Herd sour horse

[Simkie]

@beau159

It’s the handler’s job to figure out what they have to do in order to get the horse back into the thinking mode of their brain.

Absolutely.

And different horses need different things to do that.

Pulling a reactive horse off the trailer, working it, and putting it back on is not what some horses need to get over being reactive in the trailer.

You can bang on a square peg and eventually force it into your round hole, maybe. You might damage a lot of parts, but sure, you can probably get it in there.

But you can also just approach with different tools.

Your tool is not the single right answer for every single horse out there.

[endlessclimb]

Along the same thought process -

Why are barrel horses so fired up in the alley? Why don’t people just train them better, to walk up the alley quietly?

[RedHorses]

For the same reason people don’t train that bad habit out of their hunter, jumper, etc.

“The best horses” all have their quirky things. The winning barrel horses, eventers, etc are fired up, ready to go.

Therefore my horse behaves like that because they’re going to be a top competitor.

I’ve heard it most often from low level H/J folks whose horses haven’t earned the right to have quirks, but I have no doubt it’s a common premise across horse sports. I’ve just spent more time in H/J land.

[endlessclimb]

Eh, I don’t mind a horse pumped to do their job. My late mare was pushing the limit of “pumped” and “marginally in control” going into a jumper ring and it was on my list of things to work on the year after I lost her.

If I wanted something without feelings about the work, I’d get a dirtbike.

[RedHorses]

I meant whatever particular “quirk” that is actually just bad manners or lack of training, not specifically the charging into the ring, or out of the start box, or… So many juniors and AAs excuse bad manners as the “quirk” that proves their horse’s potential superstardom, when the truth is they don’t have the knowledge to train the horse.