As my young foals got older I started playing around training them and when they were ready to ride I started them under saddle - and a new passion was born. I absolutely loved starting young horses under saddle - from their first saddle on, first ride, first trail - the rewards were just so great. The horsemanship program made the process easy for me and kind for the horses. By the time they were started under saddle they were confident and willing. Meanwhile I had started a couple of business’ to try and ‘earn a living’ but my heart just wasn't in it anymore and so Phil suggested that I start young horses for people. So I did - I ‘put it out there’ to start young horses under saddle for the public, and Tanja Kraus Horsemanship was born. Initially colt starting was all I was going to do - but then I would get calls for lessons, retraining and to do clinics on the weekend - all of which are a huge part of my business today. Clinics are great because you get to see 10 people and their horses grow and learn over 2 days and the changes are often remarkable. I have people come as a ‘last resort’ or they are going to sell the horse - and by the end of a clinic they are in love with their horse again.
The hardest things I have had to over come in my business are external opinions - I’m young, I’m a female and I train in horsemanship - this is pretty much the trifecta in attracting negative opinions. Thankfully I have owned my own business’ for such a long time that I have learnt to let the results speak for themselves - as long as I have happy clients out there telling people that what I do works, then the negative comments get lost in the crowd. Most of the time they are coming from a place of ignorance or lack of understanding - a person may watch what you are doing with a particular horse on a particular day for 10 minutes and think they know what you are doing. Most of the time they don't. I keep that in mind myself when I’m at clinics or when I am watching demos - you are only seeing a small part of what happens in a moment in time - you don’t know the full history or why the trainer is doing that at a particular time.
The hardest horses I have had would have to be the ones I have to send home. The 2 I have had to send home to date have had high pain issues and It is really difficult to call an owner and tell them their horse is in pain and thats why they are behaving in such a way. Its worse when you have put in extra time to really figure it out and the owner thinks you have done them a disservice. That and the 1 horse I’ve sent home to rave reviews by the owner thanking me profusely because when the horse was dropped off you couldn’t hose it, pick up its feet or ride it forward, and then finding out later that owner has spoken poorly of you - that’s hard.
I couldn't list any one thing as a biggest achievement - taking an owner on a trail ride on their newly started horse and seeing that grin is priceless, watching horses I’ve started be successful in dressage, , endurance and simply trail riding is an amazing feeling and seeing the relationships between horse and owner grow over the
26 Love Thy Horse Magazine