OP, that was a good description of your bad Saturday ride. It has so many details that I think I can help, even if that will look like me nit-picking the snot out of it. Apologies in advance. But there are a few things you can fix that will help you to better answer the training questions your young frat boy/sissy horse is asking. Generally speaking, you are missing some of his needs.
First, do I understand it right that the “wants to rear” (or get light in front, or back up, or let you pull his head all the way around, like, nose to your knee and still not move or actively try to figure out how to get you to let go) is becoming more common? To me, anything but keeping his head in the game and trying to please you is all part of the same thing. He is tired of thinking, so he just tells you “I’m done with our ride. Check, please” in whatever way gets you to back off. It’s not the rearing that’s the symptom… running backwards sucks, too, so does standing there with his nose on your knee looking at you with that one eye as if to say “I’ll see you hurting my neck and decide to not give a sh!t. I raise you. What else ya got?” Rather, it’s his deciding to invest himself in an any active strategy of saying No to you and deciding to not think. Really, when they allow us to pull their head around or actually kick them or hit them with a whip, they are abandoning their body because they can’t, at present, see a way out. But most animals, most of the time won’t stay in that holding pattern forever, hence the rearing.
If I interpreted your Saturday ride right, then , the hard-ass, practical, safety-minded, horse-trainery part of me would like to address the fact that he is saying No to my need for him to stay in a training conversation with me and my contention that that Horses Don’t Get To Say No; They Must Try, No Matter What. At least they will have to do that if I can safely sit on them and put pressure on them. And he’s got to get past this Not Going Forward Thing Works spot in his education.
That said, you have an obligation, too. I don’t think you are being a quite good-enough leader for him. If you are going do demand the level of obedience that we want in our finished (and not-so-finished but athletic horses), then you are going to have to earn the trust he puts in you. This is kind of a Commanding Officer and Soldier thing: You want a soldier and you will get some distance by just being clear and intimidating. But you will get all the way by being the CO he deeply trusts.
I learned this with my mare. I can’t tell you how long I gave her that tactful, even bland TB-era hunter ride and she didn’t get better. But what I was missing is that I was kind of the Charlie Brown teacher’s voice to her. I wasn’t answering her actual questions about how she was going to be safe and what part I was going to play in that. I was just being irrelevant and unhelpful to her so she kept being a spooky-ass because I wasn’t a credible adult in the room. Let me save you from making the same mistake, LOL.
One more point: This impasse y’all are having is developmentally normal for horses new to having a Real Job, especially for mares and young turk WB geldings who are getting a bit of ego strength and feel they should try their hand at self-preservation. Your horse might be at the spot where he thinks he can and should stick up for himself at last.
Sometimes in Europe, these guys are treated like a number-- handled and ridden by pretty competent, business-like professionals. Getting brought into a barn and started is pretty intimidating and they learn pretty fast that they hold the losing hand with these pros; they learn to just do as they are told in order to get by. These horses are not given a chance to express any feelings about this whole Having A Job thing and they aren’t really offered their own person who seems to care about what they think. Then they get exported (intimidating) and put into a new barn (intimidating again, so they just follow the rules they know in order to stay safe)…And then a couple of weeks in, they start to feel safe. They start to feel safe with their person who seems to make them comfortable (and so clearly the person to go ask for more comfort). And now that they feel more safe, they feel safe to express an opinion. This has never happened before in their working life and, it turns out, having a Real Job sucks. Since a little bit of No seemed to work, maybe they can improve their life by just continuing to try to quit their job with the one person who likes them enough to maybe listen.
So your ride-- the part where you cruise along on a long rein or even rest in the corner-- misses the mark, or the real question he’s got right now. You are showing him that he can earn a nice, soft ride from you. But the minute he gets unsure of himself, that same tactful, passive long-rein ride can feel like abandonment just when he needs you to be the sure-of-herself adult in the room because he doesn’t feel confident. One of you has to take responsibility for keeping you both safe, and he needs that to be you. If you only offer him tact, but not reassurance or even fairly-applied pressure that gives him a chance to succeed and feel more self-confidence, you show him that the way he can be comfortable with you is by getting you to do what he wants. And you are someone who will listen.
