Page 75 - Barrel Stallion Register 2016

“For sure, all the horses that finish training with him run barrels without pain, and are happy to do their job,” adds Dr. Collins.
In a few short years, spreading horse and human happiness has helped take the 29 year old from Drummondville, Quebec, from little- known to well-known among Canadian barrel horse trainers, and an up-and-comer in the United States as well.
HORSES FOR HEALING
Tragedy played a part in leading Dale to his training occupation. His dad and grandparents had used draft horses to harvest wood from the forest at their Mont-Laurier, Quebec ranch,
so he grew up with them until his family mechanized the timber-harvesting process around 1997. But in 1999 when Dale was just 13, his father died. Dale and his sister, Cindy, and younger brother, Shane, eventually turned to horses as they struggled with the loss. Around 2000, Dale said to his mom, “We have that big barn and nothing to do with it. I want to get horses again.” Permission granted.
Around age 15, Dale bought his first horse for $1,500, including the saddle. But, as often happens in a horse-loving family, Dale says, “That trail horse started feeling lonely, and I was bored to be riding alone, so Cindy and my mom both bought horses.”
Later, Cindy fell in love with a neighbor’s barrel horse. That neighbor let Cindy compete on the horse and they started winning. “I was still into trail riding and doing tricks with my horse and stuff like that,” Dale says.
When Dale told his mentor, horseman Luc Bernard — who had ridden barrels years before (in Canada, barrel racing consists of ladies’, men’s and 4D) — Luc offered lessons to Dale. “He taught me some cues and didn’t charge me anything,” Dale says. Luc had agreed with someone else to a ‘pay it forward,’ and Dale was his person.
FROM TRAIL RIDING TO BARREL RIDING
Dale sold his trail horse in 2006 and invested the money in his first real trainee — a pleasure horse that wasn’t all pleasure. “He’d bucked
and kicked the past owner,” Dale says. “But I was lucky because, even if I knew how to train, that didn’t mean it would work out well with my first horse. At the end of the first or second year, we made the final in the 1D (the 10 fastest horses). I’d also won money in pleasure and horsemanship with him.”
Dale parlayed the horse’s trio of skills —
as a lesson horse, a pleasure horse and barrel racer — by selling him to a Quebec university’s riding program.
By this time, the family’s interest in barrel racing had blossomed, so Dale put his money into a barrel prospect. “I bought a Tres Seis horse because Tres Seis had won the futurity in
The first barrel prospect Dale purchased and trained was Nemeseis, by Tres Seis, whom
he sold after he and the mare placed in a barrel futurity top 20. Nemeseis went on to the NBHA and made the IFR multiple times.
D D a a l l e e l l i i k ke e d d t t h h e e T Tr r e e s s S S e e i i s s breeding, so he purchased
T Tr r e e s s B B u u l l l l i i o o n n - - a a h h u u g g e e h h o o r r s s e e o o n n w h o m h e f u t u r i t i e d a n d t h e n
s s o o l l d d . . T T h h e e n n e ex x t t y ye e a a r r, , T Tr r e e s s B B u u l l l l i i o o n n w w o o n n t t h h e e I I B B R R A A i i n n t t h h e e 1 1D D O O p p e e n n
a a n n d d Y Yo o u u t t h h 1 1D D. .
“I want my horses to be happy and when they get to the alleyway, to think, ‘I want to do it!’”
SPEEDHORSE 73