Training Tips

QUESTION: I have 2 percherons. They never had a problem with their ears being touched until I moved to Louisiana and I did not know the south had a problem with ticks. They had them in their ears. I got them out & rid of them, but now I can't touch their ears at all. I mean not within 6 inches of them! What can I do to fix this now?

REPLY: Your horses now associate ear handling with pain/discomfort, so you're going to need to re-desensitize their ears to being touched again, and that's all about using advance/retreat. But first, I would teach them to drop their heads using pressure/release (hold lead rope downward steady pressure, but release instantly for the smallest try, slightest change in the right direction downward). High head is a tense horse, lowered head is a relaxed horse; where the head goes, the mind follows, so spend some preliminary time teaching them to drop their heads first (all the way to the ground if you can), to relax. And get a finger in the corner of their mouth to trigger the working of the mouth when needed, which also facilitates instant relaxation in a horse. Just some horse whisperer tricks of the trade to get their minds more relaxed before tackling the ear shyness problem & that'll go a long way. Here are more:

Also...because your ear shy problem is about the need for the horse to be desensitized to that touching-there process better now, I have a section on my web site that teaches a little more how we desensitize a horse to touch. It's at the end of a segment on how to round pen your horse and then desensitize the horse to touch if they are afraid of being touched by the human (like a wilder horse, etc.). But you'll learn a good deal there, I think, on this one particular page about how we desensitize a horse in general to touching when needed:

Desensitizing the horse to something like what you're dealing with there is a real art, involving advance and retreat and involves very good retreat timing there. I think that above section will help you gain some overall general knowledge and techniques for how we desensitize to touch in natural horsemanship in general, and you should reach resolution of this problem pretty fast if you follow the method there. Trick is, with ears (again, once you've relaxed the horse first) is to quickly stroke the side of the face, over the eye (most horses love to have their closed eye rubbed firmly, feels good to them!), then quickly run the hand over the ears, not stopping there, but continuing down the neck. Faster the better at first. You'll be starting on the face or cheek, stroking up and over the ears quickly, flattening an ear as you pass over it, but just as quickly retreating that stroke over & down the neck.

At first, the head will probably shoot up high (high head is tense horse) as you cross over the ear, but don't be too ear-focused, just be stroke-focused, doing it very fast, advance/retreat. You're away from the ear before the horse has too much time to digest it or over-react to it. Repeat. In other words, you're not hanging around the ear area long at first, just stroking over quickly in the guise of stroking the horse's face, passing very quickly over the ear, down the neck & out of there. Do it fast, but soothingly. Soon the horse will stop bobbing the head up as much when you cross the ear, and when you see that, you're going to start to slow down your hand, but doing the same thing. Is a "feel" thing for when to slow down your hand there, follow the horse's tolerance lead there. Soon your hand can go slower & slower over the ear, then exiting (the retreat is everything when desensitizing!). Pretty soon you can linger by the ear as you stroke, but exit before he reacts, getting your release/exit timing split second accurate there if you can. Move away from the ear before he moves away and you'll get there faster. Long way is the short way as we say in natural horsemanship.

Go that route and soon you'll be lingering longer and longer at the ear & before long, if your retreat timing is quick enough all along, you'll hang over the ear longer and build from there to them tolerating you leaving the hand in place there. Retreat before they retreat (react) is the trick there and you'll get there. Try this and you should reach resolution fast.