The horse’s brain is very different from ours. The horse lacks a prefrontal cortex, which is the part that lets us as humans think back in time, plan ahead and imagine things. The horse simply hasn’t needed this in its evolution. The horse lives in the moment. 

Anthropomorphism is a long word that describes putting human characteristics and emotions onto horses, like “he really wants to win”. The problem with this is that horses often get the blame when things go wrong - “he knows better”, “he is doing it on purpose” or “he is testing me”. Horses only react to what is in front of them, they don’t plan ahead or do things “on purpose”. The horse is always a blameless participant in the training process. 

It’s also important not to overtrain. When training a new response, one good rule is to get three improved responses in a row, and then give the horse a rest for up to a minute. The horse needs the time to process in order to learn. 

We need to be careful to avoid both overestimating and underestimating the horse’s mental capacity.