When Wade and his wife, Debbie, bought their first horse, the couple had no previous horsemanship experience. Debbie had always loved horses and the couple was at the right point in their lives to make good on her childhood dream of owning a horse of her own.
Catalina, the horse Wade purchased for Debbie, wasn’t started under saddle, so the mare was sent to a trainer. When the trainer failed to get her going under saddle, they sent her to another trainer. And then another and another. “After four different trainers told us that the horse was dangerous, couldn’t be saddled, much less ridden, and we should get rid of her, we were at a loss about what to do,” Wade says.
Looking for help from any resource they could find, the couple came across Downunder Horsemanship and watched Clinton’s training videos on YouTube. “We started watching the rescue horse series with Cider. It didn’t take long after watching a few of the training sessions for me to decide that the Method was exactly what we needed,” Wade says. “I immediately loved how Clinton broke every step of the training process down into the smallest of details. As someone with no prior horsemanship experience, he made it easy for me by not expecting me to know horsemanship jargon. He literally explained everything.”
When Wade began working with Catalina, the mare responded to the training immediately. “Within a few weeks, I had her saddled and was riding her,” Wade shares.
Based on his success with Debbie’s horse, Wade decided to get a horse of his own. He found San Tan, a Paint, and became a serious student of the Method. He participated in a variety of private lessons and clinics, covering all aspects of the Method, from Fundamentals to Colt Starting, and went on to work with friends’ and family members’ horses, fine-tuning his feel and timing as a horseman along the way. “Plain and simple, the Method works,” he says. “It’s easy to follow, it’s repeatable and it’s predictable. That doesn’t mean it isn’t hard work, because it is. But anything worth doing is hard work.”
Wanting to take his horsemanship to the next level, Wade enrolled in the Academy and earned his certification as a Method Ambassador. “My goal is to help people build partnerships with their horses. When my wife and I got into horses, I was shocked at how poorly behaved people’s horses were and how the behavior was just accepted. I’d see people come back from a ride looking like rung-out dishrags. When I’d ask them how the ride went, they’d say the horse jigged, took off, and crow-hopped a few times, but they didn’t see anything wrong,” Wade says. “After I found the Method, I learned that you don’t have to accept that kind of behavior from your horse. You can have a good, fun, safe time with your horse, and the Method is the easy-to-follow training program to help you reach that goal.”