February 28, 2005

Hello Gregg,

I wanted to take a moment to thank you for the time that you spend with myself and my filly (Honey).  I have been extremely hesitant to introduce her to a trainer in fear of the tactics that may be used to “make her listen”.  I have heard many stories of horses that are sent ‘out for training’ and come back worse off than they left.  My decision has been to do her training myself…and I am not a trainer.  I was relieved when you agreed to come and work with her.  I have worked with her for two years now, however, I stopped her training after losing my mare in November.  Until you, I was afraid that a trainer would get a hold of her and not be willing to go slow and give me the results that I have been working towards all this time.  I have also wondered if I was doing all of the things that should be done in order to give my horse a good foundation while attempting to make her into a riding horse.  I am so glad that I decided to ask you to work with her in order to give me a ‘report card’ if you will on how she has been coming along as well as areas that I need to work with her more.

I am very happy with the way that you went about getting to know her first as well as the fact that you would not work with her unless I was right there to watch what you were doing with her.  I did not expect you to explain every move you made and why it was important to do the work that you were doing.  Your kind hands and calm voice were impressive and the bottom line was when I watched as you earned her respect and asked rather than demanded performance from her.  The end result was a horse that respected you and was eager to continue to learn from you.  I was amazed by how much alike we think when it comes to training a horse.  You gave me so many new tools to use in her training!  I cannot thank you enough for this.  Our time together has motivated me to begin her training again.

Gregg, it was my pleasure to have you in my arena.  The information and knowledge that you have shared with me is invaluable.  I truly do not know how to thank you enough.  Honey and I look forward to many hours of enjoyable training.  You’ve shown us that training does not have to be grueling and uncomfortable for either of us.  I hope that you will let us know when you are in Tucson again so that we may continue to learn from you.

Sincerely,


Deanna Severance