We have two trail horses. Our newest horse is a Chestnut 7 year old QH gelding. He’s a great horse who worked for a number of years in a stockyard. We were told that as a working horse he was rarely brushed or handled, and from the moment we met him he was a skiddish to touching. He’s gotten a lot better and lets us brush him and pet him when he is haltered.
The seller, who is an experienced horse trainer, was always able to halter him without much trouble, but once we got him home he began to avoid the halter like the plague.
Using food as an enticement we were able to get him to come over so we could place the lead rope over his neck and he would freeze in his tracks, but now he knows the trick and no longer comes to the bucket when we are standing anywhere near him. He will gladly take feed when we leave the paddock, but he knows that with the halter in our hand he is going to get caught, and he stays far enough away so that we can’t easily halter him. If we take a step toward him he takes a step back, just out of arms reach. We have been working with him for a few months, and if anything he is regressing.
I normally don’t believe in using bribes to get a horse to do something, but I also don’t like chasing a horse. The paddock he and his paddock-mate live in is large enough so that if he wants to stay away from us he can. His paddock-mate, a 13 year old QH gelding, comes right over to us when we open the gate and drops his head to be haltered, so I know it can done.
One theory is that the skiddish horse was worked so hard at the stockyard that he associates the halter with spending 8 hours working cows. So how do I retrain him to view the halter as a positive thing? He is well fed and we don’t work him hard once he is haltered, so there is no reason for him to be leary of us. My plan was to figure out some way to halter him and then reward him once he was outside the paddock, but that plan went out the window.
I would recommend asking this question at the Chronicle of the Horse message board. I was told, years ago when I got my first horse, it’s the SDMB of the equine world. Eight years later, I’m inclined to agree. The board offers a larger, more experienced pool of members who IMO will be better able to assist you with training issues.
You would be better off working with a trainer on this issue, especially the trainer who is familiar with the horse. Without being right next to you, seeing how you and the horse interact, I can’t tell you what exactly you need to change.
What type of halter do you use? If you use a leather or break-away typ halter, would it be possible to leave it on him all the time? I know a nylon would be a no no, it can get caught on things and be a death sentance, but a leather halter will break before the horse does, and the break-aways are made especially for this purpose.
The horse refusing to come to you, or refusing to stand as you approach him indicates that he thinks (apparently correctly) that he is in charge, rather than you. That is the problem. He didn’t do that for the trainer, because he recognized that the trainer was in charge. Horses can easily distinguish different humans, and assign them different ranks in the herd. Just like they do with other horses in the herd.
A common training technique for this problem is to make coming to you more desirable than not. So when he refuses, make him work harder than he would have worked it he had come to you – force him to keep moving around in the paddock for a while, with no rest, until he decides to come to you when called. This may mean spending several hours the first few times, until he learns.
A more direct, deeper problem is his lack of respect for you. He does not recognize you as the ‘alpha’ horse, with the authority to give him orders. That is a much harder thing to teach, since it involves un-teaching his current idea of the hierarchy.
Frankly, it sounds to me like you need professional help from a trainer to deal with this problem – it’s gone beyond your skills/experience.
And much of the work with that trainer will involve him training you, so that you can maintain the lessons the trainer teaches the horse. It’s fairly common for the horse to perform properly for the trainer, but then stop doing it for his owner – because he has learned that he can get away with that with the owner. Which is somewhat like what you have described. So much of the training will be you learning from the trainer what you need to do to stop this behavior.
Buddy of mine sort of solved it. Added a couple sections of fencing making a long narrow area that has the trough and a metal feed bucket hung on the fence. he would very audibly drop a handfull of horse nuts in and got the horse accustomed to him just standing neat the fence after dumping in the horse nuts. No halter, just getting him used to him standing there. After a few weeks, he started holding the halter down by his leg, still stayed on the other side of the fence. Kept getting closer but not haltering him, until he could stand next to the nut bucket. Finally got to where he could do a good solid neck skritch. Took a couple months but he got the horse to trust him and finally got to where he could halter him. The extra fencing made it difficult for the horse to sidle away. Kind of on the same principle of giving a chary cat or dog treats in a transport kennel.
That works, but it is still leaving the horse in charge. You are bribing him to let you approach him, or stand by him. Letting him make the decision on this.
This does not deal with the basic discipline problem about who is the boss here. This horse will still feel that he does not have to obey you, but can decide whether he wants to comply with your commands.
So while this technique will solve minor problems, it will make things harder when you go on to additional training.
P.S. If you have a herd of horses, making a narrow aisle where the water is located is not very safe. The water source is an area where the herd pecking order is enforced, with higher ranking horses forcing others to move out of their way so they can drink first. Narrow, confining fences here might cause a horse to get caught up in the fence when this is happening. Not a good idea if you have a large herd of horses.
Now, this would have made me go :dubious:. Horses don’t tack themselves up or change their own shoes. Working horses may not get lots of hugs and scritches, but they get plenty of handling. Which leads me to…
This. He’s figured out that it’s easy to avoid being caught and haltered. Your job - and perhaps a trainer’s job - is to disabuse him of this notion. You don’t need to beat him up. You just need to make it more pleasant for him to let himself be caught than to avoid you. As t-bonham@scc.net explained, this will most likely involve following him around, keeping him moving, until he realizes that you aren’t going to leave the paddock without him. Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass. Sounds like he’s a smart horse, just not in a convenient way.
The board offers a larger, more experienced pool of members who IMO will be better able to assist you with training issues.