancy license.
In the course of the transaction, the lawyer offered to perform some additional task, and disclosed that I should keep in mind that his hourly fee was $x hundred per hour. He was a small town lawyer doing real estate transactions (not litigation in real estate disputes) just routine stuff. I forget what hourly rate he mentioned, but it was in the hundreds, and preposterous. I had to work hard to stifle the impulse to ask, “Ok, that’s an impressive rate, but how many hours do you sell at that rate? “. It was important to him to tell himself that he was a lawyer who charged $xxx per hour, which in his mind put him in the same league as the serious lawyers who have substantial demand for their services at that kind of rate. I thought he was pathetic.
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@Core64301 yes! That’s what bothers me the most, I think. It’s not who has great scores vs those who don’t. It’s those who didn’t put any of the work in but want the respect and business.
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@YankeeDuchess Egos are such a funny thing!
I’ve known some great trainers (who had put the work in and were educated but not flashy or super competitive) that I thought were not charging enough! And some, very much the opposite.
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On the topic of pricing (and as a lawyer who has a $$$ hourly rate), don’t forget that people have overhead. Insurance at a minimum. Some sort of office / equipment. Does the trainer have or lease their own barn? I actually make something like 30% of my rate as a lawyer. The rest goes to paying for the firm. Even a small town lawyer has insurance, continuing education, employees, office, technology.
I think for the horse world it’s not so much that some lower level trainers are up charging but rather that the market cannot bear the cost to really price up the higher quality trainers. And so perhaps they are the ones finding the sweet spot of charging a high enough rate and being able to get in the volume of clients they want to have.
Certainly any consumer can decide for themselves how much is too much for whatever service they are shopping for.
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Iagree, IPEsq, overhead has as much to do with price as the trainers skill. In the same area, land, hay, farrier, staffing, insurance, and manure disposal all probably cost the same or similar. So the base costs are the same for a good trainer and everyone else. So the difference between great instruction and a charlatan isn’t going to be huge if they all want to stay in business.
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On the issue of overhead, or costs, I was assuming that all trainers in s given area face about the same costs. So the trainers in Wellington May all face high costs and have on average higher fees than trainers in Washington state. I was thinking of the issue of comparative fees within a given area.
Trainers in my modest area face very different overhead depending on their relationship with the barn they are at. Also some trainers just travel between barns.
But that’s my point. There isn’t much room on top of the base costs of the trainer if they have a place. If they travel or work for/ within a barn, they will likely still charge those rates either because of the pay -through to the barn; if they travel, well, using the going rates as a starting point for your own price is how most people set prices.
We are talking about folks who haven’t got great training skills, why assume they have good business skills? Many comments proclaim just that, these trainers are not good at training or at business. But they have hutzpah!
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Are there very different prices depending on those business relationships or do they just generally charge what everyone else charges?
I don’t honestly know. I dont know what they all charge, actually. You can look up lesson prices on some of the big lesson barns but generally unless you or your BFF is taking private lessons with a given coach, you don’t know what they charge.
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