I went to a horse forum for advice about which bit to use on my mare and was basically told I was a horrible rider and needed to get both the horse and myself into lessons. While I admit we would benefit from lessons (I haven't had lessons in years) and plan on taking some (with or without the mare), I also think it's fair to say it's not all my fault.

Horses are not all the same, and not all are going to be willing to perform at the same level, obviously. Cloudy probably will never have the "feel" that Gus does, no matter how much time I put into it. It's possible, but I don't really have the time or money for major amounts of lessons and training, all for a 20 year old trail horse.

She is what she is, and although I will work to improve her, she will always be a stubborn pain in the butt. My son rode her yesterday, and while she is a pretty good horse for him-she's fairly short, doesn't move very fast, and prety much follows Gus around- she is not perfect.

Cole learned the hard way that being a passenger doesn't always work well. Cloudy either decided following Gus wasn't all that important or was taking a shortcut to catch up, I am not sure bc I was in front. The lovely mare went under some low branches (intentional or not?) and Cole leaned back to avoid them, but not far enough, caught a branch in the nose and tumbled off. He blamed his helmet for not allowing him to tip back enough, while I blamed him for not controlling his horse.

Home to clean the bloody nose and scratches, and off we went. I was jumping Gus over some small logs. Cloudy had other plans, which involved being lazy (shocker) and veering off to the side. After several attempts I took over and made her go over the logs, but it wasn't easy.

My whole point is that we need to evaluate our expectations of our horses. Do they have the proper training and experience to do what we ask? Are we asking them so they understand? Are they being stubborn, or is something causing them pain? Are they even suited to the work we ask of them? Maybe that show horse hates it and would be a great endurance horse.