Well, the saga continues.

You know, when you get that elusive moment of “harmony” that you read about in all the training books, it is, really, an incredible rush. But more often than not, I’m mired in some middle ground between harmony and hell. Mostly, Baleno and I have good rides, where he’s listening to me and I’m listening to him; our shoulder-ins are good and our canter transitions clear and smooth. Our walk is relaxed and forward and our trot work is, if not harmonious, than at least in some kind of tune.

For both of us, the problems crop up when there’s pressure. When I’m training with the “important German trainer” or when I step foot on the show grounds for our umpteenth attempt to qualify for championships, suddenly Baleno is rearing and bucking, and I’m powerless to figure out how to change his behavior. Sometimes I ignore my instincts, too, which is not a good thing. There’s a reason they call it horse sense. Yesterday at the dressage show, my gut was telling me to get into my half seat and gallop around the arena (a very un-dressage-warmup thing to do). B felt like a lot of horse yesterday. A whole lot of horse. A good gallop might have taken the edge off and gotten a little more concentration from him. Instead, I fussed with him and did lateral work until we were frustrated. And it showed in the ring. Low scores, no submission, lots of misbehavior, but great canter work. B wanted to go.

So what next for us? I have some serious thinking to do about our current course of training. My scores at shows go down instead of up, and my horse seems unhappy more days than he’s happy. I’m going to take six months off from the intensity of dressage training and just play with him. Jump a bit, take casual trail rides, dial back the dressage to just a couple of lessons a month to work on my seat. It seems like the best course now. I know my horse is physically talented enough to move up the levels, but whether he and I are emotionally able to, that’s still a very big question that looms over our training. Maybe he just doesn’t want to do it.

It’s funny, when I think back to the very first horse show we went to, it was a two-phase event—dressage and jumping. We did really well—my dressage score was so good I was in first place in a large class. Then I went into the jumping phase, and although I had no coach, and I’d only jumped him a half a dozen times, we got around just fine. I ended up in third (we had one refusal which was purely pilot error).

So why did I have such a great, mellow horse willing to kick ass in the ring back than and not today? What has changed? What has made Baleno so hate the show environment that he nearly panics? Is it physical pain? I wish I knew. Anybody know a good horse communicator? Because at this point I wish I could he could talk and tell me what he’s feeling. Then I’d know what course of action to take.