napping

Clio, by all means try the circling. You want to get his hind quarters moving so they travel a larger arc than the front end. Horses are designed to move in a straight line so making his butt work like that gets uncomfortable and he'll tire more quickly. Use your heel back a little and bunt his ribs to get his butt moving over.

For those of you confused about the term, when we say a horse "naps" (for example, at the gate), we mean that it stops, and starts playing up - some horses start backing up, some horses stop dead, some jig-jog and some follow a brief backing up with a large buck.

My horse used to nap at certain points in the arena - because at the time his napping was immediately followed by a huge buck, I used to use a one-rein-stop and my leg to spin him, then ask for forward again. This fixed the problem. For horses who aren't following the nap with a buck, try to anticipate the point at which he's going to nap and firmly ask for a trot to get past the difficult bit - this is especially helpful with "spooky" spots/objects. Brock napped a bit walking past a cone on Saturday - he was like "no-no-no" so I was like "yes-yes-yes" and asked for a brisk trot. As soon as he started trotting he completely forgot about the cone and five minutes later he was passing and circling it without any difficulty at all.

Nap = general misbehavior then? Wow, I'm soo confused

More like general lack of willingness to go forward past something. Doesn't have to involve a spooky object, lots of horses try and "nap" at a gate because they want to leave the arena and quit working for the day.

Oh, okay. So in that case, yes I agree - keep the forward momentum going. Encourage BEFORE he starts to balk, even try to increase his speed well before if it's always at the same place.

Sometimes my horse will decide she doesn't like where we are headed. I will go back and forth over the same area as many times as it takes for her to finally walk properly where I want her to go. Walk her forward, turn around, walk almost to where we came from, turn around, walk back the other way a bit further, then back the other way not quite as far again -- repeat ad nauseum. By fits and starts, we end up walking BACK to where she didn't want to go to in the first place. I don't let her stop walking except at the spot that she didn't want to be/go to.

If she doesn't want to stand somewhere, I keep moving her back to the location I asked her to stand at - if she backs, I move her forward; if she goes forward, I back her. I try to pick an object as a benchmark so I don't get out of place myself. Most times I can stop her movement before she picks up her feet, which is the best. Once she is still, I let her relax and think about it.

On those days, I don't try to accomplish much else.

Turning in circles and then making him go forward should work too. Sorry, gal from NZ told me it was bucking, not all the other stuff. Anyhow, if they are busy doing something with their feet, going forward especially, then they can't really rear up. Just make sure you aren't hanging on his mouth so that he can't go forward and when you do the circles, make sure you don't always do them the same direction. Keep him a little off balance.

Our TWH did that to me. We were going along and then she dropped. Laid on her side, head on the ground and closed her eyes. We tried to get her up so she raised her head and then dropped back to the ground and closed her eyes again. No amount of spanking, pulling or kicking would get her up. After a couple minutes, she popped back up and was ready to go.
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I have heard the term "naps" but I thought of it as this kind of resistant and irritable acting up and baulking. NOT a fear reaction, but a willful resistance to going forward. Unwillingness to pass something because it is spooky , to me, is a different reaction from a horse and comes from a different emotional place.

We probably all have different definitions! Everyone I know (in Sydney - geographical context!) uses it to refer to any balking, no matter the cause. But generally horses napping at "scary" objects aren't actually scared but just grabbing an excuse to try and get out of doing something. So a kind of "fake" spook, if you get my drift? The true spook reaction is generally very different to a nap, but then I'd call that a spook .