Most of my training experience has been with dogs, but I think training horses is not a lot different (aside from obvious physical differences of course). What I have seen over and over again when humans train animals (and I do this sometimes too), is that humans often don't manage to make it clear to the animal what they want. Sometimes even the human doesn't know clearly what they want, or they can't manage to get the animal to even partly do the desired behavior (therefore can't effectively reward the animal), or the animal performs, but the human doesn't reward, or rewards too late (poor timing), or the animal does it, but the human doesn't repeat the signal the same way the next opportunity. Animals actually do try to figure us out, and they are very good at doing that, but if it's not working, 95% of the time the human has screwed up somehow. In many cases even a trained horse would have trouble performing for a non-trained person. So  you can continue bumbling along, trying to figure out what works for you and your horse, which will take longer and maybe be more frustrating, or you can consult a trainer who can probably shorten that road considerably. Basically it's the human who needs instruction, dogs and horses already have their people figured out, they already know how to be a dog or a horse.

-- Edited by Marlene on Sunday 20th of February 2011 01:08:16 PM