I was recently asked a great question by this magazine’s editor, Kim Miller: “With all your travels, do you find anything unique about giving clinics in California?”
My first thought was that no, wherever I go it is always true that “a horse is a horse is a horse” and “people are people.” Having said that, her question spurred something in me that required more thought and I just couldn’t let the question go.
I think in terms of deconstructing the “big picture” when I need an answer to a question so I had to think about a lot of other places where I work at “training the horse trainers” in order to compare them to California.
It is often said that Lexington, KY. is the “horse capital of the world.” I work regularly out of the Secretariat Center at the Kentucky Horse Park and it is always an awesome experience to be there. Demographically, there are more dollars spent on horses in Kentucky then anywhere else on the continent. However, these are horses involved in the “sport of kings.” Lexington, while very rewarding for my wife Kathryn and I because we love to work at retraining retired race horses, is particularly about working with fewer horses worth more money in a prestigious and aesthetically intoxicating environment. Sum it up, Lexington is a place for us where “less is more.”
Then there is Toronto, Ontario, in Canada, where we only want to work when the weather is user friendly. We do not schedule clinics anywhere in Canada between late fall and early spring because, despite heated indoor arenas, a blizzard can cancel a clinic when people can’t safely haul their horses during ice and snow covered road conditions.
However, Toronto is where, per capita, both recreational and competitive equestrians spend more disposable income on their sport than anywhere else on the continent. In a nutshell, Toronto is predominantly affluent women riding english when the weather is doable for us.
We love to work in Bermuda during the “off season” in Canada but there are no indoor arenas so we are subject to the wind and rain. The riders are all english, still mostly women with a healthy balance of both recreational and show interests. The sad aspect of working in Bermuda, though, is that the land is so expensive that there is just not enough available “turn out” space so the poor horses often go from stalls to work in arenas without enough time to simply be free to just be a horse with space to be a horse. So there are a lot of miserable, angry and/or sullen horses in Bermuda who carry a lot of stress. They also suffer during the summer when the heat and humidity is unbearable for them.
Then there is Alberta. I’m partial to Alberta, of course, because that is where our home ranch is. Again, the clinic season is limited in Alberta, just like Toronto, but the riding demographic is very different. In Alberta, surprisingly enough, more than anywhere else, we find a very nice balance of both men and women riding both english and western.
Alberta boasts “the most horses per capita” in North America. Meaning there are lots and lots of horses but not so many people. It is not uncommon to see huge herds of 50, 100 or 200 horses owned by one ranch family. Sometimes you drive the highways in Alberta and see way more horses than cars. The opposite of Kentucky, where fewer horses are worth more money, Alberta is more horses that are essentially considered livestock. Tens of thousands of horses in Alberta are just as likely to bought and sold “by the pound” as they are according to their breeding and/or training.
California, Here We Come
Finally we come to California. Of course, the first reason we love to work in Southern California is because of how user-friendly the climate is. As for demographics in the business, San Diego County apparently has the most equestrians per capita on the continent. Meaning, while Kentucky has the most money per horse, and Toronto has the most money spent per person per horse, and Alberta has the most horses per capita, it is Southern California that has the most riders.
When we work in Southern California we are truly among kindred spirits. There are both english and western riders, recreational and show equestrians, and yet there are still more women than men at our clinics.
Having said all of the above, what is truly unique about California is the spirit.
It is in Southern California where I find the most horse people who relate with their horses, not only to their sense of sport and recreation but even more so to their heart and soul. People everywhere identify with their horses as part of “who they are” on some level or another, but in California we find that “horse sense for personal growth” is far closer to the surface of the conscious mind than anywhere else we go. It is when we do clinics in California that we are not just training trainers but we are facilitating personal growth workshops where the horse is an agent for change: a mirror into the soul. I call it EAPD. Equine Assisted Personal Development.
There are people everywhere who are consciously working with their horses as a psycho-spiritual path for personal growth and, of course, like everywhere else there are people in California who simply approach horses as a tool to satisfy the needs of their ego. However, the best balance I have found anywhere when it comes to “asking the horse for what we want while giving the horse what it needs” is found in California. It is in California where we find the most people aspiring to a mantra of “ask not what your horse can do for you – ask what you can do for your horse.”
It is also in Southern California where we find the most people willing to apply the lessons learned from “horse sense” inwards on a quest to ride deep into the unconscious mind to “train the dark horses that so often live in the shadow side of human nature.” Far more than simply sport and recreation, horsemanship in Southern California is awakening and evolving into being a conscious spiritual experience and that is truly what makes working in the Golden State so very special.