I wrote last month about giving the horse the benefit of the doubt when issues develop. There is always a reason when things go wrong, and we have to accept at least half of the responsibility. Remember it is us that is asking for certain acceptable behavior, if we have not defined what is actually acceptable then the horse is right to be wrong.
Once horses are further along in their training problems can take on a different dynamic.
When a horse is inexperienced with no or little understanding of what our expectations are the problems are usually pretty obvious and relatively easy to diagnose if we start working backwards from where things went wrong. In the horse that is generally reliable and predictable starts to misbehave in certain predicaments it is easy to jump the gun and assume that the inappropriate action is situational. This can be the case but there might be more below the surface than you think. Continue reading →