Cal Middleton Professional Horse Trainer

Cal’s journey through his professional life with horses has been a constant upward evolution. Cal has mainly been focused on two ideas; gaining knowledge, and sharing that knowledge with others. The understanding of the horse that he worked hard to acquire throughout his life and career was never quite enough, as he was always searching for something deeper that would fit a greater number of horses.

The first three decades of Cal’s life included riding at his grandparents ranch as a boy, working for and learning from the best performance horse trainers in the world. Running his own training business, winning accolades and titles in numerous events such as reining, cow horse, cutting, ranch horse and more. Working with top dressage trainers and competing in classical dressage. Working on farms and ranches and learning the utility of a horse. 

After Cal had built a successful horse training business and a had great understanding of the show horse world, Cal was still wanting to learn more. He was invited to attend a clinic with Peter Campbell, who learned horsemanship and ranching from the great Tom Dorrance. Tom Dorrance is the man that started it all, teaching his stockmanship concepts to, not only Peter Campbell, but also to Ray Hunt and others who helped popularize many of Tom’s methods. 

Like so many others, Cal was intrigued with Peter’s approach to the horse and spent as much time as he could learning from Peter until Peter’s death in 2017. Cal continues to learn from the older generation, he rides horses for the public, gives clinics, offers consulting services, and takes every opportunity he can to mentor the younger generation through his apprenticeship program. Cal has been teaching clinics and helping others with horses professionally since 2005. He has learned from so many trainers, horsemen and women, as well as from his own experiences.

There are many out there today offering a variety of services, but Cal may stand alone as one who has a true understanding of the good and bad of the show horse arena reaching high levels of success himself, has real world experience on farms and ranches, and understands the depths of true horsemanship being able to teach it to others while always keeping the horses’ best interest in mind. 

Cal published his first book in 2016, started the Horses and Life podcast in 2019 and has contributing author to many equine magazines for over a decade. 

Cal has a passion for children and has worked full time as a behavioral implementor and consultant inside schools and homes. He also worked 8 years as a high school wrestling coach, among many other jobs in the real world. 

Cal is a past president of the Heart of America Brangus Association and a former judge for the National Reining Horse Association. He is a lifetime member of the AQHA, NRHA, ASHA, ApHC, APHA, IBHA, ACHA, and many others. 

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