Equuality: Reflections on Life with Horses

The Spirit of the Amateur

About the Book

We are at the dawn of an age where most producers in any domain are unpaid and the main difference between them and their professional counterparts is simply the (shrinking) gap in the resources available to them to extend the ambition of their work. -Chris Anderson

For a long time, the common wisdom has been that if you are serious about horses you need to buy a serious horse and pay serious money to be at a serious barn and work with a serious trainer. After all, the professionals have the keys to the kingdom: the tricks to winning competitions, the techniques to communicate with our horses, the secrets to unlocking their equine minds. The belief is that, without the strong guidance of a seasoned trainer, we would not have what we need to have a successful ride, let alone to reach our horsemanship potential. We'd be stuck in the world of the hapless amateur.

Commonly, we consider an amateur to be someone lacking the skill to make it as a professional. This is a slur, a distortion of the real meaning. Amateur is a French world, literally meaning "lover of," derived from the Latin amare, "to love." So an amateur is someone who does something for the sheer love of it. An amateur is free to follow their passion, to explore the potentials, push the boundaries, make new discoveries. They don't need to report to anyone other than themselves and don't need to follow any guidelines other than those their love dictates for them.

A professional, on the other hand, is a whole different creature. While most professionals started our as passionate amateurs, their priorities are now different by definition. A professional is commonly defined as one who takes payment for performing. When horsemanship or any other passion is turned into a job, the priority shifts to making money. There are bills to pay, clients to please, services to market and reputations to guard. In the shift from amateurism to professionalism there is often a shrinking back, a withdrawing of creativity and passion in the face of economic fears.

The modern age has brought with it a plethora of technologies that have dramatically changed the relationship between the amateur and the professional. Historically, amateurs sought professionals to get guidance, inspiration, and instruction regarding techniques. This transfer of knowledge required face-to-face interactions, which necessitated the professional training barn, a place where students would board their horses, where horses were trained, and students took lessons. The professional training barn makes the amateur into a lesser creature. It appears that the amateur "needs" the trainer to teach him or her, and thus, the amateur's education will be limited by whatever restrictions the trainer is burdened by.

The amateur/professional relationship began to shift somewhat with the era of video and DVD, which allowed trainers to make recordings of their methods and distribute them to a wide audience. Video footage was still professional information though, created by someone playing by the rules of a professional. It was impersonal as well, needing to appeal to as broad an audience as possible in order to sell enough units to be economically feasible. Even still, video created resources for amateurs to begin their exploration, providing some professional guidance without as many day-to-day limits.

A huge change in the amateur/professional system is now taking place as the internet has become the defacto means of communication for an entire generation. The internet allows amateurs across the world to share information with total freedom. We write blog posts, respond to discussion groups, live chat, and post videos. We get answers to our questions within minutes from a vast array of people who are pursuing horsemanship from the same passionate angle that we are. While any given individual may (or may not) lack the experience of a seasoned professional, the collective pool of information is not only deeper, but also much, much larger than the perspective that could be offered by any individual trainer.

As information becomes cheaper and communication connects us all the more readily, we become increasingly empowered to pursue our passion for horses with the true spirit of the amateur. We act out of the sheer love we feel for the horse, learning from millions of other people around the world who have been transformed by the same freedom. Together, we contribute our experiences to create reciprocity of discovery. Out of this tempest of creative energy, we are giving birth to a new art of horsemanship, the shape of which we can only guess at. It's going to be an exciting ride.