Training from an Emotional Perspective

How to 'Train' from an emotional perspective. That's been the hardest thing to decide and define. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Can you even really call it training? Honestly, I don't know if I can answer any of these questions. Everytime I try to explain it, it comes out sounding mystical, illusive and sometimes cryptic. I wouldn't say there's any of those things really involved, it's just a matter of you have to experience it to get it. So how do you explain it to other people, to clients? That's the question of the day. Usually it ends up coming out as 'I work for the horse, and on their time.' To me this means taking the time to form a relationship with a horse. Taking the time to get to know him or her for who they are. Sometimes this can be somewhat difficult, especially with the horses that are coming in for 'rehabilitation', as usually they come in very emotionally surpressed. This supression comes out as anger, bad habits, buck, bolting, or even complete dissassociation with their bodies. In any case this can be a very dangerous situation. When a horse has been so supressed, they don't usually know who they are, let a lone what you as a human being can offer them. They have no idea how to define themselves. There is a similar phenominom in human abuse victims. Part of this process is allowing the horses to define themselves. In a lot of cases, especially the dominant horses, this results in the horse becoming pushy, almost over exuberent, in everything he/she does. In the submissive horses they become almost overly insecure. It's two completely opposite ends of the scale, yet all a part of the same journey.
I am going through this with one of my own horses right now. Scooby is a 9 year old Paint gelding, and he is defining who he is. We personality typed him as a Prize Fighter, but that may change as he decides who he is. He originally came to me as a rehab case for bucking issues, and after his owners decided that they could no longer afford, and had no interest in, continuing on his journey I made the decision to purchase him. It's been a very interesting road to say the least. Started late in life, He had spent the first year and a half  of his under saddle career as a dressage prospect. What one would call 'very well trained', he lived in a mental box. His world comprised of riding, he was told where to put every foot, and how to put it. It created a horse that was 'well broke'. After this he was sold to a young girl and started in hunter/jumper training. Again, he was told where to put every foot and how to put it there. Now Scooby is a very dominant horse, after all the under saddle supression he was taking out his frustration in a very agressive manner, on people and also on other horses out in the herd. He moved stables a couple times and his frustration grew. Scooby was also suffering from some fairly severe physical issues at the time and the pain only added to his anger. Shortly after, he began kicking out at people whenever the touched his sides. Now an interesting thing happened when he came to me. I gave him permission to be himself, and he had no idea how to do this. This horse that was overly dominant had absolutely no self confidence when left to think for himself in a working situation. It's a weird side effect for a dominant horse to experience.