Born on a horse ranch in Manitoba, Canada, Kyle Shaw grew up on the back of a horse. His equine education was well-rounded as his parents dabbled in all facets of the horse industry that would catch public attention, from boarding and trail rides to sleigh rides, lessons to training. They provided any service that the public would pay for, but his father had a passion for reining.
Shaw didn’t always share his father’s love of reining though. “I showed in the reining for the first time as a youth. I was probably about five or six years old the first time out,” he explained. “I stayed in the youth thing for a little bit in the 13 & Under, but then when I was 12 or 13, I started to like dirt bikes more than horses, so I switched to that for a while. But that was expensive! You know, because bikes break, and I had to come up with the money to fix them. I had learned early on that the horses were the best avenue for me to make money to fix my bike, so I went back to doing that.”
Shaw was buying cheap horses at the local auction, training them, and selling them for more during this time, and by the time he was 17, he found himself training horses more than he was riding dirt bikes.
“I worked for myself in Canada for a time, then later, when I was working at a different facility in Manitoba, something happened. One winter, so much snow had accumulated on the roof, that one morning, we found the roof on the ground, so, you know, that forced some changes,” he said with a
smile.
One place that is certainly not known for its heavy snowfall is Texas, so that is where Shaw landed for a time before an opportunity presented itself for him to work with Dean Brown in Campbell Hall, New York at Santa Hill Ranch. From there, he traveled to Wisconsin to work for Justin Michaels at Michaels Performance Horses.
“I spent a couple of years in Wisconsin, and then Matt Palmer, who is a good friend of mine, was working at Santa Hill and offered me a job. I had already worked there for Bob Santagata, so it just kind of made sense to go back,” Shaw said.
Shaw had an especially successful year in 2019 when he won so much that he was bumped to Level 4 only. “It was fun when it happened, but you know, the following year, when you only qualify for the level four, and may not have the corresponding caliber of horses to do that, it’s tough,” he admitted.
As far as future goals, Shaw hopes to make the most of every opportunity he is given. He said, “Every time you get on a horse, you kind of have an idea of what’s possible. So, if you can go out there and have the run that you are envisioning, even if it’s not the winning run, you’ve got to be pretty happy with that.”
Due to his upbringing and the various trainers he has worked for, Shaw feels like his knowledge is well-rounded. “Everyone I’ve worked for has been so different. When I started, I probably had a lot of my own ideas, and when I went to work for somebody and they do things differently, I felt kind of useless at the
beginning,” he said. “Everybody has a different focus; they emphasize different things. Then things start to come together, and you gain a little bit of confidence. You pick up things along the way and ideally, in the end, you wind up with something that works. That’s what I love about reining. It is always evolving and there is always more to learn.”
For other assistant trainers, Shaw had one observation seeded with valuable advice. He said, “I see a lot of people that are maybe just a little bit impatient with how quickly they expect things to happen. It takes time. I mean the goal of an assistant is to eventually do their own thing, but you have to develop your identity as a horse trainer. That’s hard to do if you are just throwing yourself a lot of different ideas from a lot of different trainers and owners. That makes it difficult to reconcile them all into one picture of how you want your career to go. I think you need to be patient and try to understand the perspective of wherever you are working, from the owner, the trainer, or whoever. If you understand where they’re coming from, it’ll make a lot more sense in terms of how you fit in with the plans that they might
have for you, and how that fits into your plans for yourself.”