Page 74 - Barrel Stallion Register 2016

Some trainers excel at being able to read and improve a horse’s mental state and biome- chanics. Some excel at communicating to a horse what they want it to do. Some have awesome people skills and others are great industry ambas- sadors who genuinely want the best for their horse and human clients and for the equine com- munity as a whole. But, few trainers combine all these qualities into one people- and horse-loving ball of insightful service. Canadian barrel horse trainer Dale Cloutier is one of those few.
“Dale is very much a caretaker and he expects perfection, so the horse never learns to do anything wrong,” says friend and client Darian Burt of West Jordan, Utah, who with her husband, Bob, owned and bred the great speed sire Dash Ta Fame. “He’s
also very attentive to not overdoing it with his horses and to involve other types of riding so they don’t get bored or soured on the barrels. The horses love and trust him 100 percent because he’s so careful never to do anything to lose that trust.”
Stephenville, Texas barrel racer Molly Powell has ridden Dale’s horses and testifies that anyone can ride behind Dale. “Some people train horses so they can ride them, but not necessarily so other people can,” she says. “Horses Dale has trained are open to other riding styles because they’re not uptight; they’re real solid.”
Simply stated, Dale’s philosophy, gleaned from barrel racing experts like Molly, Sue Smith, Kendal Owen, Renaud Poulin and Danyelle Campbell, consists of making horses and people happy. “I
want my horses to be happy and when they get to the alleyway, to think, ‘I want to do it!’”
The people he makes happy include his veterinarian, Julie Collins of St-Bernard de Michaudville, Quebec, who says Dale can spot a problem before a horse shows any sign of lameness. “He can feel the horse very well,” says Dr. Collins, an equine sports medicine vet. “When he calls
me about a locomotion problem with a horse he’s training, he can explain the problem. It can be
a challenge for a veterinarian when a rider calls before the horse presents lameness, but Dale can relate the biomechanical dysfunction to what he feels: no propulsion; the horse’s thorax not being rounded in the left side; the cranial phase of the stride is shorter on the left hind; and so on.
72 SPEEDHORSE
Dale Cloutier has
a natural knack for knowing what his horses and his clients need
by Diane Rice