This came to mind as Elizabeth wrote to tell me that her 8 year old TB mare, which she has had for two weeks and hopes to rides in Western dressage, seemingly begins to pick up what she is trying to teach him, vertical and lateral flexion for instance, but as she said the mare soon seems to lose the understanding, gets bracy and regresses in his training.
Well there are lots of reason while horse seemingly starts to understand and perform something then degrade in performance. You can ask too much. You can ask too fast. You can forget to give the horse a release and pause to learn and a lot of other reason I'm sure. In the old days I would try to push the horse through it, rarely if at any time succeeding. It seems that I would get a resentful horse out of it. I really have no idea if a horse can resent something, but I think a horse can certainly get confused and seemingly shut down in willingness or softness. Took me a while, probably much longer than most people, to recognize when to stop. And not just to stop but to move on to something the horse can do - sort of like re-establishing communications between you and him, and his confidence as well.
I have a new horse in, Jake - a dual registered QH - Palomino (he's in the photo above). I learned long ago to re-start any new horse so you can see what he knows and not leave any holes, and to do so quietly because this is the beginning of your relationship with him. Jake was bred and trained for western pleasure and AQHA type events but hadn't been ridden more than a handful of times in the past 5 years. So we had a lot to work on besides spoiled pushiness and avoidance behavior that worked for him in the past. He came right around in 2 days of ground training, picking up the feel of the lead when I wanted him to come forward, backup, stay put-ground tie, or bring his left or right front end over.
In the saddle he was doing well learning to soften when I asked for it. Moving his front end or back end independently when I asked with my legs. Moving on to asking for lateral movement with forward momentum, he initially did good, allowing me to laterally adjust him for bigger circles but then he just stalled, instead slowing and moving his backend out. Asking again a couple times did not bring better results, so we just moved onto something else he was successful at doing.
So my advice to Elizabeth and her mare was to approach it in the mañana view. It's like you are addressing the horse - "It's okay you don't understand what I am asking, or you are not confident in doing it right now. We'll move on to something else and try this again tomorrow, or the day after that."
A couple days later I ask Jake for some lateral movement while trotting a circle and he's expands the circle and does so in much better balance. My job? Quit asking so much.
