Training Tip: The Reactive Side will Always Exist

No matter how great a trainer you are you will never be able to completely eliminate the reactive side of your horse’s brain. We’ve never been able to train the reactive side of the horse’s brain out of him, and we’ve never been able to breed it out of him. It’s always going to be there.

Even if you have a really well-trained horse that uses the thinking side of his brain 99 percent of the time, there’s still a one percent chance that he’ll use the reactive side. No matter how well trained a horse is, every once in a while, the reactive side of his brain is going to show up.

The downside is you never know when the reactive side is going to pop up. But here’s the good news: Anytime your horse uses the reactive side of his brain, all you have to do to get him back to using the thinking side is move his feet forwards, backwards, left and right and reward the slightest try.