Interesting discussion. I have a horse which exactly that, “Needs a confident rider.” For me, and for my horse, it means the rider needs to know how to ride him correctly, and asks for everything correctly and confidently. If she asks correctly and he doesn’t respond, she can insist nicely, but won’t have to ask twice again, and she knows that she asked correctly the first time. He will respond because he is highly intelligent, and wants to go for a rider, and work hard. He’s a performance horse, and not a toy. He can take a joke, but only once. If you confuse him, or ask him incorrectly, he’ll get pissy, and if it continues, he’ll just object and drop a shoulder and you’re on the ground. If you ask correctly, and confidently, he’ll give you the moon, learn anything new you want to teach him, and try hard for you. Its an interesting kind of horse to ride. But you have to know what you are doing. Because he can tell if you don’t.
Here’s an edit. I was thinking of dressage with the above comment. With jumping, if you aren’t confident, he’ll take you for a ride, find his own spot, which will be too long, and make his own pace, which will be too fast. So with jumping, he needs to be regulated to the fence, and needs somone who knows how to see their spot, and angle for what they want to do before and after the fence. He will stay in hand and do as you say, add and extra stride, turn in the air, swap a lead upon landing, do a roll back 90 degrees for a turn after a jump, but you need do know what you want and you need to insist he listen to you, and he’ll do everything you ask. If you are not confident, he’ll find his own way over the jumps. I lost my glasses that way, the first time I jumped him through the woods and timber. He took every jump, and brook, and some I hadn’t even intended, and I learned what a huge jump he had, and how handy he really was, but i basically hung on for the ride, and it wasn’t pretty. That’s another example.
