After the Latch-On: What to Do If a Horse Cannot Be Touched

If an issue horse still will not allow human touch for bonding or haltering to begin, even after the previous latch-on exercise is completed successfully, then begin to desensitize the horse to your hand and ropes/halter. This often indeed will be needed for serious trust-issue horses, formerly abused horses and wilder horses who have never been touched kindly by Man before. But we've now got a healthy foundation as leader laid down that is going to serve us well in this next step to help the horse get past touch fears.

Desensitization processes are very carefully and slowly applied to such sensitive horses. There's a real fine art to it, though. Timing and technique is everything! I find it best accomplished with such fearful-of-touch horses in the latched-on follower mode, both of us on the slow move at all times. This helps the horse to get there faster and respects the horse's fears and what he innately needs to do to deal with those fears as a prey animal.

Fact: when horses are afraid, they MUST move their feet. That is simple prey animal psychology, just how nature designed horses to be as flight prey animals (food for predators!). This instinct has served them well for thousands of years. Therefore, I respect that need and allow the move during early desensitizing, so that the horse can deal with fears naturally, but I direct the move while the horse is latched-on, by having them follow me, them continually disengaging their hindquarters every time I make a turn. I make frequent turns throughout so the horse has to keep thinking about following (more effective than just walking a straight line).

To begin hand desensitization, as I make a directional turn, my hand might reach back quite passively (no eye contact, my side to them) and I briefly brush the horse's nose gently ("oops, was that an accident, or was it on purpose?" the horse sometimes wonders, startled). But done so nonchalantly, passively and quickly like that, no-big-deal-like and definitely not giving them any message that it will go any farther than that because my hand is pulled away just as fast, the horse barely has time to register the touch. The retreat is everything in all effective desensitizing! But the horse indeed knows it was touched and "lordy, didn't die after all when that predator touched! And look that predator is even walking away! Whew, I'm still safe!"

I think it is real important to step outside of our predator way of thinking right here to get perspective on what it must feel like to be that horse prey animal there, fearful of a friendly human predator's first touches so that we gain the proper empathy, patience and understanding. And all horses know full well that we are predators; we act like predators, we look like predators, we even smell like predators! To get inside that horse's mind and touching-fear feelings, try this visualization exercise:

Picture you are lost in the woods and suddenly are cornered by a big grizzly bear, no means of escape, no help in sight. Suddenly, we have turned from being predator to being prey ourselves in that grand food chain of life! Gulp! Imagine your fear level there! Now....imagine that this particular grizzly just fell off a circus truck and is actually a friendly, harmless, loving even, trained bear, hand-raised since birth by kind humans, but we sure don't know that yet when we are cornered by him in the woods! That grizzly looks like a dangerous predator, smells like a dangerous predator, even acts like a dangerous predator as he stands there roaring on his two back feet, as he was maybe trained to do to say hi folks! He ambles toward us to touch us, as he's been taught to do in the circus, but we don't see it that way, do we?!! We see a predator who is probably going to harm or eat us! We are terrified! Imagine your scrambled thought attempts at retreat from this predator!



Gee...the friendly predator bear only wants to touch you!

Now... think about the horse you are desensitizing to human (predator!) touch. Understand: the fearful horse feels exactly the same way as you would in the above scenario, no different. We are going to have to convince him to trust us, and trust here is an earned thing, not a given. Through our actions and retreat from actions, the horse will become convinced (on its own!) that we are safe and mean them no harm. So, we have to begin our touching desensitizing lessons slowly, on a safe level the horse can digest one baby step at a time, the horse never being made to feel threatened by us at any point. Keep that mindset from this point forward, it's important.

The horse digests that first miniscule nose touch success (survival!) one tiny thought/step at a time. In some horses, the shoulder area is more easily accepted as a first touch spot while on follower mode, while others, the neck if you can reach it during the turn. In the most serious fear-issue horses, I find the points on the front of the head from the nose up through the forehead generally works best. Experiment at first to find where the horse allows the first brief, very fleeting touch – it's usually the spot that is easiest for us to reach, the place they are making most accessible to us, but remember the quick retreat is even more important than the touch!

You build baby-step-by-baby step from there. Turn directions, touch again. Retreat hand instantly. Find the quickly accepted spot and built upon it. Before long, using this advance/retreat, while still on the move, I have constructed about a palm-sized area on the horse that is now well desensitized to repeated touch, and my hand can linger there in that spot increasingly longer and longer, even as we move together in unison, the horse tolerating it, doesn't bolt.

Incidentally...if the horse does bolt out of the join-up position during any of this desensitizing step, I immediately send them around for a lap or two (because those are the rules of our herd of two!), couple of turns (make the right thing easy, the wrong thing hard). Very quickly they run right back to the less pressure follower spot, beg to come back usually, because it feels better/easier inside of them, quieter and less work for them, less pressure on them. And you begin again, this time less pressure there, going slower, because the bolt simply exhibited their threshold line you crossed over too long with the touch, or you are proceeding too fast in the entire process for their comfort level and they flew over the top in their instinctive flight survival reaction. I file that away mentally – that threshold line and what the horse just told me there about our pace perhaps. And I then work to cross a threshold better, more effectively, more sensitively next time.

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