Spooky and it's relationship with learning

I was having a conversation with a client tonight during her lesson, just after her horse had spooked at something at the side of the arena. But to understand the spook, we had to go back to about 5 minutes before that when we asked the horse to do something that it found a little bit harder. When this happened, the horse lost rhythm and started showing some behaviours of concern. When we continued, the spook happened. So what most likely happened was that anxiety came up in the horse and this prompted her senses to increase - looking for danger threats. And then she found one.

It’s always a fine line to balance when a horse starts to show concern. Learning happens when we are slightly out of our comfort zone so we have to go there at some point. During the situation that I described above, we went back 2 steps, to the one where the horse was ok, and worked there until the horse was settled.

I’d love to know your thoughts. Let me know if you have any questions.