I received an Email from a young girl and cannot get my reply to send, which frustrated me, but then I realized that I'm probably supposed to put the information out to a broader audience. She has a young horse that she is re-training and her concern for his wellbeing and awareness of his confusion really touched me. Confusion is a big factor with horses. When it happens, no progress is made, we even go backwards, undoing the good stuff we thought was confirmed! And it happens more often with the youngster and when we are exploring an assortment of schooling philosophies. The only answer really is to "start over" by finding one thing that makes sense to the horse and returning to it
each time he becomes confused. It will be the foundation that you use to start, restart and establish communication. It can be to groom him, or to lead him over poles on the ground, or massage his neck, etc. Just find one thing and stick to it. I had a student whose horse freaked out every time she went out her gait and she really wanted to trail ride. We started walking serpentines around cones in her pasture. Then I put the cones just outside her gait, she walked serpentines through them, slowly I moved one cone at a time further out until we had her riding down the road. BE CREATIVE.
