By Ariel Univer
As a trainer, I keep very few secrets from my clients. Where some may be more tight lipped or filtered, by nature I’m more of an open book. This is true for myself professionally and personally. It has served me well at times… and at other times caused me some issues. For the most part, my willingness to communicate and be transparent to the people who have entrusted me with their horses and their kids over the years has given me the ability to build a business based on honesty. That’s something I’m very proud of. However, there are a few hard truths that I don’t talk about so openly. I think some of these truths transcend past my personal experience, and are very relatable to most trainers. Also, they may be valuable for clients to take into consideration. So, I’ve decided I want to share them with you today.
1. When you have a bad lesson, I think about it probably more than you do.
When you struggle through a lesson, fail multiple times in an exercise, or fall off, you might think your trainer just lightheartedly rolls their eyes and after giving you a brief pep talk, moves right on with their day. We really want you to think we do this! Because it’s hard enough that you left your lesson feeling down on yourself and frustrated, it’s not our job to add our personal feelings to it. But… when I’m driving home that night, I’m thinking about your next lesson already. What can I do to fix it? Should I explain things differently? Did I raise that jump too quickly tonight? I don’t want you to have your confidence dashed. I’m doing mental gymnastics to get you and your horse back on track hours and sometimes even days after a bad ride. Maybe even long after you’ve moved on from it. We want you to succeed and we don’t want you to know that at times your struggles become our struggles too.
2. I pick my battles.
If you have a trainer who seems to nit pick or one who more readily lets things slide, I can guarantee you that both of those types of horse professionals are holding back. We want to call you out when you put your saddle away dirty. If you’re whispering to friends while auditing a clinic, we want to shoot you a look because you should be listening and learning respectfully instead of chatting. We pull out our phones to text you that you left your horse with a sweat mark after your ride, but often times put our phones back in our pockets without hitting send. Trainers are perfectionists. The good ones are, anyway. We have to be, in order to do what we do. Most of us were brought up with trainers who were pretty tough on us.
I remember once when I was about 15, I left my bridle out on the cleaning hook after a ride and forgot to put it away. It was an innocent mistake for a spacey teenager to make, and not one that I’d done before. But when I arrived to the barn the next day, my trainer had disassembled the whole bridle and hung each piece from the rafters of the hay loft. It took me most of the afternoon and some questionably unsafe ladder placement to retrieve them. I was tearful and quite embarrassed, but I never left that bridle out again. These days such “drastic” measures in teaching students to be more thoughtful and responsible aren’t as common. But one could argue that lax horsemanship is more rampant. So, I kind of understand where my trainer was coming from with that stunt. I did learn something, after all. I may not be hanging bridle parts from rafters… but there are days I think about it.
3. We blur the lines between work and our personal life, and we pay the price.
I try to answer texts from my clients in a timely fashion. That’s usually because my phone is glued to me at all times. iPhones have a feature, one we all know too well, that tells us our weekly screen time. I hate knowing this number. Most weeks it’s 8+ hours a day. I’m videoing horses during lessons, looking up horse ads online, calling and texting clients, farriers, chiropractors, various vets. Whether I’m physically at work or not, it makes no difference. I’m always working, to some capacity. This lifestyle has become the norm for me, but I often times realize I’m cheating myself and my family out of quality time together. A dinner at a restaurant where my phone stays in my pocket is something I owe to them, but don’t often do. When the texts message “ding” sounds, I instinctively reach for it. It could be the vet! I’m waiting to hear back from a seller about an offer that was made this morning. I have a client worried sick about an upcoming horse show and I’m trying to reassure them not to stress. It’ll just be a minute, I tell them, I swear. This makes me great at my job, but admittedly leaves me lacking in the mom and wife department.
I’ve realized at this point in my life and career that I have to get more comfortable leaving someone on read so that I can be present at home, and creating healthier boundaries. So when you call me at 9pm worried about your horses loose shoe or wondering what blanket he needs tomorrow… I don’t always want to answer. Some things can and should wait.
4. We feel the weight of our responsibilities.
When a client entrusts us to care for their horse, we do not take this lightly. I want to know that the horses in my program are happy, healthy, and thriving. As we all know with horses, this is no easy task! One drastic temp change or turnout mishap and you’ve got disaster knocking at your barn door. Horses are anything but hearty, and at any given time it’s common for all trainers to have one on stall rest, one on colic watch, and two more with mystery ailments that you and the vet have been trouble shooting for weeks. When your horse isn’t well, we absolutely lose sleep over it. Although you may think it’s just another day on the job for us (and it is), we still get our stomachs in knots over care related issues.
Our responsibilities don’t stop at horse care. When you’re ready to purchase, you trust us to find you a horse with your budget and make sure it checks your boxes. It’s the hack winner, or it’s a short stirrup saint pony, or it’s a jumper prospect that’s going to take you up through the 1.30s. We want to make good on our promises and follow through. The part of our job that directs us to pairing you with the perfect partner, as well as properly managing your time and money in this venture, is incredibly rewarding… but also stressful. It’s a big responsibility and we can’t guarantee that the horse that walks off the trailer is your dream mount. We do our due diligence and hope our expertise can bring home “the one” despite all the variables involved in equine sales. It’s always a gamble to some degree. Such is the nature of dealing with horses, people, and money. We want you to be happy, and yes we do earn our commissions in the process!
5. We question ourselves.
Overall, I’m very confident in my skill set as a trainer. I have the years of experience and trial and error under my belt to back that confidence up. We don’t get where we are with clients that trust us and horses that perform well without proving ourselves time and time again. However, I’m not cocky. I’m not too stubborn to admit when I need to relearn or rethink something. After all, this industry is ever changing. New technologies, new discoveries, and new methods of training pop up all the time. If we don’t learn and grow, we become obsolete. So we have to have the ability to admit when we need to further our own education. If I dig my heels in when I’m wrong, I’m going to pay the price for it.
I’ve had days where I’ve felt confident in a direction of training for a horse. A feed regimen or tack change. And well… it doesn’t pan out. Admitting that you assessed something incorrectly isn’t easy. But we owe it to ourselves as trainers, and to our clients, to be able to walk our decisions back when they don’t work. If I spend a week working with a horse in a new bit that I thought for sure would be the magic change it needed in its program, but it wasn’t, I have to be able to say “I thought I was right. But I wasn’t. Let’s try something different”. This is HARD for a lot of professionals. I’ve seen other pros double down on an obviously ill fated decision to try and save face. I did that myself in my earlier years in the industry. When you feel like you have something to prove to the world, it is HARD to be wrong. But there is a lot of relatability and growth in changing lanes. I think clients come to trust and appreciate that mindset way more.
So I’m hoping to leave you with this thought: if you look at your trainer and think “wow, she really has it together”. Or “He always knows how to handle himself well”. Then kudos to them- they’ve got a lot of the tough stuff figured out. But I can promise you one thing: they doubt themselves. They’re disappointed in their performance or decisions periodically. And they definitely lose sleep on more than one occasion thinking about you and your horse. Remember to give them grace and remind yourself they are human, they’re trying their best and on some days that may look different. They very much appreciate your trust in them every day.
