Horse Training HELP!

[renee@dnai.com (Renee Been)]

Hi all--well I guess that I did things a little backwards when I   had my
Arabs---Had two wonderful guys for 15 yrs---bought them both as three yr
olds.  I don't have an arena or other training facilities---so my guys got
trained on the trail.  Of course the first several months our outings were
with a friend on a really trail wise quarter horse--and we did LSD
rides---slowly working up to trotting and canter---then after several years
of really fun trail riding, I realized that one horse had a great extendead
trot, and the other was a lot upsidedown---so, I then went to a trainer for
dressage lessons---learned a whole lot!!!!  Got my great trotter up the
third level dressage--and helped my upside down guy to be a great long
distance horse.  

I had to sell my Arabs when I got into another horse venture, and it was
sure hard.  Both went to great families with horse crazy jouniors ready to
excell at another level--so that made it a little easier.  

My advice??  Dump the trainer as others have suggested----find someone who
will really work on your level.  There is a lot of really good sort of new
stuff out there from natural horseman training (as you started out with),
massage, T Touch---and it goes on and on--someone I know of and highly
respect states something to the effect that the joy and learning is in the
journey, not the end point.
renee