In a small, bright indoor arena, an elegant warmblood stallion wearing dressage tack stands side-by-side with a stout stock horse wearing a worn western saddle.

The unusual pair is about to go to work with trainer Frank Calzavara, a horseman who over 30 years as a professional trainer has developed a style that melds cowboy and classical traditions. "I like to call it the Calzavara individual method," he jokes.

A third-generation horseman, the 48-year-old’s career has covered a startlingly varied terrain. "It’s been a fun ride so far, and I’ve tried to learn something from everything I’ve done along the way," he said. Calzavara has worked in rodeo and in horse racing. He’s performed as a trick rider, as a stunt performer in films, and as the red-coated outrider at Churchill Downs. He has done public exhibitions as a dressage rider and as a cowboy, ridden in inaugural parades for two U.S. presidents, and galloped horses on race tracks in Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky and Illinois. He has trained sporthorses and pleasure horses, driving teams and trick ponies, stock horses and stakes-winning race horses, priceless stallions and backyard pets.

He was best known as a young man for extravagant public exhibitions jumping horses over cars and flaming fences. But as a trainer his greatest pleasure comes in working quietly with young horses, and older charges with behavior problems, shepherding them back from the brink of the hopelessly rank.

"Last Christmas one of my former clients sent me a picture of her and her horse jumping a fence at their first hunter show. This was a horse that came to me last summer because she could hardly get on him, who acted up like crazy and had thrown her and broken her ribs," he said. "Now they’re doing great. Nothing makes me happier than that." Loud and relentlessly jovial with humans, Calzavara is just as relentless in his quiet with fractious horses. Tense horses’ fear deflates in the face of his steady calm.

Breeder and dressage competitor Kathy Benjamin said Calzavara started her Hanovarian stallion Legendary under saddle this winter. "I really trusted him with my stallion, because Frank’s methods are so gentle, but he is firm," she said. "You hear he has a background in rodeo, and that makes you think his methods might be aggressive, but Frank is so mild." By birthright, Calzavara is a cowboy. His maternal grandfather was a performer in old western shows, jumping horses through fire at Madison Square Garden. His mother Gene was a professional trick rider, travelling the country to performances with her family beginning when she was just a toddler. His father Rudy Calzavara managed stables, played polo and worked as trick rider and pick-up man in rodeo, eventually starting his own rodeo company, which is still in operation. When Calzavara was born, his father operated a boarding and livery stable in Libertyville, IL. The family lived on site, and Calzavara grew up helping care for the horses and leading customers on rides. His mother taught him to trick ride, and along with his siblings he began performing at rodeos when he was a young child.

"It was a great life for a kid, everything was an adventure," he said. The family spent summers travelling to rodeos, with Calzavara spending his childhood with the wild collection of characters that follow the circuit, from cocky young cowboys to rodeo clowns. As a competitor, he excelled at steer wrestling. As a performer, Calzavara became well known as a trick rider. He was named "contract act of the year" at the International Finals Rodeo in the late 1970s.

But at age 18, he was exposed to a much different approach to horses when he was hired as a trainer at Tempel Farm in Wadsworth. For 10 years, from the early 1970s to the early ‘80s, Calzavara worked at the dressage facility, occasionally performing in public exhibitions -- the farm did not then have regular public performances -- but largely concentrating on training the young stallions. He started and trained up to 20 Lipizzan stallions every year.

At Tempel, he was exposed to riding masters like Alf Athenstaedt, whose riding and manner with horses he much admires. Also coming as an occasional visiting trainer at the farm was German dressage legend Willi Schultheis.

"I was this cocky young kid, and like most cocky young kids I was pretty convinced of my own talent. Then I watched Schultheis ride -- you couldn’t even see him move, but oh my God those horses worked for him It made me realize what good riding really could be."

But he said his great gift in working at Tempel was meeting his mentor, Dr. Mikulas Ferjencik, a longtime veterinarian at the farm who so revered his horses that he would walk into the fields to cut them fresh alfalfa with a scythe every morning.

The cultured, elderly European took the rough-around-the-edges cowboy under his wing, teaching him his philosophy of life and horsemanship. He worked with Calzavara as he trained the young stallions, and Calzavara assisted him in training the farm’s driving horses and in handling the breeding stallions.

The Calzavara Individual Method Trainer Frank Calzavara said his approach to horses focuses not on a particular technique, but on taking each individual horse as he comes. In working to start young horses and in working with horses with behavior problems, said he tries to discover what techniques work best for each individual, and concentrates his efforts on keeping the training process as stress-free as possible for the horse.

He believes that a horse’s first experiences in training set the foundation for his career. A solid beginning will help the horse excel in future training, no matter the discipline, he says. "Look, these horses are going to leave here and go on to whatever their jobs are going to be, and they’re going to have to learn new things all the time. Maybe for one horse that new thing will be passage, maybe for another it will just be going on a new trail," Calzavara said. The key to performance, he believes, is confidence. "If they get started right, they’re going to be okay with learning new things. But if you’re tough on them when you start them, if you don’t pay attention to what stresses them out, then they’re going to think that learning new things is scary, and that leads to behavior problems. And that can ruin a career, no matter how athletic they are." Horses Calzavara has started have gone on to success in dressage, eventing, jumping, at the Quarter Horse Congress, and at thoroughbred race tracks around the country. Calzavara often works horses using a "pony horse," a stock horse he uses with young horses just beginning their training, or in working older horses with behavior problems.

