SAN ANGELO, Texas – “Born and raised in Queensland, Australia on the East Coast. Moved over here now permanently about 10 years ago and came over to pursue a life and career in the horse industry,” Horse Trainer Dan James said.
Dan James says he always knew he wanted to work with horses.
“As a kid it’s all I kinda really wanted to do. The thing that really probably drew me in was the movie horse stuff so seeing what people could have horses do, I hate to use the work “tricks” but if we look at the rare the laydown things like that. I was always fascinated by film in general to see what people could achieve with horses and that’s the direction we’ve sort of always loved and pursued,” James said.
That career path opened up several doors, or gates in this instance, for Dan including performances at live shows like the San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo. But, he says the liberty acts like the one in this arena ties in to the work done on the big screen.
“They see a horse galloping from point A to point B, that’s all done through mark training which is part of the liberty and it all goes hand in hand.”
And speaking of the spotlight, if the horse named Swampy looks familiar…it’s probably because you’ve seen him with some A-list celebrities.
“This horse in particular, Swampy, from the 6666 Ranch here in Texas, he’s appeared with Jennifer Lawrence in Vogue magazine, he was also in Versace along with some of the other horses we’ve got …so these guys have appeared in lots of different photoshoots and stuff. He was actually even cast for the second Jumanji film, he didn’t get the part but he did all the prep work for that particular piece. so over the years this guy has had several people including Bella Hadid did a photoshoot with him so he’s been around,” James said.
How long does it take Dan to get a horse ready for this type of Hollywood pressure?
“So if I were to start a horse today, I’m looking at the first six days. And that first six days, that horse is going to learn how to work around me, at liberty, change direction, start some mark training. Through the next sort of 3 months that’s going to build on wide open spaces because quite often the areas we go to may be 1,000 acres or 100,000 acres so this guy has to come out and do all these tasks even in that environment. So that next three months we start to continue to develop that foundation. After about 12 months we’re at a point where the horse will continue to work around me not only the stop cues that go into it, then we start teaching things like the lay down, the Spanish walk, the rare for some of the horses so there are quite a lot of hours put in,” James said.
Dan says it all begins with some fair discipline, meaning Dan needs to be the figure in control so if the horses get nervous, they can look to him for guidance.
“You start to see that relationship and that rapport that starts to take place, but it never just starts with the trust it often starts with the other elements to get to the end results that you see in this relationship ,” James said.
Those relationships now showcased across the country – teaching crowds of all ages about horsemanship and liberty.
“Working these horses at liberty always circles back and reminds me about the liberties we have in life,” James said.