He’s not being a dick; he’s just trying to keep himself safe in a way that doesn’t involve actually turning any of that responsibility over to you. To learn to turn your safety over to someone else is a huge, huge deal, for man or beast. My heart goes out to young horses who find themselves in this tough spot.
So after he had his little tantrum about “do we really have to work some more? I’m right here by the out-gate,” you said you put him back to work and jumped some. Did you feel him rise to the occasion and try for you? It so, that’s an indication that he benefits from a lot of direction. And they do find security in knowing what they are supposed to be doing. I think he needs more of this kind of “hands on,” very directed handling and riding. Even when you are on a long rein, you need to stay quite tuned in to his emotional state and give him the kind of ride that addresses that. (This might be another topic that takes time to explain. Ask if you don’t have a sense of what this means.). Also/But! You might not get that willingness again because while the jumping after the tantrum made him feel directed and confident, it also was more work and hard-ish work. Next time, find something very short, very clear and directed to do, perhaps trotting on a circle and leg yielding in and out-- no more than 3-5 minutes-- and then get off. When you do this ride, be very cheerful as though you are entirely changing the subject from his tantrum. You want him to have thinking with you to be a pleasurable experience, so you need to be expressing pleasure and goodwill, too.
Also, lots of English horses (and those who were not held to high standards on the ground) have this kind of problem: They are A-1 triers and thinkers when they are under saddle, but inconsiderate or even spooky when they are not being as carefully directed because no one told them they had to be. So your young horse might not yet know that when you are on a loose rein, you are still his Commanding Officer whose orders must be obeyed AND who can pick up the reins to reassure him in an instant.
IMO, handling a horse with precision on the ground translates to riding. In your case, where your horse has more education about getting with his rider when he’s working under saddle, but isn’t quite so clear about your leadership when he’s on a loose rein, it can really help you to teach him that any time you are around him, with a loop in the rope or even without his being caught, you are directing him and he should keep his focus on you. It can be hard for horses to learn to continue to rely on us when we give them that on-the-buckle ride, but if you never give him an experience of your being on him where you are not relevant, you’ll have an easier time convincing him to mentally stay with you when you are riding causally.
But it sounds like he’s practicing so many variations on I Won’t Go Forward that it’s the next big thing that’s getting in your way. Without the benefit of being able to see him and better judge his various questions or holes in his education, from your description, I’d be tempted to address this basic question next. There is a Long Way and a Short Way to addressing the problem of the horse who has alighted upon a strategy for getting his boss and kind-but-irrelevant handler/rider to piss off.
The Short Way (which has some value because you are creating a situation with an addition and release of pressure) is to address his the various forms of not-going-forward MO, via picking and winning this fight while double lunging him or long-lining. For me, there is a certain temptation to this in that I need to find a way to show the horse that I am deeply relevant to him; that I can put enough pressure on him that he will find it necessary to apply himself to the problem of getting me to release it. That said, I had better make it possible for him to earn that release. Also, you tend to have nothing if you have a horse who essentially disregards your leg. That’s like the backward-thinking version of bolting through the bit. It’s just not safe and it’s certainly not the behavior of a horse who is accepting training and trying to keep his head in the game of figuring out what you want. It’s sad that we often have to start the process of making horses look to us for peace by being exactly the person that causes them distress. But that’s OK if we carefully plan a situation where the horse will quickly find his way out of the stress we create for him. And your horse needing a pretty rapid correction to the not-going-forward problem offers a decent opportunity for putting useful pressure on him.
