My horse really likes to have his “hand held” too. Luckily he is one that might react for a second but then he will stop and try to think things through quickly. But he’s way more confident if a person is with him. I’m working on his confidence but I suspect he will always kind of be that way to a point. He’s just a very people-oriented type horse.
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This caught my attention. Did she touch it in the same place? Or in different places?
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Let me tell you about Hobo Britches, a real pretty dun gelding with a dark dorsal stripe and lacing in it, clear over his hips, were the name must have come from.
First time I had seen a horse with lacing, is very rare.
A friend had two geldings for sale, both four, one a big strapping bright bay and the dun above.
She hauled them to us to train and sell the bay for her, said she was giving me the dun, called him some choice words and said he was the first pet rock horse she had seen.
She explained, he is fine as long as someone tells him what to do, otherwise he just stand there, no one at home, blank brained.
She was right, out with 7 other geldings, they would come in the pens for water and leave slowly and he would stand there and then walk to the fence, watching them leave and not think to walk along the fence 40’ to go thru the gate.
I had to go in, he would follow me and thru the gate, stand there while I was petting him and when I quit he would look around, see horses going away in the horizon and run after them, like he just noticed them?
Pasture was 2 miles long of brush and draws, don’t know how he managed to stay with the herd, but one day he didn’t come in the pens with the others, we went looking for him and he was on the opposite side of the pens, two miles away, against that fence, looking in the other direction from headquarters.
No sense of direction either, better not get lost and give him rein to take you home.
One day driving cattle out of the canyons, we needed to hustle ahead a bit to keep some from turning up another canyon and I barely squeezed and he kicked at my heel, hitting it!
Out in the pasture, all others would come to me and if he did, he always stood just far enough that you had to walk the last steps to him, he was standing there like a windup toy that just ran out of winding before he finished walking?
Something he did well, if you stopped and got off, you didn’t have to tie him anywhere, he would stand where you stopped, blank stare, until you came back, perfect ground tying installed.
One local cowboy came by and fell in love with his looks and bought him.
I sent the money to my friend and decades later we were still talking about the pet rock brained horse Hobo Britches.
Some horses are mental cases, OP’s horse may be one of those.
After trying for five years, maybe is time to let someone else try with her.
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Maybe she’s like the raptors in Jurassic Park systemically testing the fence for weaknesses? 
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I arrived late to this thread so I apologize if I missed this but…how’s her eyesight?
She seems happy to do everything when you’re there leading her (or riding her with contact). But when she doesn’t have you on her leadrope or holding contact on the reins, she can’t. It could be common sense or learned helplessness, but couldn’t it also be eyesight? You also said she always explores her world through touch, sometimes to her detriment with the electric fence. It’s all making me question her vision.
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Or maybe she can’t see the electric wire very well? (Again, this is total spit-balling on my part.)
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Well, I had one that did this, which is why it caught my attention. And I can’t tell if he’s uncommonly smart or uncommonly stupid. I watched him touch a hotwire repeatedly, at first multiple times in the same spot, and then he continued around the fence, testing it.
This particular horse seems to learn quickly but he always seems to get what most of us would call “the wrong lesson” about whatever it is he’s learning. It’s like, take whatever a normal horse would take away from a situation and then turn it to like 45 degrees and THAT’s what he took from the lesson. It makes teaching him things uncommonly difficult. You have to assess all the things he could possibly take from it, and then eliminate those if possible, before guiding him to the correct answer.
And lord help you if he ever gets the wrong answer, because that is IN there and it will be tough to get it out.
Like I said, I can’t figure out if he’s uncommonly smart, or dumber than a box of rocks.
He too, will react unpredictably. Guy shooting mortars off next door that never does it but decides to because it’s the 4th of July and anything goes here? Nary a jump. Bird that lives in the barn that he sees EVERY SINGLE DAY flies over his back? Loses his sh*t.
Anyway - that’s why I asked - it sounded very similar to this mare.
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We have a pony who is not the sharpest tool in the shed. He is beautiful and kind, the type of pony every kid (heck, most adult women!) dreams of having. Anyway. He has had EPM. Another “dumb” horse I knew also had EPM. I noticed that a couple of people said they have known “dumb” horses with neck issues. I would not be surprised to find out that it’s all related. It’s not that they are “dumb” but that their brains are not processing things in normal ways.
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Some of the repetitive hits were in the same place, but she went around touching each line between the tposts. She wasn’t testing to find a way out though. She just touches EVERYTHING.
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Yeah, I wasn’t convinced he was trying to find a way out either - it looked like he couldn’t figure out why it bit him and he kept seeing if it would bite him elsewhere. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.
I wouldn’t trail ride this particular gent as he seems uniquely unsuited to dealing with novel stimuli and I’m getting older and don’t particularly enjoy getting spun off anymore.
Hope you find an answer for your mare!
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And I have to believe that its pretty unpleasant for the horse.
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I had a gelding much like your horse. Over and over, he made very bad decisions or completely forgot how to problem solve very simple things. And when he made his bad decisions or something wasn’t easy (like there’s a fence he was to walk around to get to the next paddock), he was inconsolable. One time, he almost kicked my dad in the face in his freak out because he couldn’t see my other horse; my other horse was standing about 20 feet behind him. He just wouldn’t turn around to look, and wouldn’t listen to my dad to turn either.
