Sharing Responsibility

not. I continued this for a few more circles and each time he relaxed more and more until he finally stopped thinking that he needed to be scared. I then went on to have the nicest ride on a horse that I have had in a very long time.
As I thought more and more about that ride I came to believe that he needed to be more responsible in how he behaved in that situation. When his riders corrected him to try to make him more attentive it took away his responsibility and in a sense made it acceptable for him to overreact. In his mind we caused him to overreact because we overreacted first. By doing nothing and giving him the choice in how he should respond he accepted that responsibility back. He did not want to spook but he felt almost obligated to do so until I let him have to option not to.
It is hard for us as riders to give up some control. However if we could learn to give some of the responsibility back to our horse he would feel more involved and more in control of his own behaviour. We must keep authority but we need to learn not to micro manage rather we should delegate and allow the horse the responsibility to do his job.