So on the long lines, and with a whip that would allow me to quickly and definitively turn up the reinforcing pressure behind my softer aids for “go forward,” I’d work on that. Of course, you have to find a situation where he will “make the mistake” and sull up. Go there and ask him to go forward anyway. Generally speaking, you will firmly keep turning up the pressure (keep backing around so that you are always at his hip, well back, and he’s got an open path forward) until he goes forward. Any forward will do, but you want the right attitude, too, not just movement. If you have halted, you ask softly and he goes at a walk, promptly, with his ears up that’s fine. It’s also not enough pressure/confusion for him; he knows the right answer so he’s happy to try. If you ask for a trot, anything short of the same “Going now and would you like fries with that?” earns him a little more pressure from your driving aids. You might get a big “Oh, all right!” big plunge. He might gallop around and look pissed. Meh, let him be a bit angry about having had to submit to your go forward demand. When he’s had a couple of circles to breathe some and get his indignation out of his system, ask him to walk. Here, be polite and just suggest it. After all, galloping around is hard work. If he wants to gallop and gallop, you just stand your ground in the middle of the circle, with whatever degree of tension he puts on the lines. Let him work it out himself and don’t change what you are doing. When he’s less pissed, he’ll “get back in his body” and notice that running is hard work. Your offer of a walk break is your taking care of him and supplying just what he needs right then. But your asking him to walk while he’s still mad and so full of rage that he can’t feel his oxygen debt doesn’t seem to him like help, it seems like another demand.
If you feel very confident in his knowledge and generous attitude when you go up to the canter (lots of work) or when you go up just one gait at a time, try a walk to canter. I don’t care how he gets there, but here I’m “inviting him to make the mistake” because this will really be lots of work and a sudden request. If he doesn’t make prompt, legitimate try, let him “hit the whip.” What I mean is that when you asked to canter and he didn’t go and feels a gentle touch of the whip on his gaskin, that’s something he earned by not moving out promptly ahead of where your driving aid was.
This last situation is an example of how you need to “invite him to make the mistake.” When your event trainer was stumped by him and just said “wow,” that means that pro didn’t understand him well enough to set up a situation where the horse could guess the right answer that would get you all to take the pressure off. So my proposal about how you might get your horse to sull up should be taken with a grain of salt. Not seeing him go, I probably don’t have enough information to customize one. One thing I would not do is use the corner as the “backward pressure” and you driving him through it. That’s because the corner never releases the pressure, rather you just screw him by driving him harder into something that scares him. (See how the cattle moving away idea comes back into play here?).
So what you want is a place where there is no impediment other than his own mind to going promptly forward, and your only “sin” in his mind is that you asked him for more forward than he was prepared to give. That is key because when you are under saddle and start to get into trouble and close your leg, he doesn’t have that automatic response to your leg that you thought he had. You continuing to kick isn’t quite getting it, so back up and teach him the simplicity of always, automatically going forward from your driving aids.
When you turn up the pressure, some things are important. Start with your voice or a cluck-- aids that you’ll want to have him know and readily obey while you are under saddle. I also add an inhale or pulling my posture up (the Natural Horsemanship types call it "putting ‘life’ or ‘energy’ into your body and, by extension, into his body). The next layer of aids is me raising the bight of the rope or the hand with the line that’s around his bum. That’s the equivalent of my leg. IMO, he’d better be looking like he was going to step off promptly by now. If that horse makes me raise the whip…he may come to regret his decision. But because I am clear and I have an escalating set of aids, the horse himself is in charge of how hard a “ride” I give him. The whip is his to control.
If he sulls up, backs up or tries to turn, I keep the current aid in play (usually my voice, my position and posture and the raised “leg hand”). I’m not harsh or unpredictable, but I am supplying unrelenting pressure. What I’m looking for here are the “wheels turning in his head.” I want him to try his usual MO and find it unsatisfactory. I want him to ask himself just what other strategy he could try in order to make me release the pressure. Usually this is where, either in desperation (if they don’t know what the forward aids mean and they just guess with that plunge) or in exasperated giving-up (if they do know what the forward aids mean but effin’ don wanna), they pop forward into “too much forward.” Then see above for helping them get back to peace from that state.
