Why are the trigger controls not consistently working?

I am trying to record a scene for a pre-rigged Adobe puppet called “Cowboy”.  The puppet comes with a number of shortcuts for poses and hand positions, for sad and angry and so forth.  I was recording the gestures during playback without problem.  Then I stopped to lengthen the cowboy track and the music track.  When I went back to record, the trigger icons no longer worked.  At one point, I got them to work a little -- but they only affected the bottom half of the character, while the full gestures  should have the hands waving in air and so forth.  In addition to this issue, I have had other times when the controls seem to have no effect for no reason that I can figure out.  Where am I going wrong?  In this case, I have made sure that the puppet track is selected and the control panel is in “perform” mode…. It’s just inconsistent.  It will work for a while, then it won’t.