Sharing Responsibility

There is always a reason when things go wrong and we have to accept at least half of the responsibility. Remember it is we who are asking for certain acceptable behaviour 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 little or no 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. If 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.

I will share a scenario I worked with a horse that is a very talented dressage horse that had just started schooling Prix St. George. What seemed to bother him the most was noise that he could hear outside the indoor arena but couldnt see. The arena where he is ridden has no windows but large doors on either end. Most of the year the doors are open allowing the bright light from outside to form a large bright spot the size and shape of the door. This obviously bothered him from time to time he would catch a glimpse in his peripheral vision of something moving outside the doors or hear something he thought he should be able to see but couldnt. Needless to say he got upset in a similar location semifrequently.
His riders normal correction was to try and regain his attention when he would get distracted and this caused him to spook and overreact.