Trail Riding

Question
Hi Rick,

My name is Sam, I am 14 going on 15 and I currently lease a 10 year old saddlebred gelding named Yoda. He is kept 24/7 in a large pasture with around 4-5 other horses at one time. I have been riding for, oh, around 7 years and have worked exstensively with saddlebreds and saddleseat horses. I recently stepped out of the hustle and bustle of the show ring and want to get more into trail riding but Yoda isn't too confident out on the trail. The barn that I board him at has 3 large pastures with a "trail" that we can ride around on and I have taken him out several times with a small group and he did very well. He walks away from the herd when I ask but it seems like he just shrinks inside himself and becomes very insecure. Usually at this point I will stop and rub his withers or his hindquarters and he will relax a bit but not to the point of total comfort. In the pasture, Yoda is the leader and does prefer to lead groups but when asked to go by himself this whole confident Yoda slips into "Okay, but are you sure?"
     I am very interested in the natural horsemanship, very much the opposite of my trainer. I ride Yoda in a bitless bridle (Dr.Cooks) because he is terribly hard to bridle because when he was younger he had an awful accident with a bitting rig that resulted in a broken neck for him. I do understand that this probably has a large influence on the bridling problem. Yoda will usually throw his head up out of reach or just gently step away, but if someone wants to ride him with a bridle we must wrestle him into it and I really hate fighting him.
    Can you help me help Yoda on these two problems?

Answer
Hey Sam, glad to hear you are out of the show ring.  Shows don't help many horses and people get to caught up in winning and time events both which confuse and cause fear in a horse.

Go to my web site are read my horse history page and my horsemanship page.  It may not make sense at first but the more you read the more other things will make sense that you have read before.  So don't give up when things don't make sense.

If you really want to be good with horses, you have to stop thinking like a human.  You have to think like a horse and learn what makes them tick.  

A horse is a reflection of the person handling them.  So if a horse is not confident, then the rider is not confident or is not showing the horse that he is confident.  NEVER BLAME THE HORSE FOR ANYTHING.  A horse only reacts to what we do.  What ever a horse does you have to accept that YOU caused it.  When you put a horse in pasture a horse will not have any of the problems that you say he has, why, because you are not there to cause the problem.  When a horse does good, people always want to take credit for training him, but when they don't do good, they blame the horse, they are wrong.

Read my web site and try to understand how a horse thinks, feels and reacts, then you will be able to know what YOU do wrong to cause the problems.

PS:  A horse cannot fight by himself.  A horse only fights if he has a someone who is fighting with him.  Your horse does not have a bridling problems, he has a problem with people not knowing what they are doing so he resist the bridle, which is good, if someone does not know how to get a horse to take a bridle, they more than likely do not how to use it once it is in the horses mouth.

Hope this helps,

Rick