Our emotions tend to be based on experiences and events which have occurred throughout our life and can be stored in our memory.  Some of these emotions can be extremely powerful and trigger responses years after the event which initially roused the emotion.  This is why I don’t personally believe the saying that “time heals all wounds”.

A horse however, like most animals, lives only in the present, although in many instances he will  learn from past experiences.  His emotions are less complex and much more basic than those of a human.  Instead of fretting over a lost friendship for example, he will instead be concerned about himself first and his safety (although in the wild obviously, the safety of the herd is also his responsibility).

The domestic horse has many of the same types of worries as his wild cousins – and some might argue, with the lack of a herd’s social structure in evidence and dominant protection of the lead stallion, a domestic horse might perhaps even have more concerns.  Rather than being able to rely on his own instincts and abilities to satisfy his basic needs, he is often boxed in and has to rely on his owner to provide food, water and shelter, even being deprived of the choice of breeding partners.  He is also forced to tolerate his owner’s emotions and dominance, or lack of dominance (and thus, as he sees it, lack of protection). 

What you may not realise is that the horse’s short-term memory is slightly more delayed than that of a human, meaning that when you give an instruction which he has not come across before during a lesson or schooling session, it is unlikely he will be able to process the information and respond to your request immediately.