Pull the rope out!

Poor Spade he nearly had a heart attack today but he responded great! I went out and he actually walked half way across the pen to greet me. He comes up, perks his ears and walks toward me, but he is blowing at the same time. It is kinda like "I am happy to see you but if you move wrong, I am running". Once he allows me to start putting the halter on he is committed. Need work but he is making progress. We go through the same thing with lead rope. He is still very unsure about the tools that I use. It seems that he has to double check them everyday to make sure they haven't grown teeth overnight. Today I had a really simple goal to see what he has retained.
He is now leading like a regular horse. In fact I am now teaching him how to stand still comfortably without facing me. The thing about Spade is when he gets it, he really gets it and it is hard to teach him there are conditions to something that you taught. For instance I have taught him that when I bump the halter and look at his hip he is to turn to me and stop. So when I go to lunge him and he gets to the end of the rope and the halter lightly bumps him in movement he wants to immediately stop and face. Then he gets confused when I keep him moving instead. This seems to erase the prior cue that I taught. That makes it seem like we are starting over daily. Once I realized what was happening I started breaking down the cues to make them more simple. Like I said yesterday, I have to teach him HOW to learn. I know once he gets it then he is going to learn very fast.
After going through all his drills. I was happy to see that he understood all of them for the most part. So I started with the off side drill that I had taught him last week. It will prepare him to move on to things I have been planning, just waiting on him to mentally grow some. I began tossing the rope over his head. No problem. As I tossed the rope all the way down the off side and between his hocks and his rump,  he pinned his ears. As he was about to start kicking I saw a flip in his expressions. He started thinking instead. With a little tug and a smooch on my part, he turned his head the opposite way and did a 360, and ended up facing me. I was so excited. It has been 5 days since I had taught him this and it stuck. He was learning not to use his instinct but to use his brain. I continued the drill both ways. He was doing great. Then an "oops" on my part happened. Again I tossed my rope on the off side and laid the rope in it's spot above the hocks. This time I was in the center of the pen but well behind his hips which drives him forward instead of holding him in place. When Spade walked forward the rope became foreign to him again. Like Spade does, he panicked and took off around the pen. This rope went from the opposite side of his neck, down his body, around the back of his butt and to me. I calmly stood there with the end of the rope in my hand. I kept a little bit of tension so that he wouldn't trip himself or get release for reacting like a prey animal. Spade took two strides and realized that the rope was still back there so he started pitching. The first time he kicked out the rope flipped up right under his tail. By this time the flight instinct was in full force. He immediately clamped his tail as tight as he could holding the rope in place.  I knew that we were in trouble. That made him panic more and kick even higher. I still just stood there and let him work it out. I was waiting on him to start responding instead of reacting. He made one lap around the pen in this wild condition and the mental flip happened. He stopped and froze with his hip dropped, tail clinched and muscles shaking I saw his wheels start turning in his mind. He knew he was in a jam and didn't know how to get out of it. And there wasn't anything that I could safely do to help him. He had to relax and get out of it himself. That is when I saw him stand up straight and give slack to the rope from his halter. Then he turned the opposite direction like we had done the ten minutes prior. The rope was still under his tail but because he moved his position I was able to sling the slack out and around his tail bone and jerk it out from under his tail. He stood quietly as I pulled, from a distance of coarse. When he was released he faced me and walked up like he was thanking me for untangling him. I continued to flop the rope on the opposite side and around his feet. I would even let him tangle up in it with me holding the end. He started lifting his legs and wiggling himself out instead of the normal explosive reaction. I was very happy to see him thinking so I quit for the day.
   On my way home I realized that we often react instead of respond. I know in my life I am the worst about reacting to my oldest daughter when she does something that is totally age appropriate. I will immediately get angry when I find that she has covered herself and her room in stickers or that she spilt her glass on the table. If I would step back and take a few seconds and think about a response then I wouldn't damage my relationship with my child. Reactions damage and tear down realtionships. They also have a way of altering the way that people think about you. The bible says in James 1:19-21 (one of my favorite books by the way) 
¹⁹ My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, ²⁰ because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. ²¹ Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.
Just like Spade has to stop and step out of his nature to run. We have to stop and think about how God wants us to respond to situations. 
So what do you do when someone sticks a rope under your tail??? God is standing in the center of the pen waiting to see if we are going to do what He has taught us or if we are going to continue react and hurt ourselves or others.