"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
Since beginning to use positive reinforcement and other such new age methods of training, I couldn't help but notice how incredibly 'smart' the horses all suddenly seemed to be.
This change has come from flipping the focus back onto myself. Inadvertently, I have gone from thinking of one horse as perhaps not as smart as the next, to seeing that whatever I am doing is wrong, even if it has worked on many horse's prior.. It just won't work for that individual.
So where is the root of the misunderstanding? How can I break down what I'm asking, and change the way I ask it so that this particular horse will understand?

Imagine someone is trying to teach you to write in Japanese, while also speaking Japanese, and you can't understand a word. What a frustrating, unpleasant task. Sure you could copy what they're doing, but you will never know what it means. You will never be able to write a coherent sentence.
To a Japanese person, you would seem pretty stupid. But if you learnt in English, one piece of information at a time, and were able to ask questions when confused, you would eventually be doing pretty well.

So am I suddenly meeting lots of intelligent horses? Or am I the one growing a brain? Life is a lot easier for everyone when both parties can do both the listening and the speaking.

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." -Einstein
The horse doesn't need to behave in a way that suits us, it's not natural for them.
It's our job to provide the right environment, the right method, the right questions to ask for them to succeed.