A very key, very important, very life-preserving point must be made here. It warrants all caps: DO NOT SURPRISE OR ATTACK THIS HORSE in this pressure-exerting situation. Remember that “surprise is in the eye of the beholder,” so you must ramp up your aids, or pressure in a way that is tailored to him. He must not be so scared or so stunned that he cannot think. His thinking under pressure is what you want. He can get mad at you and that can cause him not to think. (In fact, I think he might be already doing this when he gets into that mind-lock stuck place he gave you in multiple ways on Saturday.) But the point of letting him get mad without his feet being still is that the hard work of running and the breathing/movement actually helps him change his mind. Lots of horses can’t change their emotions while they are still.
The DO NOT ATTACK/SURPRISE thing is crucially important because you can teach these sull-up types to do that more and to internalize their emotions so that they become impossible to read. That horse is a danger. If he thinks that when he feels bad (pressure is on that he hasn’t learn to think through and earn a release from), and then a true threat to his life is going to come out of left field, he’ll learn that any pressure means he might as well prepare to explode and fight because no amount of thinking will get him out of trouble. No horse actually wants to do that and I don’t think it’s the first instinct of a flight animal. But if we trap them with pressure that they can’t make sense of, we teach them to be unreadable and explosive. And someday, without you or someone else realizing that they ramped up the pressure too much, to that unpredicted threat he was expecting, he’ll explode because he always suspected it was coming.
This means that when you are having a rather existential, high-stakes discussion with a horse about whether or not he’s going to try to figure out the pressure or just fight to the death against it, the pressure you apply can’t seem like a huge threat that came from nowhere. Actually, all horses thrive on the opposite: They like the application of pressure and release that is so predictable that they feel they can control it. And they like being around the people whose reactions are so orderly. What you need with this horse on the long lines is a lovely, blessed release of pressure the very second he goes forward. But in general, or even more precisely, you need to release in that moment that you feel him start to think. He’ll get soft and perhaps even hesitant. This is a delicate place-- he’s bravely raising his hand in class and venturing to offer the right answer. Be careful and responsive and encouraging with him there.
But you see how the problem isn’t necessarily pressure from a rider? Rather, it’s pressure that has cause the horse not to think. When your cowboy said he “had a hole in his education” I’d put that a different way: He was taught to do some stuff by his competent European pros. And they might have been so good that they applied the magic balance of pressure and predictability that he could function within it. But, not knowing what you want, not having that very “narrow,” directed, hands-on ride, being a new place, letting his hair down a bit and actually feeling his emotions (fear and perhaps a bit of self-pity about having to have a job), he feels your asking him to go forward toward scary things long reins, or your having him work beyond the time he thinks he should have to without your having established your status as his boss… well, that’s just lots of pressure with now obvious “open sesame” answer that he knows will get a release. So he just quits trying to think his way out of it. Because he hasn’t yet learned how to re-engage his mind when he finds his little self overwhelmed by some demand or scary thing, he just starts fighting. This is the problem with the pro-trained horse handed off to we mere ammies (even good ones). We stopped giving them the narrow direction they were used to and then we don’t have the colt-starting experience or pedagogy it takes to back up and teach a horse how to accept training.
So the most practical, specific, non-abstract training advice here is about installing the Thou Shalt Go Forward Button on the long lines. I like doing it that way because I can stay safe and that lets me allow a horse to get as unthinking or as angry as he likes without me having to choose between the goals of doing whatever he needs to see the point and the goal of me defending my body. But what I’m describing takes some long-lining skill. If you aren’t adept at that, I’d suggest sharing this post with the cowboy who has done a lot with him and see if he agrees about what would suit your horse. Just don’t get him either of you tangled and really don’t get him running backward to the point that there’s ever a danger of his flipping himself over. Not only is that physically dangerous, but I think he’s in a fragile mental state where he can’t afford to get accidentally trapped. That is his worst paranoid fantasy so you need to disconfirm it and show him that the path to salvation is always to go forward.
