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From our Basic Horse Training Series:
"How to Halter a Horse," Issue 20, part 1 of our FREE monthly newsletter
Is he head shy? Does he have a cow when you touch his ears or chin or block his vision? Then put the halter down and use your hands to desensitize him to your touch. (Use a dressage whip at first if you feel he might throw his head about and strike you. This would be a silly way to lose your front teeth. Stand at the point of his shoulder if you feel there's any chance he might try to kick or walk into you.) Begin by finding the spots where he doesn't like to be touched and do what any bratty older sister would do: Keep touching him there. If you can't touch his ears, rub the area you can rub, edging ever closer to the ears as the horse grows bored, being careful to only remove our rubs when the horse pauses. There's only one way to screw this up and that is for you to pause when he moves away. If he moves, you move with him. Remember, you "sensitize" the horse (that is, make him more likely to move) when you remove your pressure as he moves; you "desensitize" the horse (dull him to something) when you remove your pressure when he stops doing something.
If you're saying, "Yeah, but he moves his ears the second I touch them," that's fine. If you can bring your hand up and over his ears even for a tenth of a second, you would have accomplished your immediate objective of touching his ears. (Our long term goal is haltering the horse and we never start with our goal, right?) All you need to do is repeat this over and over and over, slowing your hand above his ears as he begins to grow bored. The horse has either grown sensitive to having his ears touched because people backed off as he pitched his head ("sensitizing him") – or no one's ever worked with him period (as in the case of a youngster). Either way, our response is the same.…
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