In the weeds

Way back at the beginning of my career as a horse trainer, I worked at a jumper barn and we had this wonderful client who had a gelding (Monterey) that he just doted on. Monterey was a huge beast of a horse, well over 17 hands with feet like dinner plates. He could jump the moon. Monterey’s dad paid more for this one horse than I would make that year, or most of the years following. He was that kind of horse.

When the trainer who worked with Monterey and his owner first told me about them, she said that dad didn’t care about how to ride, he just wanted to jump big fences.

The combination wasn’t always pretty, but Monterey was never to blame, and when things came together it looked like everyone in the ring, not just the horse, knew what they were doing.

I am not like Monterey’s dad. I need to know everything. I need to get down into the weeds regarding every aspect of my horse, and every one of the horses I trained over the years. I learned to watch horses and let them tell me what their future held, where they would succeed and where they would struggle. I could place riders or myself on these horses and through years of endless study and observation create a team of two species that moved like one. I allowed my students to fail and taught them to let their horses make mistakes. Everyone grew together this way through mutual respect and forgiveness. Eventually beauty would flow through the heart of the horse and through the hands of my students and anyone watching would see what it was and feel elation.

Everyone knows what a good team looks like, regardless of species. We know it when we see it.

I am a geek. I am a geek about everything I care about. I not only knew the name and function of every piece of equipment that could conceivably be placed on a horse, but had also analyzed how that equipment affected movement, communication, and relaxation. I knew how every bit lay on the tongue, and knew that some bits sold as friendly were everything but and that if I put my tongue on the place where steel hit copper on a bit I would feel a little electrical ‘zing’, no wonder the bit was sold as an aid to keep the horse’s mouth wet!! Yikes!

I’m now walking a different path than the one I knew so well, and I know frightfully little. I now find myself staring at simple tools people buy every day to teach their pets and find myself asking familiar questions: How does this device work, what makes it effective, what will keep it effective, who should use it and under what circumstances?

I want the answers. I don’t want opinions; I know how little value opinions carry. I want facts, whys and hows, and I want to get down into the weeds of every single tool, whether I will personally ever use it or not.

Training dogs is totally different than training horses. Horses have no intrinsic need to be trained, nor do they particularly care to please us. Dogs live for training, they are eager students, ready and wanting instruction, thrilled for the opportunity to please us.

As a beginning trainer, I feel that my fullest effort should be in preserving and shaping that eagerness and enthusiasm. Bringing it out in shy and worried dogs, while shaping it in more forward and eager dogs. Towards that end, I will study every nuance of the work of others; the science of behavior and canine movement. I will acquire videos, books, and hands on learning from those who have best preserved the joy of learning in their own dogs, then I will take it all home and point what I have learned at my own dogs, my shy ones, my high drive enthusiastic ones, and those in between. What works, I will keep and improve upon, what fails I will tuck away for further study.

In dog training, as in horse training, I have once more found myself down in the weeds, just where I love to be!