I am by profession a horse trainer. This is not a protected title, which means that anyone can call themselves that, even if they don’t know anything about horses. In fact, if you have a horse that you handle in any way, you are a horse trainer! You might not be a good one, but every time you interact with a horse the horse is learning something from you i.e. You are training it! 

Then the schooling of the horse begins; 
for the next 45-60 minutes this horse is supposed to do everything the rider wants, and will get punished if it don’t. now it is NOT okay for the horse to be an idiot! 

When this is over the horse might be taken for a trail, and the rules changes again, some people will now accept things that just a few minutes ago was an absolute NO! 
OR they dismount and gets caught up in a conversation. During this time the horse is rubbing it’s head on them, pushing them of balance, and doing all kinds of things that are ignored for the most part, except the occasional "NO!". 

Back to the stable again, the horse walks over the owner, is given a hose-down, and then placed back in the stable. Maybe it gets fed, and is greeting the feed with the ears pinned, and then promptly rewarded by being fed… 

The more in a hurry the owner is the worse this scenario gets… 

After a while this horse will start to show some really nasty habits, and some of them will become dangerous… 

To any horse owner I would like to say; 
If you don’t have the time it takes to have a horse, choose another hobby, or have someone else take the horse for you from time to time. 

If your horse is kept in a stable they need to get out EVERY DAY. And not just for one hour and the other 23 hours inside, the horse needs to socialize with other horses, if this is not possible, then you really have to spend several hours with the horse every day. Horses are very social, and needs to interact, and a bored horse will find things to entertain themselves with, some of the things they come up with are things we call stable vices, other things we just say that the horse is crazy! 

You have to learn how a horse thinks and what makes a horse do what they do. It’s your responsibility as a horse owner! The horse didn’t ask for you, you invited him into the relationship, so it’s really up to you! 

Take the time to reflect over why you have a horse in the first place. Most people answer that it is for recreation, and that is a great reason… so why do they let themselves get so frustrated? Horse shows can be a fun thing to do, but it shouldn’t be the most important thing to you, especially if you haven’t had a horse for very long. The first priority should be the well being of the horse, then that you both enjoy each others company and really can be a recreation for each other. If you then take the horse to a show and have some fun that is great, but from what I see at shows, a lot of people seems to forget that it is about having FUN.. for BOTH of you! The next time you go to a show watch how many people treat the horses before and after the classes. In the warm-up you see a lot of jerking on the reins, "get that head down" and so on. You’ll see special equipment that is removed just before the class begins, they get that horse into that frame with any means available, and hopes that the effect will last the class through, and maybe they can sneak in a little quick jerk on the rein when the judge is not looking, to remind the horse that this is serious business. Fun for the horse? Fun for the rider? 

If you don’t care about these things, you really shouldn’t have a horse! Horses are so sensitive, so intelligent that they deserve the best possible deal with their humans.  They need guidelines to follow, in the wild they will follow the guidelines of their heard leader, this is what makes them feel safe and happy. If you don’t prove yourself as a leader for your horse, the horse will think that it is his responsibility to take over, this is deeply rooted in it’s instincts! One of you have to be in charge, if not, it is not safe! 
And the leader will have to be tested, because even if you showed yourself as a leader last week it does not mean you are a good one today.
 

My work consists of going out to peoples places and work with their horses, or teach the clients how to do it. 
The more I do this the more I see that there is really very little help in me working the horse for the clients, unless the clients intention is to sell the horse! 
Now why would I write a thing like that?? Because I believe that if you want to get a good horse you really need to do the training yourself. The reason for this is that the horse understands the difference between people very well, I have worked years in riding schools and seen very clearly how the horses differs between the different students. They can act up in class, I would get on them, and they would act like angels, but as soon as the student got back on the horse is "difficult" again. The same goes with handling the horse on the ground.  I can work with a horse and get that horse to behave very well, and this will transfer to the owner.. for a while. But very often a horse is a so-called problem-horse because of things that the owner do, and in that case the bad habits will come back when the horse is handled by the owner again. What needs to change is the way the owner handles the horse, not the horse itself! 

How to work with a horse doesn’t come natural to a human. Our instincts are so opposite of the horses that it’s really a miracle that we can interact at all. 
When I teach someone here in the States I speak English to my clients… so they can understand me. When I train a horse I try to speak "horse"… I try to make sense to the horse in a way that it can understand. It has taken me a long time to learn how to do this, and I am still so far from being fluent in the communication, but I keep striving for more understanding and knowledge at all times. My teacher is books and videos and other horse people, but first and foremost I try to learn from the absolute expert; the horse! If this is so hard for me to learn, can you imagine how hard it is for a horse to learn "human"? Yet most people expect the horse to do this all the time, and there lies a huge source of frustration for both the horse and the human. 
As a horse owner you must make a big effort in understanding the horse, understanding it’s language, and how to communicate to it what it is that you are trying to say. Very often you will not be able to do this in a way that the horse can understand. Don’t think that the horse is being stupid or difficult! Try other ways of communicating what it is you want! And make it a thing that the horse will not only understand, but also accept. 

The alternatives to understanding the horse and how to communicating to it what you want is to use tools and equipment. A common example for this is nosebands, tiedowns, sidereins, stronger bits etc. when humans don’t know how to ask a horse for something it’s in our nature to force the horse into it. it can be done, but is it fair to the horse? 

See it from the horses point of view!