Does Performance Dictate Training, and Training Dictate Performance?

I was thinking about this subject the other day when I was remembering trail rides I would go with my late wife, and thats been awhile since she was unable to ride for the last few years of her life. But, God Bless her and her thoughts for the horse, she would kind of nag on me for working on things with my horse rather than what she termed as just enjoying a trail ride. So I would go back and forth on the question of 'when is riding just riding, and not training'?

It's been said by many much more learned people than I, that giving your horse a job where he can focus on performing what he needs to do, to assist the rider in getting that job done, is a strategy on making a better horse. When people hear that, like I do, we all nod our heads...that makes sense. But invariably, the thought comes up on what is the difference between teaching a horse or giving him an understanding on something like doing a turn on the hocks or crossing a bridge, and an actual job like moving cows or checking fence?

One of those differences may be the level on which the rider holds himself/herself and the horse responsible for how they do something, as opposed to the focus on just completion of the task. If we are trotting miles to get to a pasture gate, we would very likely be much more forgiving to the horse on their straightness then we would if in an arena trying to achieve straightness. I am not advocating riding with acceptance of poor performance, nor am I suggesting that we have to correct small imperfect movements in the horse, but it does seem to me that 'training' and performance (doing a job) are sometimes, maybe a lot of times, different.

If you are at a competitive event, which is performance, at some point that ends and what you are left with is your memory on what you need to work on. Same thing with doing more traditional work, like gathering or sorting cows, you would finish that and look back on how and what you need to do to improve.

Decades ago, when I discovered that there was more to riding horses than pulling on the reins and kicking them in the belly, everything was learning what my holes were in what I could do horseback. Sometimes giant holes, and today if seems like I haven't filled too many of holes up sufficiently. But those difficulties shaped what I would work on.

When I was an Army Range Rider, my horseback patrols would highlight many things that I would work on when riding for myself off duty. It was just necessity as I did not want to find myself without skills or tools to handle the difficulties I had just experienced. Riding on a narrow trail with a steep drop off into an arroyo (a dry river bed) and uphill on the other side with thick Cholla and Prickly Pear cactus, I learned that my horse and I needed to be able to back uphill a bit, walk forward in a very small circle and/or do short, sharp serpentines in order to get turned around when that trail ended. And through necessity a horse just can't back up hill without being soft in the poll, head down and vertical so his weight is balanced and he doesn't drag his front end and fall with the back. A horse can't do small circles with balance unless he is soft and giving to lateral flexion and the rider has to b able to control his feet with the reins and use his legs to bend the horse and get the hind end to untrack. I'm here to tell you that the first time I looked at a 20 foot drop off and did not have those tools sufficiently to be pretty sure that we could get out of such a predicament, I worked on that until my horse and I were sure.

Another time, I was checking wind mill fed stock tanks in grazing units when I saw a dead cow blocking the sluice from the wind mill tank to the dirt tank. To make a long story short, there was no way because of the uneven and steep terrain that I could throw a rope on the dead cow and pull her out of the sluice so I had to dismount, put a loop around the dead cow's hind end, loop the running end of my rope around the saddle horn and ask my horse get his dead cow pulled out by getting my horse to back up with me helping to pull on the end of the rope around the dead cow's hind end. While I had pulled logs on horseback on this horse I wasn't sure we would be able to do it from me on the ground, but eventually did, so what did you think I did at home? I practiced getting my horse to back on a feel on the lead rope from me in front of him and then pulling short logs then railroad ties in the same fashion. Funny thing is that have never had to have a horse pull or drag something with me on the ground since.