On 24/02/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I would not hesitate to send a horse I own to a good trainer, but I would > prefer to either do the work myself or supervise the work with my grandson > doing > the actual early riding. There's a relationship that develops between the > trainer and the horse and it's hard to be part of that relationship when > someone > else starts them.
>From the little I've learned about training my own, I completely agree with that. It's my opinion that even if you sent one of your horses 'out' to a trainer, there is still a ton of work to be done when you get that horse back in your hands. I think you would really have to work at getting to know that horse because you weren't part of the orginal process of training. I think if more owners decided to take training into their own hands and tried to educate themselves as much as possible....and kept their methods gentle - we would have a lot of happy horse/human partnerships. I think gaited horses offer a bit more of a challenge though. Because if you start out and you're completely focused on gait and getting a gait....you could really ruin a horse's natural way of going if you weren't careful. Like now with Dagur, if we decided that keeping him in a hollow frame was just fine....he would be building those upside down muslces and eventually as he got older...he would pay for it dearly.... How many times have we seen horses with the underside of their necks overdeveloped?? That spells out trouble, and it's a good indication that some very vital stages in his training were missed. Wanda