The rest of the topic is about a horse who learns to think under pressure. That’s a more diffuse, all-over and in-every-handling-situation thing. I mentioned it, too, because I was doing it wrong with my own horse for a long time and because I was doing just what English-riding people tend to do with hot horses, and it was the wrong thing.
Good luck!
ETA: One thought about your ride when you have his head pulled around just to stay safe. You mention kicking with your outside leg. I’d try something different and, perhaps, a different way of thinking about how he’ll earn a release here and how this move under saddle fits into your training with him.
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Don’t pull his head around any farther than you have to in order to be safe. Never pull it so far around that his ears are not on top. That twist at the poll/atlas is bad physically and as a training thing. Also, you are trying to hold it around for the shortest duration you can. It’s a posture that’s quite hard on them. Too bad the NH world has shown it to us so often.
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I’d personally bump with my inside calf or heal, not the outside. That’s because he can’t go forward in a straight line with his head around and I don’t actually want him to walk in a circle. Rather, I want any forward movement at all from my leg. The easiest response to leg is to swing his haunches to the outside for a step. So throw him a bone and reward that answer to your driving aid!
If you make the right answer (go forward) so physically hard that he never guesses it, you are not being a fair teacher to him. And he already has a question about whether or not he wants to be in your class, so setting him up to get the right answer without it being too hard or too drawn-out is key. You are teaching him how to learn more than just what to learn.
- When you get that stop to the side, release his head and praise him for moment. Stand there and pet a swipe down his neck.
Then, just to be reinforce his correct response to your leg, you’ll apply your inside leg (same leg as 15 seconds ago) again. But you know what? You’ll pick up that inside rein gently but with your hand a tad high and your rein pretty short before you do that so that the right answer (steps sideways) occurs to him, and if it does not and you need to bump a bit harder, you are already poised to be safe should he try again to say no. You are really trying to teach him prompt, unquestioning answer to your leg, so you need to set up a situation where your leg can ramp up the pressure, you stay safe, of course, and nothing else changes.
Do not get emotionally involved in his taking umbrage at you asking him to step sideways (or anywhere) with that one rein held short and high. Leave it there and change nothing but the amount of pressure that you are adding with your leg. This is another situation where you are fair, simple and unrelenting. The problem of getting a release from pressure is his to solve, not yours.
- When you find yourself needing the one-rein circle, just remember that what you really need is his easy and automatic response from your leg. So if he does this well, ride him as though you don’t need it. Then, if he gets sticky enough that you feel you need it, just try raising that hand, creating a slight bend, using that side’s inside leg and getting a step over. From there, look up and see if you can’t just walk forward. He sulls up? Keep your hand and get another sideways step. That is harder than just walking forward, so he will discover, sooner or later that the better offer, the one he should take, is to just go forward from both legs.
I mention this because when you said you were adding outside leg to the one-rein circle, I thought I could add something useful about how to make this situation into one that kept you safe but give your young man a simple learning situation. Also, I think you’ll find yourself needing the safety of his head pulled around sometimes for the next bit, so I wanted to suggest a way that you could teach him how to release himself from it so that that tool would work for him as well as just a way for you to be safe.
I will say for all the gentler horsemen out there who are reading along, I don’t consider this soft, gradual approach sufficient and if this were one I was going to ride, I would do some version of installing that obedience to the driving aids on the long-lines that I described. Call me a hard-ass or whatever, but I would not feel safe riding a horse who only went forward because I had somehow pleased him. Horses are so kind and generous, but I don’t think it’s safe to ride them at their invitation.
He’s surprised when it DOESN’T happen.