Currently, I have a mare who is, I swear, the dumbest horse on the planet. I absolutely adore her. She has the BEST personality. She loves people so much. She loves everything, so much. She has one brain cell and uses it to give love. She’s just extremely stupid. But, she doesn’t have meltdowns or make dangerous decisions, she just ‘gets lost’ on the wrong side of the barn or decides to eat an entire salt block in 12 hours because it tasted good (and yeah, she had explosive diarrhea and salt burns on her tongue)
The reason I bring her up is that she has very little intelligence BUT she is willing to listen to me, and she doesn’t have a meltdown when she can’t figure something out; she just tries until she gets it right or I help her. My gelding could not do this. He could not problem solve and he could not take help. Eventually, he did grow out of it. But it wasn’t until he was about 12ish that he did. It was like his brain finally started to work and his immediate reaction wasn’t PANIC!
So, no help here, but commiseration. I think a few horses could probably benefit from an anti-anxiety med.
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This made me laugh. I swear I work with people like this…
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I haven’t experienced it with a horse, but I have with a dog. It was exactly as you describe - like experiencing “50 first dates” in real life. Every morning, it’s like being back at square one. Super sweet, but his lack of ‘common sense’ / critical thinking goes beyond “dumb” or “simple”…it’s a complete and utter inability to learn or understand.
It’s definitely anxiety rooted, like your mare. It’s like something makes him scared / he can’t figure something out and his brain just turns off and he cannot think. But no matter how much you work through that fear or show him how to solve it over days, months, years…the next day it’s rinse and repeat.
He decided he was scared of my father. 6 years later no progress. He’s even lived with my dad for months on end. Morning: terrified of my dad, barking, reactive. All day my dad will work to gain his confidence, by evening - he’s choosing my dad, snugging up with him, greeting him confidently. Next morning - it’s like he’s never met him all over again. It’s BIZARRE. We’ve just given up and live with Dory. It’s been long enough, we’ve figured out management. Loving sweet dog…but something is not wired right in his brain.
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I have not read all the replies, but you are probably right. However, these types who appreciate leadership can make really good lesson horses. They find comfort in the familiar, and are actually happy to tote a kid over the same ground pole in the same place in the arena every single day.
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Her spook and need for a hand to hold make her unqualified for that at this time in her life, but maybe someday
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This doesn’t really address the long term can’t think for herself problems, but I would be curious to see what she would do (and maybe you’ve tried this already) if you left her free, and then put the curtains between you - no halter or anything on her, and curtains all the way down. Then maybe slip your hand through with a treat in it, and once she notices that, pull it back slowly and see if she’ll make the connection then? I mean, that may still be relying on mom too much, but if something finally clicked for her.
Or really, any other exercise at liberty, just to see how she handles it. Like a single ground pole or something. Maybe you’ve done plenty of that already too.
She’s been free-lunged before, right? When you were doing the jompies getting ready for her inspection? She figured that out okay, didn’t she?
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I free lunge her all the time, with the Old Man when I’m short on time but they need exercise. I install very good voice cues on every horse I own, so it’s not an issue.
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Based on my experience and in my opinion…some of them just never “get it” forcing you to endlessly spend time backing up repeating the same lessons. Over and over. The ones I have worked with had very little to nothing in common as far as breeding and/or history. They just were what they were. Some would improve but always revert back when least expected.
Don’t blame yourself, not your fault. Stop pushing the rock up the mountain here.
You want a clever, independent partner, shes not it. But a rider who likes to micro manage may be a perfect fit and find her easy to work with.
Recall being in a barn that the BO insisted, despite objections, on putting a coke machine next to the viewing area right at the arena gate. Friend with a gorgeous but not clever DWB was in the indoor galloping around the corner past the gate towards an outside line when kid dropped in the coins and the can dropped with predictable result. After friend got back from the ER, she had a chat with BO. Coke machine was relocated to tackroom.
That horse was schooled in that corner by competent Pros for over a year and sometimes he was fine, sometimes not. Didn’t matter the rider, he dumped Pro and Ammie unless he was micro managed in that corner and sometimes even then spook at where the coke machine used to be.
Trainer built new barn and arena, horse still would be fine then inexplicably and violently spook going around that corner by the gate at the coke machine that was not and never had bern there. Guess he saw ghosts…they sold him with disclosure. He still won when he was good and still spooked at that same place. Expensive horse, vetted to death, custom saddles etc, just not the able to deal with some things.
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I thought of this thread just now.
I went to turn the horses out. The two horses being discussed have private paddocks attached to stalls. When turning them out they are kicked out of their private paddocks into a group turn out.
As I went to put out horse A I noticed a small wound on her leg, so I went and grabbed a halter and lead rope and brought her thru her stall into the barn aisle. Tied her to the bars, right by horse B’s stall (which is next to horse A’s stall). Horse B started to freak out as I put the halter on horse A and walked her back into the barn.
Horse B was screaming and freaking out, running back and forth, the whole length of her paddock, spinning at the gate, running into her stall, spinning, running back to the gate, spinning… Screaming the whole time like she is dying.
Horse A was totally visible if horse B had bothered to look while spinning around in her stall. She could have almost touched her if she wanted to.
But no. She was too busy not thinking and freaking out.
Horse A was not at all bothered that horse B was freaking out.
I eventually went out there and grabbed horse B (had to toss a lead rope around her neck, she was not stopping to put a halter on) and walked her into her stall and showed her horse A tied right there, and she finally took a deep breath and became a sane creature.
There truly are horses who react first and think later, and they do stupid things.
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