Horse Problem - Spooky Horse - Horse spooks at things in saddle - how to desensitize spooky horse (Contd.)

(Continued)

Once you know the horse is okay being rubbed all over with the plastic bag and having it shaken a bit around him without him spooking, next, I would go for a casual walk with the horse leading several feet behind me, my back to the horse so that my body language, to start, reads "retreating" to the horse. I will have the wand with plastic tied to the end and we're going to use advance/retreat to first introduce the horse to this desensitizing tool. As I walk, my back to the horse, horse behind me, slack in the rope, I'm going to hold the wand up and in front of me and start very nonchalantly swinging it in wide circles. The circle will extend in front of me and high over my head. If the horse has issues with this, I will see out of the corner of my eye his head shoot up high, his ears pointing forward intensely. A high head is a "tense/on alert" horse, a lowered head is a relaxed horse. I read his body languge to see where he fits in that spectrum to know what he's feeling about what I'm doing there. I continue this walk until I see the horse's head start to lower as he digests: "okay...she's just doing some weird human thing with that noisy flappy thing, but...she's walking away...so...guess it's not a problem."

When I see that the horse is beginning to relax a bit there, head starting to lower, I move on to the next step: As I make a turn on our walk, I cut in a little closer to the horse, my shoulder to the horse, no eye-to-eye contact, and I'm going to have the wand I'm circling high & over my own head suddenly, but casually, fly over the horse's head in that circle, as well, first by his one eye, then the other, but just as quickly, I retreat on the same walk as before, swinging it over my head still. I'm retreating too fast there for the horse to get too upset that this crinkly loud thing just flew over HIM that time, so even if his head shot up high tensely at that, he really doesn't have time to have much more of a reaction than that. I've already retreated! And he knows it. I do this repeatedly until the horse seems accustomed to it (is a body read thing). You can't do too much of this, so take your time, and do it as much as you want to/have to.

 More Despooking Horse Continued: