Features

Horse Trainer

 

Dan Byrd
 

Making Time To Train People, Horses and Himself…
Dan is a Mounted Shooting Machine

 

Maybe you had a chance to see Dan Byrd shoot at the 2008 World Championship in Amarillo. He and his Buckskin Hossley made it look easy—each step precise, every turn well executed, every shot on target.  The perfect example of tremendous planning and preparation leading to a top-flight performance. The result: a spot in the Top Ten overall finish.

 

Such a guy has to be extremely organized, right? The type of person who has a five-year plan dictating where his future career goes. A man who knew from the earliest age just what he was going to do with his life. Right?

 

Uh, not exactly.

 

“It all just kind of happened,” Byrd says. “Things just fell into place, and I went along with it.”

 

So Dan Byrd, top mounted shooting competitor and trainer, just went with the flow to get where he is. And what a trip it’s been.

 

Beginnings

Byrd was born and grew up in the Santa Fe area. He got his first horse at age four. When he was 12, the family moved to a ranch outside town, and the youngster showed some abilities that would become more apparent later in life. “I bought, trained and sold my first horse around then. It was a Quarter Horse gelding that I’d bought for $250.  By the time I was done with him, he had turned out to be a nice horse and I sold him for $2200.”

 

He enjoyed the experience of training his first horse—and for a kid, the profit wasn’t so bad either. By his mid teens, Dan was competing in roping, reining, pleasure horses and the like. He says at that time, he was “bored and unfulfilled with those particular disciplines and wanted something more exciting”.

 

And he still wasn’t sure what he wanted to do when he grew up. “When I got out of high school, I really didn’t have much of a plan. I wasn’t planning to do something with horses.  I went to college instead. But that’s when everything seemed to fall into place in my horse career.”

 

Opportunity Knocks

That’s around the time he found the sport of polocrosse—a mix of lacrosse and polo. And unlike roping and reining, Byrd found that he enjoyed the adrenaline and challenge of making great horses for the sport. In fact, he became the highest rated player in the United States. Mostly that was because of his previous horse experience. He was able to create a new level of horse in the sport. That combined with great hand-eye coordination allowed him to rise to the top. And this would prove to be a real plus in his later competitive ventures.

 

But being at the top put some extra responsibility on him. If he was going to win in a team sport, his teammates had to be up to the challenge: “So I trained all the horses.  I coached the other players. I went all over the country and gave clinics.”
Dan’s success and high profile brought him to the attention of the folks in polo, and he began training horses for that sport as well.  In 2000, a Santa Fe based venture capitalist named Charlie Kokesh hired Byrd to train his polo ponies. Kokesh had some experience in mounted shooting—which he mentioned to his new employee. Well, one thing led to another…

 

Mounted Shooting Time

Dan had done some shooting in his life, but not from horseback.  And not with a single action revolver. That didn’t stop him from entering his first match in 2001; he did well enough to qualify for the Worlds after only competing at two shoots. And there, against the best of the best in the country, the new shooter not only won the men’s 1 division, but also placed in the top 10.

 

“I think I was just lucky,” he says in all modesty.  “I had a really nice horse, and I did not understand that the placing in the overall counted for all level of shooters. So I thought I was only doing well in my class.” But his previous experience was also a factor: “My background in polo and polocrosse helped with hand-eye coordination. I had taught players that the mallet is just an extension of the arm; this also goes for the gun”.

 

In 2002, as luck would have it again, Byrd qualified for the Worlds for the second time by going to only two shoots, and this time won the men’s two division and again placed in the top ten overall.

 

By 2005, polocrosse and polo were pretty much in the Byrd past. “There just wasn’t enough work to focus on them; however, there was a need in mounted shooting. So from there it became a full time job.”

 

The Trainer

So Dan Byrd, who grew up with horses but never planned to go into the horse business, was a horse trainer. And he quickly came to a training philosophy.

 

First: “It doesn’t matter if you’re doing polo, polocrosse, reining, shooting, or roping. The foundation of your horse is basically the same. The training is aimed at making them supple and broke. They’re all the same at the beginning. Then you finish them for a particular sport.”

 

Second: “People have different definitions for what a ‘broke horse’ is. In my opinion, a broke horse is something you can saddle up and do anything—it’s not just getting on his back and riding. They’ll do whatever you ask in a nice manner; they’re ready and willing.”

 

Third: “Everybody’s in a rush. They want it now.  They have a hard time understanding that it takes time. Some of the toughest horses that I work with, somebody brings them in and says, ‘Hey, I shot off him!’ And that’s not good. Most of the time they haven’t started the horse on gunfire the proper way which means it takes more time to undo what they have done. Plus, the horse doesn’t have the foundation. It hasn’t flexed, it doesn’t know how to side pass, they haven’t worked on its hind end. Sure, maybe it can run patterns. But in the long run, it will not be as efficient as a horse that is trained properly.”

 

So how do you do that? “We start by working the horse from the ground, and getting him supple. Even the older horses need that. And we work with them every day.  It’s not so much working for long periods of time, sometimes less is more. Most of the time its quality over quantity, meaning, its appreciating the smaller things: a good stop, a nice turn, a baby-step toward the goal means a lot in day-to-day work. You realize this by a change in feel, attitude, and the general demeanor of the horse as they progress. It’s hard to describe to somebody.  But it’s part of having the experience and knowing the horse.”

 

Byrd adds, “We work them in the arena, but they all get out and around.  Sometimes we’ll go lope them around in the desert. A couple of days a week we’ll load them up and take them to a different arena. And when we finish them off, it isn’t just getting them used to gunfire. It’s the announcer. The banners.  The other horses. People don’t realize just how much time it takes to get a horse ready for competition.”

 

But it’s not just the horses. Working with riders is becoming more and more important. “It’s amazing how even small things like a little bit of body position change, or a little bit of rein change, can improve the performance,” says Dan. “And to help a rider get that is very rewarding.  Fortunately, in this sport people want to ride better and to understand their horse. And it goes from your Level 1 to your top level shooters.”

 

Byrd says the process continues during and after competitions: “I make a point of watching my clients at the various shoots. I give them some advice ahead of time about a pattern. I give them feedback after a stage run. In fact, working with them is the main reason I go to the shoots.”

 

Now all of that means Dan Byrd has little time to practice himself. Still, he’s on top of his game: in 2008, he was the Overall Champion Cowboy at Festival of the West, took Reserve at the Eastern United States Championship and the Western United States Championship, and ended the season as the Number One ranked Cowboy in the World.  2009 looks just as promising.

 

But to hear Dan tell it, his biggest thrill is seeing his horses and students do well.

 

“I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. It’s fun to see their excitement when they accomplish their goals.”

 

The list is long among Dan’s clients that have made it to the World Champion winner’s circle.

 

So over the years, the guy who just went with the flow has become Dan, the man with a plan. And a successful one, for many people and horses in mounted shooting. But horses and mounted shooting aside, Dan is most proud of his two sons, Niko and Sam. Both boys, ages 13 and 11, seem to have the natural Byrd ability with horses and just may carry on the family tradition in years to come.

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