More Anti-Training Methods?

On one hand Jill was glad the property owners were addressing the things around the facility that needed attention -- but on the other hand, she'd enjoyed having the student send her pony right through the snow drift at the about-to-be-repaired end of the arena. What a great training exercise!
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Every time Jill tried to sell a brood mare in her lesson pony herd, the owners of the place shut her down. If they weren't for sale, why were they working up the ponies? For the show ring? For the beginner lesson program? ha. She recognized that they were talented, sweet, sensible athletes, capable of show ring performances. And, she only wanted the best for the ponies too. She thought they were all to be in the family! Jill thought of herself as a trustworthy match maker, teacher and horse trainer, but they wouldn't allow it...

Therefore she wondered for what purpose that she was putting in about 2 hours work, plus cell phone expenses and mileage for every $15 earned in lesson fees. She'd thought it was at least toward the cause of developing part boarders. Why did the head coach pay less for the use of ponies, while she charged more and supervised less?

Jill had single-handedly done a lot of work to clean up the urine-smelling barn, to make it more presentable, more business like and safer. She had done a lot of work creating an Emergency Plan, organizing both a human and equine first aid kit, planning/giving stable tours, following up to ensure waiver signing, invoicing, filing, cell phone calls back and forth, in order to do all the work of catching the ponies, switching the stirrup leathers, clearing the ring of jumps.... only in order to get started on the real stuff, the stable management and riding parts of the lesson. Whew.

The ponies did not like to be seperated, so private lessons did not add the usual level of additional security, unless she had extra volunteers to lead companion animals! She celebrated all the challenges in the months it took to get a few animals reliably independent and to get two beginners ready to matching levels! She knew it was easier to teach in the lesson factories, where you could shoot a cannon in the arena and a horse wouldn't even blink. But Jill was doing the work here with every one's best interest at heart.

Once things were ready to really get rolling, the owners said they had decided to keep only one coach on the property, the other one, that had been coming and going with them for about a decade. Ouch. It was actually painful how much she would miss the place, specifically, the ponies, not to mention the students in the tiny lesson practice. It was so unfair!

Now that she had ridden all the ponies and pulled the manes, trained all the students and parents about farm rules and organized the payments and schedules to maximize efficiency the boarder/head coach who had recruited her to ride in the first place was squeezing her out, and authorized to take over her students.
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Jill had experienced it before though and what goes around comes around. She knew eventually she'd be getting calls from those riders who would have had quit from that teacher, and would want to find where Jill was teaching by then!
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"Why do you think the Sport Office shows her name as a Level 2 but no contact info for her?" her rider pal was asking. Jill was pretty sure that there were complaints lodged against the coach in question, and felt somehow justified to benefit thus, as the only certified teacher listed in the area. Was the "superior" credential flawed?
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Its true this all came down as Jill dated one of her ex-boyfriends. "So her name is Jill?" It was only a text message but it was still shrill. They'd been spotted together out for a burger and a beer and his current girlfriend was clearly (also) livid. Jill could see why. Behind her back he said he wasn't into her but he was afraid to mess with his professional success by dumping her. "What you feel comes out in what you do," Jill was forever a teacher, always one for doling out advice. "You may as well be consciously truthful. For sure I am getting nothing romantic going with you, though I value our friendship."

At least once after that she'd tried to help professionally. With another opportunity to attend an amazing competition that he declined. The event would in fact make the cover of the magazine he was hoping to sell to, and he would send them a complaint letter about their priorities. In a way she agreed with his point that their choice of the big show cover shot alienates the all-important grassroots members of the sport but on the other hand, did he see the irony?
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The expert and heavily invested farrier said the academics and executives often didn't know their horses and Jill kept an eye out to see if his theory would hold up. She noticed the new colour photograph at the big Agricultural expo showed this same coach lunging a horse and rider, with three points of contact. There were side reins attached, the rider had reins and the teacher had the lunge line attached. Instead of trashing them in public, Jill wrote the Education Centre, after the fact, trying to stress her interest in being helpful (about the esteemed-in-error-coach's inaccurate display, which she thought was accidentally being heralded by a not-quite-knowledgable-enough Equine Studies program as a model). Jill had sometimes found the scientific types at the healm of the certain programs quite ignorant about actual day to day horse interaction. "By the way, there was a display at this year that showed a picture of a student being lunged. It is not quite a perfect example of the lunging process that would be suitable for a certified instructor to model." and she attached feedback from a Sport Office trainer to support the reasons it was incorrect, to her note.

But, Jill was not surprised there was no reply, no effort for any clarification offered.

One of the key learnings Jill had taken away from that esteemed trainer's teachings was never to SHOW the WRONG way, only to clearly demonstrate correct method.  Because of people's way to retaining visual info, the trainer said it was important not to plant WRONG pictures in anyone's mind...