“What does her expression tell you right now?” I asked.
This mare held such a desire to do right. She had been accustomed to requests for upwards transitions being initiated with a feel of pressure, followed by a swift escalation of pressure if she were not responsive.
When an escalation of pressure suggests she is “not right yet” and that more try is expected, then the meaning in the pressure is that her response is, to put it another way… “wrong”. This can be a source of confusion when the initial request is also made with a feel of pressure. It was a lose-lose for her, because she did not have the chance to do right before she felt wrong. On top of that, she knew to expect an escalation of pressure when she was not right. This had translated to a slight, but habitual tightening in her back as she moved out. A tightening in her back, is indicative of a tightening in the base of her neck, which in turn pulls her wither, and therefore her shoulders down. In other words, she effectively ran herself into her own brick wall, as her hind feet advanced into a buried front-end.
She had frozen up now, in her anticipation of an escalation of pressure, but her expression was not one of resistance. It was one that suggested she was used to a wall between herself and her handler, through which she could not ask for help.
This had appeared to the appy lady as stubbornness, disrespect and lack of try. In fact, the mare had almost literally tripped herself up in her concern about and desire to be accurate. It is not always so easy to observe some of these smaller things that matter to the horse, from up there in the saddle.
If we could reshape things a little, for the mare to stay soft in her initial response, there would be real potential for these transitions to be worked out.