Dyna is a special horse, and yes, I mean that in the short bus kind of way. It is not her fault, she is the result of bad breeding decisions on the owners of her ancestor's fault. She is VERY inbred, it almost looks like they were going for linebreeding and took a wrong turn. She has one stallion 7 times, one 5 times and another 3 times in a standard 5 generation pedigree.
I purchased her several years ago as a riding horse for myself. She was a blast when I test-rode her, just very sensitive to the bit. Of course that could have something to do with the massive TWH bit the sellers were using (honestly, aren't 11 inch shanks a bit much?). She came home wiht us and after a few months proved that she really did not like women much. She loves men though.She cannot deal with a dominant "mare" on her back.
She has 2 brain cells, and if they disconnect, just give up. She goes to pieces. It is difficult to train her to do something new, she gets so agitated and confused. You have to go over things S-L-O-W-L-Y, or the brain cells disconnect.
That being said, once you finally get something installed in her brain, asking her to change or adjust the behavior is near impossible and has a high probability of making her disconnect. Case in point, this past weekend we took her to an SCA event, her first in a couple of years. The week before we really worked on remembering how to neck rein and weave through poles to do Saracen heads. It never occured to us to practice just walking a straight line through 2 sets of poles like in a reeds course. At the event, the course consisted of the Quintain (oooh, SNORT, scoot to the side, even though we have seen one before) a target to throw a javelin at (SNORT, scoot, wiggle, "Cm'on it's a HAYBALE you moron!"), rings (oh, no problem), a ring to throw a javelin through as you gallop (or in our case, running walk) past, catching it (in theory, she had never done this and when she saw the javelin coming past her head she swerved) as it comes out the other side, and last but not least, a reeds course. We got to it, lined up and started the course (Oh, poles standing up, I weave through these! "No, go STRAIGHT goober! Straight!") and she proceeded to attempt to do exactly what we taught her. Weave. We got through it, but she was SO confused. When she did the course the second time, she tried to weave again, and the third time she did a bit better according to my husband who was riding her. She is an odd creature, once something is ingrained in her little brain, that's it, that is what she does. I guess in some instances that is a good thing, but it can be frustrating.
