The first seven times she ran back. Each time we came back to barn we’d run more laps around hay stacks. I could tell she was getting tired. But eighth time I walked her away from hay stacks I noticed she went quite a ways before turning to go back.

When we went back again we ran more figure eights. Only this time I could tell we didn’t have to do too many. I walked her out and away from doing figure eights and I suddenly had a horse who decided that it was sooo much nicer going for a walk away from barn rather than doing a bunch of crummy ol’ figure eights. We had a nice ride that day and she was in no hurry to get home.

The last thing to do is this: Ride. Ride a lot. Don’t wait for weeks or months in between riding. Try to ride at least once per week for three or four hours. Preferably, try to ride at least twice a week for a few hours at a time. (Ideally, you should ride everyday. But that’s hard to do with today’s time constraints) Doing that your horse will get in his brain that you’re going to ride and he’s going to leave barn and there will be no argument. In fact, if you want to have a great horse biggest secret is this: Ride heck out him!

So if your horse is barn spoiled you can try doubling him to show you are in control. The next thing you can try is making wrong thing difficult and right thing easy. Make it dang hard for him to go wrong thing and very pleasant to do right thing. And lastly, ride your horse often. Two to three times a week if possible.

So it is with rider and horse. Maybe not to that extent, but still it happens.

And since rider is human and capable of reasoning, then he or she must be one to interrupt pattern of behavior. The rider must loosen up while in saddle. Relax. Have fun. Learn to watch horse's signals that he has spotted something - and then talk to horse and start giving him confidence.

Soon, horse's demeanor will change and result will be a more relaxed, fun to ride horse.

Whether rider realizes it or not, he or she is training horse by just riding. The horse simply reacts to stimuli he gets. If stimuli is consistent, horse's reaction will become a habit until changed. If stimuli is tense, causes fear reactions, and so on, result is a spooky horse.

This is but one example of how us humans can actually be reason horse does or does not do something we ask of him. Although it's true that rider is not cause 100% of time, it's a good place to start untangling problem because it's often where it begins