Your horse is at the age where it is ready to start working but you don’t have the desire or the knowledge to be the one doing the training. These are a few helpful guidelines to help with the process of choosing the right trainer.
Decide what you and your horse want to do
The first step before starting the process of looking for a trainer is to decide what you would like to get out of your horse in the future. Are you planning on showing, jumping, working cows or do you just want a pleasant trail horse? Be realistic about the potential for both you and your horse.
How much are you willing to spend?
There are very few guidelines for how much trainers charge as it varies from hundreds to thousands of dollars depending on location, education and level of training the trainer is supplying. Many expensive, experienced trainers hire on hands to do much of the training for them, which means your horse is likely not to receive training from the person you thought you hired to do the job, but from someone working for him. This is not uncommon practice for big name horse trainers and is largely accepted by horse owners but make sure you know what you are getting before paying for the service.
It can be a good idea to hire different trainers for different stages of the training. There are a lot of good trainers that will start your horse and get them gentled for a smaller fee before your horse goes off to a professional trainer.
Visit the facility
Before sending your horse to training, visit the training facility to make sure it meets your requirements. Different horsemen have different ways of doing things and they all think their way is the right way. So make sure you know how things are done where your horse is going to avoid confusion later on. Some trainers encourage visits, while others would rather the owner stay away and it is hard to say what is wrong or right. The important thing is that you are comfortable with the way the trainer works and treats your horse and you.
Realize the potential of your horse
Different horses are bred to perform in different disciplines, but just like people, some horses have more potential than others. Even though a horse is bred to perform great in one discipline it might not turn out to be the world champion it was born to be.
A good trainer will be honest about the potential of a horse and tell you before you spend any more money on trying to make the horse something it is not.
Pushing a horse beyond its potential can be catastrophic and repairing a horse that has been pushed too far will cost you money and time that could have been saved by stopping the training process when the horse had reached its limit.
