DressageArena.org

My horse doesn’t pull any dangerous stunts, he just is smart, and knows what he can get away with. He can be mouthy on the ground, but nothing pasty mouthiness, he doesn’t bite. (and i don’t hand feed treats). When lunging he is pretty good, he still needs work on turning while lunging, and not cutting in. Riding on the trail, he’ll sometimes trot downhills, but it is just a lack of experience out there. He also can get nervous if he sees horses trotting away from him, but walking away he is fine, and that would probably be fixed with just going out there more. I have no clue how he’d do at shows, or riding in unfamiliar places, because we haven’t been yet. Riding in the arena at home he needs improvement. He is very unresponsive, its very hard to get him going and stay going. He also associates groups of horses with stopping (because i use to stop and talk to friends, but i stopped doing that when riding and he’s improving) He gets one lead right consistently, the other one no. if he is hyper he’ll sometimes try to run into the corner, or he’ll do little crow-hops (which has only been twice in the whole year i have owned him.) He doesn’t spook that easily, and he comes back to his senses quickly, but he does look around a lot and gets distracted. We started jumping and he is alright, he sometimes veers off or stops in front, but he just can’t get amped up enough for the jump. (one time we did this jump and he realized he didn’t have the right striding so he slowed on his own and still jumped it, my trainer said that that was very good and that he was such a good boy) He knows nothing about dressage, and it would be good to get him to have solid basics, though he still needs help in just general riding. When i first got him, he didn’t know anything, he didn’t know how to lunge at all, turn when riding, or going at all. he was nearing age 4. He is around five right now. When i first got him he was left alone for a few months, so he probably forgot some other things. And to think i wasn’t even comfortable cantering on the lesson horse yet. well i guess we did somewhat well for me being a greenie to the horse world. Don’t worry I;m comfortable with cantering and galloping now, and any of the stunts he tries to pull, my trainer sometimes laughs and says he doesn’t know how to be bad, even when he tries. I enjoy riding him so its not anything like that. I just think I can’t bring out his potential with my skill level. My trainer is very knowledgeable and I’m confident she could help him tremendously. She says it would only take 6 weeks to transform him, but that she’d have to work with me so he doesn’t get back to his old habits. I’ve owned him for a year, and I know we didn’t improve as much as we should have, I mean we have improved some. but since I’m not super-experienced we haven’t improved as much as we could have. I only moved him close at the beginning of august of last year,and only started riding regularly then. We did improve a lot, some people at the barn said we improved exponentially, i got him to canter for ten minutes straight once, which was amazing. But then we went downwards rapidly for about a month, where he would only walk, and when i used ask, tell, demand he’d stop moving and shut down. But then this last week, my trainer convinced me to stop being nice and to hit him harder and he has been so good and listening ever since then, and going on the ask part instead of the demand. So should i have my trainer work with him to improve him, Although I do eventually want to train my own horse from the complete beginning. My farrier is also knowledgeable and she might give me a job to help her train some of her horses, not from scratch but just to refine their skills. And when I told my trainer that i eventually wanted to do that she said she would work with me in "breaking" (i hate that term) a horse, she said if she worked with me someone would probably let us do that for free. so should i have my trainer help me refine my horse’s skills? thanks for the help and sorry for it being so long.
omg did not realize how long that was thought it was shorter, so sorry guys, I’d be amazed if anyone read that whole thing