Van Hargis on Jack Brainard

Now here's a special treat, the late Howard Hale with an interview with Van Hargis. This is from an interview that I did with Van a couple of years ago. One of the things and one of the people that he talked about was Jack Brainaerd.

Gosh Jack Brainerd is an interesting horseman, isn't he? He's probably in his 90s van but really an interesting individual.

"One of my little dreams come true. I had an opportunity to do a clinic with Jack. He had Abilene Texas several years ago, I'll tell you a little bit about Mr. Brainard and his attitude toward horsemanship. He was probably in his mid 80s at that time and we had the arena divided in half and I'm looking at one end of the arena. My students were down there and Jack was looking toward the other arena or toward the other direction of the arena. His students were down on that side and we were standing literally standing side by side. One of my students made some sort of deal and I yelled at them some instruction and I thought at first I must have said something wrong because I saw the corner of my eye. I saw Mr. Brainard shaking his head and I'm thinking, oh, I must have said something wrong."

"Mr. Brainard, what's on your mind?"

"He said, Van, you know, I'm just afraid I'm going to die before I learn everything about these darn horses that I want to learn."

"And at that point I was so humbled to sit there and think, here's a guy that's 86 years old, I think he was at the time who had probably trained more trainers than most of us have trained horses and yet he was still on that journey of learning and horsemanship to the point where he was concerned about not getting a chance to learn everything he wanted to learn. And that's when I realized, you know, at that point in time, you know, I've got a long way to go. We all, it's a never ending journey. It's a journey that yields nothing but happiness and success which stay on it and stay humble."

Texas clinician and trainer Van Hargis with the late Howard Hale. That's it for today's Horseman's Corner.