Horse with no "common sense" - can anything be done?

I think that she is a lovely mare that you have produced carefully and well. Sounds like she is who she is, and that may or may not be the right fit for you. In any case, should you decide to sell her, she should have no problem finding a nice home. Like someone upthread said, maybe a lower-level dressage home with someone who likes mosey around the farm as a “trail ride”.

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I hate to say it, it could be her. I have a mare that goes back to AP Indy and she is a bit like yours. She’s a lot more trustworthy and able to problem solve, but she doesn’t always present as bright. She’s definitely a “slow thinker”. She likes being a bit more handheld, mentally as well as physically.

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I’ve never yet tried to put a horse through a bunch of hanging strips or curtains.

Like someone said above simply sell this horse to someone who doesn’t care if she walks through a curtain. You say she is good at dressage. Find someone who wants to do that. I’m sure she’ll thrive with another owner. One whose training is about building the horse up, not tearing it down.

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Let me guess, you think this is a reasonable and rational thing to write? What is your goal here?

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My goal is always to find compassion and relief for the horses.

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Wow. This is such a simple and straight-forward skill to teach. Whether it’s for regular use of fly screen strips or heat retention, or if rare use on a trail ride with hanging branches or vines that may swoosh against a horse, it’s really quite valuable for something so simple.

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Oh look, a candidate to show me how it’s done.

Where are you located? Happy for you to show me where my 5 years of patiently training this horse went terribly wrong.

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Ugh. I read about how AP Indy lines are athletic but ammy friendly. Lots of pictures of them out eventing and such. Does ammy friendly mean kind of dumb?

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I absolutely can’t speak to TB lines … but some of the dumbest warmbloods I’ve known (who have been wonderful, trainable kids) were the most ammy friendly horses who could take almost all the jokes. The super smart ones, not so much in my experience. Those dumb ones were never asked to think though - always in a program with a turnout/in routine never having to think past their own stall interiors or their ultra safe turnout fields.

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:roll_eyes::roll_eyes::roll_eyes:

Barking up the wrong tree, I think. Not only is “walking through curtains” a very normal thing to train a horse to do for so many reasons, but OP is very, very capable. Not just by their own claim, but at least one poster here has ridden the horse IRL and said the same.

Loving the positivity from you here.

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As has been pointed out in other places, there are other relatives. Maybe she didn’t get the curiosity genetics that would encourage her to try figuring things out. Just as with people, horses have a wide variation in intelligence and curiosity and yours might just be one that needs to be micromanaged.

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Sometimes! Or middling intelligence and somewhat lazy. Not holding a grudge against the rider that buried them to every jump for two weeks straight sometimes requires the horse to have a short memory… :joy:

That said, I really think she will be very happy in a micromanaged home situation - like an ammy dressage rider who keeps their horse in a program. They would appreciate the fact that she likes the arena and the work, and that would free you up to find a horse that won’t freak out and fling you both off a mountain.

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Hope not. My horse is crazy smart and ammy friendly. Just can’t drill him. He just thinks before he reacts and has enough sense not to get either of us killed if he can help it.

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That’s exactly what I’m looking for. Something with an iota of critical thinking skills so when we’re on a trail and it’s not flat and wide, we both survive.

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Maybe she could be that, someday. She’s a lovely horse in a lot of regards. Just missing the pieces that I need to have fun, which is the ability to try a hand at anything.

Dressage is up her alley - “tell me exactly what to do when, and don’t lose our connection/handhold.” She excels at that.

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Yes. Yes it does.

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This depends - if it is something like a corpora nigra cyst, those can be lasered.

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We had an AP Indy grandson for a while. He was not the one I mentioned above. The comments about those horses being dumb were interesting to me. We all used to say he was the dumbest (albeit cute) horse we had here.

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Through humiliating and denigrating the current owner?

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Hey I’m not worried about it. Someone with the username dressagelvr is likely not to understand why “kinda stupid with no survival instincts” might be a problem for someone who likes to ride out of the sandbox. I’m confident in my training abilities, and confident that Shayney just doesn’t have a natural ability to think through things on her own. That’s ok. I’ll find someone who never wants to ride out of a ring and she will do just fine, I think.

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