Helping Your Horse Work Through Fear 

I feel a bit less animosity toward the woman, because I think she did what she thought Ken told her to do, not necessarily what she does at home. But then the methods for desensitizing to clippers are very obvious, and she should be able to figure it out without him. I agree that she is too sensitive and soft with the gelding. There also seem to be quite a few big holes in his training, in the parts that are always done very early. It's weird to be jumping him without first addressing those. He seems like a smart, willing horse that just needs to be taught how to do the right things. As you said, this guy is too aggresive. Too much pressure and not enough release. Another trainer said, and it's true, that when you use strong or harsh pressure, you will not be able to go back to using soft or gentle pressure. They will learn to only respond to the exagerated pressure. This guy is a hyperaggressive trainer.I would never let him near my horse. I have nothing against firmness, but that's not what this is. He gives the poor gelding no proper release at all. He's bullying the horse! That's no way to treat any horse, let alone a poorly trained rescue horse! He needs thoroughness, with no missed steps, kindness, gentleness, and consistency. Ken doesn't show that or explain it to her. Too much testosterone. A strong but gentle woman would be MUCH more successful overall. I agree that he's in too much of a hurry. He's yanking on the poor thing's mouth A LOT. And his method here makes no sense. All that's needed is desensitization, not this craziness! He's NOT teaching what the horse needs to know! (And I don't like cowboy stuff, but that's merely personal. I can tolerate men playing cowboy if their methods are good, but his are not, at least in this video.) And yes Steve Smith is excellent! He probably does have a related video. Another channel that might is Basic Horse Training. They might not reference clippers specifically, but desensitization to noise. Many channels show and talk about desensitizing, and many show how to teach the horse to lower their head, especially as part of bridling. I think that's just a gimmick Ken is using to justify the $200 he probably charged the woman. He comes across as a shyster or a grifter in trying to sell her on it. This is a rescue horse that's been through an unhealthy life. He just needs exposure to a wide variety of things that look and sound scary, but done in a caring way, so he will learn that they are not going to hurt him. And building trust with her will help a lot too. That's another reason why she should be redoing the horse's basic training, including proper lunging, which is ANOTHER thing Ken didn't bother to show her. He just wanted to get rid of her and her horse as fast as possible! There simply is NOT a trick you can teach in 10 minutes that will solve this issue. He needs to be retrained from the bottom up, because it's obvious that steps were skipped, and desensitization is one of the first and MOST obvious ones we do. I can't see what kind of trainer would skip that and let this horse move on to more complex tasks like jumping without addressing this! Many things buzz like that. Plenty of riders have been paralyzed or even killed by horses that shied away from scary sights and sounds. This is not a minor issue! This guy is downright irresponsible in telling her the thing is solved! She will immediately have the same problem at home. Nothing has been solved. Who cares if the horse thinks that he can make the sound stop by lowering his head. How long is that going to last? It'll last all of 5 minutes, until she turns them on and starts trying to clip him. This could eventually be used WITH desensitization, but not without it. Certainly not as a stand alone solution. It's a stupid idea. If I were there I'd call him a fraud and demand my money back! Do watch the channel of Steve Young Horsemanship. He is an expert in dealing with VERY difficult horses! Maybe the UK's best! There's not much that he can't deal with. He talks about the Pressure And Release training methods a lot of course, because they are the only way to do truly effective training, and because they don't rely on fear or pain in any way. He often talks about energy, and how to use our own energy. He says if we raise or lower our energy level, the horse will do the same, even if it's as subtle as having us think about something, because they are SO sensitive that they can feel it! This horse was needing to be calmed, but look at how much he was raising the gelding's energy! No calmness or trust was built here. I won't be watching anymore of his videos, that's for sure.

I also see Ken has a video on how to calm a nervous horse. It has showed up beside this one, in the list of videos RU-vid suggests next. I hate to think how that will go! He tries to calm this horse too, by bullying the poor gelding quite a bit! His psychology is way out whack, and so are his methods. All horse videos get positive comments left by inexperienced people, including those who have never been near a horse. And in general that's nice. I want everyone to love horses as much as I do! BUT there is a problem wirh some of them. A lot of those with little or no experience pretend to know what they're talking about, and some of the others will believe them. Even having ridden 50 to 100 times, or owning your own horse does NOT make people the experts that they love so much to think they are. In both those cases they are still only beginners in horsemanship overall. Sure maybe they look good in thecsaddle, have soft enough hands, and maybe they can even jump a 2 or even 3 foot fence, and I do give most of them full credit for knowing they still have to learn tons more stuff. They are almost all great people too! But SO many of them follow the methods of Ken and the other charlatans posing as horse trainers on RU-vid, and just watch a ton of random videos, and think that makes them knowledgeable! They've NEVER actually read even just 1 book on it! A true expert has read AT LEAST ONE HUNDRED BOOKS on horsemanship, and many articles and studies, has bought and owned may horses, and experienced many horse ailments and their treatments. They have travelled extensively to many barns and arenas, and studied every aspect of horsemanship extensively, including anatomy and illnesses, and how to prevent and treat them. That makes me far from an expert too. But at least I can tell if a trainer has identified the correct objective and is working toward it. Except for just 1, all of the people above are not even able to tell a disaster from a good trainer. They seem to think that any time they enjoyed a video, it means a quaility job was done by the person shown, when those 2 things are not at all related to each other. These people badly need to get off of RU-vid and start reading books, where some cohesive thought goes into it, instead of random RU-vid garbage. Whether these teenagers and teeny boppers enjoyed it or not has NOTHING to do with the video and is more likely to be whether their parent yelled at them, whether they have any homework to do, or if they had their first real kiss that day! Girls that age are the vast majority of veiwers of all horse videos. It's easy for me to spot them. And normally I like them. After all, I was one once too, and I wish I still was. But the other equally gullible teens listen to the ones praising the video, and some will seek him out when they aquire a horse they can't deal with. THAT is where I have a problem with all of this. It's bad enough they'll get ripped off for 100s or even 1000s of dollars by him, or people like him, but far worse, their horse could be traumatized, causing lasting damage! The comment sections are full of people who badly regret using Warwick Schiller and other arrogant idiots like this guy. Heaven only knows how he treats horses when the camera is off and nobody's looking! They are so delicately minded that it's very easy to traumatize them, and it's very VERY hard to undo. For that reason, I really wish that the people who do not train horses for a living would not praise every trainer they happen to see! Just because a customer said on video they were happy, doesn't mean they were. Maybe they were just too embarrassed or too hesitant to say so at that moment. BTW, almost all of the charlatans in horse training on RU-vid are men. Not all men are terrible and not all women are great. But the energy this guy and a lot of other men give off is really toxic. Steve Young, JR Rosa, Jesse Drent, Matt Harnacke, and Kory from Horse Plus Humane Society, all have really good attitudes, among the men. But you can't learn much beyond the correct attitude on RU-vid. As I said, people need to learn to find the right books, and to get off of RU-vid and actually read them. RU-vid and Netflix are rotting all of our minds, just like tv did to the older people, but even worse. Do you want to learn about horses? Or do you just want to waste your precious time on badly done and disconnected videos, half of them of idiots like this guy.