A top horse is nearly always, to a degree, ‘reactive as well as sensitive’. To an extent, it is the same thing. YES it is ideal if the horse is ‘sensitive’ and not ‘reactive’ to the environment or stress, YES that’s true.
But fact is, it is not even Many or Most top horses that are ‘sensitive’ and not ‘reactive’. It is just not so easy to separate one from the other.
It is training that teaches horses to be, most of the time, ‘sensitive and not reactive’.
That’s the case with ANY Horse to a point. You’ve all seen an amateur’s horse stop spooking when the trainer gets on it.
But…There is a limit, for every trainer, no matter how good they are, to how much they can school ‘sensitive to the aids’ into a horse. Horses are improved, not made into Olympic horses.
The extra energy, the excitement, gets translated into more and more impulsion, more articulation of the joints, more freedom, more lightness, more self carriage.
YES dressage improves sensitivity to the aids, YES it’s the goal of dressage to ride on light aids, and there is STILL a limit to how much you can make a horse be sensitive to the aids if he is not naturally sensitive to the aids.
MUCH ‘insensitive to the aids’ is due to physical limitations, NOT a lack of desire to please or a cold nature. That’s the first thing we’re ignoring in these discussions. Horses DO have physical limits to how sensitive they can become, no matter who trains them. More about that later if desired.
MOST professional trainers, the ones who will be taking these elite horses on, could care less if the horse gets excited sometimes.
They also know that competing a top horse like that is a marathon that lasts years. We only see the end point on the internet, TV or magazine. These horses are NOT ‘overnight sensations’. The horse has to come out every single day for YEARS, thinking, ‘whoop tee dooh!’ with his ears up and prancing around like its his birthday.
You saw the list of competitions Power and Paint went to in his time - it was as long as your arm. The horse has to have a kind of energy, a kind of ‘every day is a new day’ that most horses simply cannot manage.
Professionals correct things very quickly, and unlike an amateur (this is the difference between an amateur and a professional), they correct things very quickly and they aren’t going to be upset or ‘thrown off’ by this, and the rest of the test will be fine.
They also realize one blown movement isn’t going to ruin their score.
The judging has always been like that, the desire from the very start of the FEI was to ignore the occasional ‘instinctive reaction’, and it isn’t going to make or break a test if the horse gets a little wild.
The way a professional reacts to misbehavior of a horse is very, very different from how an amateur reacts. The professional either laughs or says, ‘aha, something to work with’ and the amateur says ‘oh my god, i need a valium’. The horse suitable for one simply isn’t suitable for the other.