Calzavara rides the pony horse, controlling the other animal with a lead rope attached to a halter worn over his bridle, the other end of the rope dallied off to the pony’s saddle. When a young horse is first backed, his first several rides will often be with a pony horse. "I don’t use a pony horse with all the babies I start, but I do a lot of them that way," he said. Using the pony is a traditional method among many western horsemen, more unusual with the sporthorses Calzavara often works with. He believes a well-trained pony horse helps the young horse gain confidence from the older horse, and thinks the youngster is less stressed with the pony at his side.

It also prevents the young horse from bolting, bucking or refusing to move forward when first under saddle. But most of his other methods come from a more classic dressage approach, focusing on teaching the young horse to move forward freely off the leg, powering from behind without artificial headsets or constraints. "I probably get more horses in for remedial training for behavioral problems than I get babies, and I can tell you that horses usually develop behavioral problems for two reasons -- they’re either spoiled or their stressed," he said. Horses often begin to behave badly on the ground when spoiled by inexperienced owners. He said two common and easy to avoid mistakes are feeding too many treats to horses in hand, and simply not handling horses enough. He said horses should always be led in and out of barns and pasture using a lead rope, even if the barn’s layout allows them to run in and out on their own. "And treats belong in the feed tub," he said. Stress leads to most behavior problems, he believes. Some horses are stressed by owners or trainers who are too dominant or aggressive, others by a training environment they find too difficult, others by chronic pain.

One of the most common sources of stress, he believes, is simply poor riding. "A lot of the horses I get in are just acting out because they are frustrated," he said, saying a rider with unsteady hands and a poor seat cannot communicate clearly. The confusion and lack of confidence are more than some horses can take. He urged horse owners to honestly assess their skills and to buy a horse with a steady, tolerant personality if they are still on the learning curve. "The best thing you can do for your horse is to work to be the best, quietest rider you can be," he said.

"He was the best man I have ever met," Calzavara said. Ferjencik stressed to Calzavara that a kind, respectful approach created not just happier horses, but horses better able to achieve higher levels of training. With him, he learned a more classical approach to training young horses, one focused on collaboration with the horse rather than the dominance sometimes found in the world of western riding. After nearly a decade of working at the dressage facility on weekdays while continuing to rodeo on weekends, Calzavara was getting bored. He decided to make a radical departure by going to work on the racetrack. He first worked as an exercise rider and as the owner of a string of pony horses who exercised horses in the morning, then took the thoroughbreds to the gate in the afternoon.

Later, he was hired as the assistant trainer in a large stakes barn in Florida. During one meet at Churchill Downs, he worked as an outrider, overseeing the safety of horses and riders on the track and bringing the winners to the winner’s circle.

In the gypsy lifestyle of the racetrack, he moved from meet to meet, travelling from Florida to Illinois to Arkansas to Kentucky. He found it to be a stressful life for humans as well as horses.

Calzavara said he gained two important things on the track. First, he said, he learned a great deal about the physical care of equine athletes in working as an assistant trainer. The thoroughbreds, under the intense physical stress of training, demand a level of detail in care and attention not typically seen in other horses he had worked with in the past.

That level of care continued after he left the race track and went into thoroughbred management, first as the manager of a large, now-defunct thoroughbred training, breeding and veterinary clinic where he oversaw the training of as many as 60 horses. There, he was responsible for assisting in surgeries and post-operative care as well as training young horses. Later, he worked as the stallion manager for Richard Duchossois, owner of Arlington International Racecourse.

"After all that, I can wrap a leg better than a lot of vets," he jokes. More importantly for his training career, he said, he learned to look past a horse’s behavior to see his talent. "You grow up around western horse people, there’s guys who don’t want horses to flick an ear without permission," he said. "On the track, these horses are so fit, so on the muscle, and stuck in such a stressful routine, that some of them really act up. And nobody cares! Because on the track, you want that horse to feel like the king of the world. A horse that’s dominated isn’t going to perform because he’s not going to have confidence in himself." Ability to develop a horse’s confidence is Calzavara’s chief attribute as a trainer, he believes.

He said his own horses have such confidence in themselves and in him that they rarely balk at stressful situations when working as pick-up horses in rodeo or ponying young horses.

His horses have also used that confidence when working with him over the past nearly 20 years in his part-time job as a professional stuntman, doing everything from galloping through Lincoln Park in Chicago to standing off a riotous crowd on Daley Plaza for a commercial filmed downtown. Calzavara’s first stunt involved a horse, jumping over a car and then doing a transfer from horseback to a moving automobile. Since then, he has appeared in dozens of films and television productions --sometimes working with horses, sometimes not. Among the films he has worked on was last year’s Road to Perdition.

"My whole philosophy in training horses is to build their confidence, and you can’t do that through fear, and you can’t do that by manhandling them," Calzavara said. "I’ve seen trainers get results by just dominating their horses, but I really don’t think any horse ever really gets good that way, let alone happy."

For the past 13 years, he has tried to bring that philosophy to horses and clients at his own small training stable, Jus-Ran Farm in southeastern Wisconsin, adjacent to Bong Recreation Area. He concentrates almost exclusively on young horses and working with horses with behavioral problems, working largely with young sporthorses, but happy to work with backyard pets as well.

He said he often thinks of his late mentor Ferjencik as he works. "He always called me Frankie-boy. He’d say ‘Frankie-boy remember, quiet hands, quiet mouth, quiet horse," Calzavara said. "The older I get, the more I see how right he was."