The importance of using retreat

Just been watching a video and one thing that came up was the importance of retreating when your horse is unconfident in a situation. Another point was that if something good (or bad) happens with your horse you need to know why it happened.

So I am thinking about the different reactions I had from Lucie recently in different situations and it starts to make sense. Why was she emotional in the arena? Because I made her go there. What was her reaction? Right brain, unconfident, stressed, emotional. What did I do? Continued in there. What did she do? Stayed stressed. What should I have done? Retreated - come out of there, and reapproached. Just go in there for a minute then out, repeat, reapproach until she shows confidence, in me, in the surroundings. Move to somewhere she is confident. (That is what I did yesterday.) Because she is showing that she is thinking about safety issues. She isn't confident in my ideas so she's not seeing me as a leader. Next day, what did I do? Let her have her idea, graze. What happened? She relaxed, and started to follow my suggestions. Because I retreated, or didn't make her do something she didn't want to do. Result was, that she did more, and it seemed like her idea.

I need to take care of her emotions, and by showing that I am doing so, she will have more trust in me. She has just shown me that I can do this by retreating, and not making her do something when she's not ready. This may sound like "giving in" to the horse but by using retreat I can build confidence. Reverse psychology.

Why was she happy and interested before, when we did some nice liberty stuff in the round pen? Why does it seem she is no longer interested and switches off around obstacles? Because she feels as if I'm making her when she isn't ready. Because right now she isn't confident so she can't learn and doesn't want to play. I'm pushing her when she isn't ready. The more I push, the more we go backwards. I've just learned how slowing things right down has helped our relationship.

What is important to horses? Safety, comfort and play. In that order. If you don't have one, you can't move on to the next. (And food - very important to my miss; part of comfort.)

Interesting that I'm also seeing some extrovert behaviour and reactions, which I quite like. Important now not to squash that but to use it. Let's see what happens today and if I can use this.