About Bryan

Bryan first got involved with horses as a child on his family's farm. He is the first to admit that if it hadn't been for the need to use horses to follow his father and uncles around the farm he would probably not have got involved with horses at all. But pretty quickly as he grew into a teenager he got more and more hooked into the joys of horses and riding. As with most people at some stage of their horse life Bryan soon was attracted to the competitive side of horses and began competing in local gymkhanas and jumping competitions. However competition wasn't enough to satisfy Bryan's horsy needs, the challenge of breaking in and working with young horses became another skill he took up and with visions of training techniques and professional trainers provided by regular copies of Western Horseman magazine from the USA, Bryan quickly got a reputation for being handy with a horse . His techniques began with instruction from his father and uncles which was very much the old stockman style of tie them up, rope up a leg and so on.

Not being totally happy with this type of training, Bryan sought out other styles of horsemanship where ever he could. His first introduction to natural horsemanship was an article about Ray Hunt in the Western Horseman followed closely by an article about Pat Parelli.

Bryan's involvement in competition lead him to compete in a wide variety of fields. Show jumping, Gymkhana, Eventing, Endurance, Dressage, Showing, Hunting and to a lesser degree a little dabbling into Polo and Rodeo. Dressage is the discipline that has really captured his interest and has become an overriding passion, although lately he has been drawn to compete in a few horse trials. Over the years Bryan fine-tuned his horsemanship which led him to quit his job in 1990 and take up the life of a professional horse trainer with funds augmented by horseshoeing. Bryan met with a good degree of success with his business and soon after getting established he attended his first Parelli clinic with Pat Parelli. The information that Pat imparted to Bryan was such a quantum leap in knowledge that he pursued the Parelli program for the next six years and achieved level three in PNH. Parelli was not the only horseman Bryan learnt from. In the early days of natural horsemanship and even to this day Bryan learnt from and continues to learn from Australian natural horseman Ken Faulkner. A four day colt start with Ray Hunt and some time with Monty Roberts gives Bryan a well rounded approach.