Mickey Owens is President of the Texas Mounted Shooters Club and a many-time champion in the event. She is a long-time student of Craig Cameron’s.

Mickey Owens, Manor, Texas

I took a notion in my later years to get back into horses. About ten years ago, I sat down with Western Horseman magazine and ordered a video from probably every trainer in the magazine. I remember putting Craig Cameron’s video in, and it was like magic. I knew I had to go meet him, so I took my horse and went to his clinic. That was just the beginning.

I can’t begin to describe the door Craig mentally opened for me. He gave me such a desire to know more, and I kept going back. Every clinic I went to, I gathered more knowledge and became a better horseperson. I discovered mounted shooting in 2001, and I never would have attempted it without Craig’s training. I’ve taken what I’ve learned and really made it pay off over the years.

At sixty-one years old, I placed third in both the CMSA Nationals and the CMSA Western Championships in 2007 competing against eighteen-year-olds.  I never could have reached that level if not for Craig. Without the knowledge he has shared, I’d probably still be trotting a horse around in my backyard. Over all the clinics I attended, I watched him not only change horses—I watched him change people.

Craig has a special gift that isn’t just for horses. He has a gift that helps people discover themselves. I have seen him help students discover a new person inside. He asks you to deliver and makes you push yourself—and he does it largely through humor. He uses his great sense of humor to give people a “warm fuzzy” feeling and help them have fun while they learn.

I saw a teenager at one clinic who simply quit, flatly stating, “I can’t.” I remember Craig telling her as she cried and refused to try, “If you want me to stand here and tell you everything you’re doing is correct, you don’t need me. I can only teach you if you want to learn. But don’t ever say you can’t, because everybody can.” She came back the next day and promised Craig not to say “I can’t” anymore but to say, instead, “I’ll try.” Craig was able to turn this girl around. He makes people believe in themselves.

Of course, I’ve seen him turn horses around as well. Craig never screens the horses he works with. Once, at an exhibition in Colorado, they brought in a wild mustang that had never been handled. This horse reacted quite differently to the situation than a horse that has been raised in someone’s pasture would. It was extremely wild and wasn’t afraid of Craig in the least; in fact, it was ready to fight him. Instead of moving away from Craig, the mustang moved toward him. This horse was just simply mad, its ears lying flat to the sides.

I had never before seen a horse come after a human being. It was one of the wildest animals I’ve ever set eyes on. Nevertheless, in a little more than an hour, the horse was relating to Craig and coming to him. This was one of the worst starts and nicest finishes I have seen with Craig and a horse. An understanding developed between the two without Craig having to resort to extreme measures.

As Craig says, horses are generally okay. It’s when you introduce the human element that problems occur. So what he really does is help horses with people problems—the problem being that people don’t know how to communicate with them. No matter how you look at it, what’s important is that Craig’s methods are learnable by anyone—and they work.