The meaning behind "Green"

I finally got a good realization/reminder that yes indeed, Bryce is in fact a "green" horse. He was always so good that I just never saw him as being "green" (even though that is clearly him because he doesn't have much training) but he never acted as if he was clueless until my lesson the other day.

We have been slowly working on courses. We started with just a jump or two but now we have made it to almost a full course (~6 jumps). Since he is just learning, we were focusing on one thing at a time. Lead changes were something I started to teach him before his time off and I was waiting to re-introduce them once he was nice and comfortable with courses.

Well Bryce decided instead of remembering how to jump, he would kindly show me he still remembers how to do his changes. It was so nice of him during the first one or two BUT then it just turned so unorganized. It was like he switched his mind off of jumping. He started just flinging himself over the jumps and jumping way under himself just to get to the other side and do a lead change...then do another change...and then try another...

Any time I would try to bring him down to a trot he would basically canter in place until he thought we were going to turn so he could do another change. Finally, I was able to decently make it down a line with a nice, asked for change at the end and hold that lead with no added/extra changes.

Its not like it was a complete failure of a lesson but it just got me frustrated that all my hard work of getting him to jump nicely just got thrown into the toilet.

Just need to remember....one step at a time.