Horse Sense: Horse trainer Tom Curtin teaches clinic in Bigfork
Tom Curtin has heard plenty of stories that started with “All of a sudden.”
Maybe the time when a someone tied their horse to a log and “all of a sudden the horse ran across the creek with the log tied to it.”
Or maybe the time they tied the belly cinch too tight and the horse bucked the kids off grandpa’s mare.
Whatever the “all of a sudden” story might be, Curtin aims to help people understand the needs of a horse. He was in Bigfork recently to lead a horsemanship clinic at the Johnson Ranch. The two-day clinic addressed riders from beginner to advanced and all the horse issues in between. Curtin’s goal is to work with the horse from the “inside out, instead of the outside in,” which for many horse owners is a unique proposition.
Curtin is a rancher who has a place south of Billings, and it’s his ranching background that helps him lead horse clinics.
Horses, he said, want to work, and if you give them a task they’ll be much more focused. “Ranching with a horse is still the best way to get a job done,” he said. “Nothing takes the place of a job for these horses. They were designed to get a job done.”
Curtin and his wife, Trina, travel the world to do clinics, from Australia to Canada. Alida Tinch asked Curtin to come to Bigfork.
When Curtin started doing clinics about 20 years ago he was more interested in showing people his way instead of trying to understand what the individual and their horse needed. “That never worked for the people, or the horse,” Curtin said. He’s changed that, and now adapts his teaching to each person’s unique situation. “I learn every day,” he said. “This has been great for me.”
People often make horsemanship way too complicated, and Curtin tries to instill in his clinic participants a sense of working for the horse, instead of the horse working for them.
With egos leading most humans by the nose, that’s sometimes a hard thing to accept for some horse owners. “You may kid the rest of the world, but you’re not going to kid the horse,” Curtin said.
He teaches a vaquero style that is based on being around livestock; how to keep the sheep or cattle calm while getting a job done.
The Curtins’ students are often people who want to learn a horse tradition they might have missed out on. People come to Curtin for answers, but like a wise sage, he encourages people to look inside themselves for the answers. “We’re not teaching horsemanship,” he said. “It’s about life; how one living thing presents itself to another. I try to get people aware of being aware. You’ll never find a horse that doesn’t understand what we’re teaching.”
There is no magic secret to horses, but if he could distill horsemanship into one trait, it would be awareness of the feet. With a slight touch of the reins, Curtin had his horse step backward, then side to side. The pressure was ever so slight. Control the feet and you control the horse. Whether you’re riding dressage, hunting or using a horse in the backcountry, “It doesn’t make any difference,” Curtin said, “it all comes back to the feet.”