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

(Continued)

Safety warning tip: When you're first doing this segment of the desensiting to wand with plastic, letting it fly around/rubbing his body, do not let the plastic fly over to the opposite side of the horse from what side you're standing/working on. The horse could suddenly catch seeing the plastic in his off eye and spook right into you there, startled, in the early phases of this exercise. In the beginning, keep the plastic on the same side of his body that you are standing on, and desensitize both sides separately, but equally, you (and the plastic) always remaining on the side you are working on. Once he can handle that perfectly well, both sides of his body equally, and can handle it flying around that side as well, THEN introduce him to seeing the plastic in his off eye, but keep a short lead there when you first do that so that if he does spook at that, you can control the startle reaction and keep him from spooking into you by quickly pulling his head toward you, which immediately sends his hind legs far away from you safely. It is important for him to tolerate the plastic flying around his off eye/opposite the side you are standing on, but do all the above first, incremetally, before moving to that final step.

This entire above exercise, incidentally, is also a very handy overall exercise to get horses who are afraid of whips desensitized to them, to show them, we are never ever going to hit them with this wand (that they might think looks like a familiar whip at first and be afraid of it); we don't go there in NH - we do not abuse horses and whipping is abuse. With a horse afraid of the whip (from past beatings/being struck with a whip), you might have to break it all down and desensitize them to the wand first without the plastic, rubbing them all over with it first, which is where the extendable/retractable aspect of my training wand comes in real handy. It allows you to break it all down and do that in baby steps. Start by making the retractable wand very small/short first, retracting it to its smallest size, let him sniff it with head down & then rub the horse all over with that.

When they can handle that, extend the wand so it's a tiny bit longer, but not much. Rub all over. Extend a little more. Rub all over. And so on, until the horse can handle being rubbed all over with the wand fully extended/full length. Then introduce the plastic on the end and move on from there. Real important to break things down when needed so a horse can digest successes (build confidence) incrementally and you get there faster. Long way is the short way, as we say in NH. And sometimes, you're dealing with more than one fear like that (fear of wand/whips, fear of plastic, all at the same time), and in such cases it's best to break each one down separately and desensitize individually in baby steps, and you'll get the horse fully there faster, in the end.

Once the horse is fully desensitized to all the above, has no negative reactions any longer, but takes it all in relaxed stride (and this might or might not be over one session, might take more), now it's time to move onto our final exercise here that is going to help him "get the spooks out" once and for all when riding him, which was what we've been leading up to all along here. But the foundation had to be laid down there, from the ground safely first, each building block stacked on top of each other securely, from the ground up, before we move on to the in saddle part of this exercise. So make sure all the above is working very well for you before proceeding with this next step.

Saddle/bridle up the horse and mount, but don't let him walk off yet. Have him yield the head to one side and bond on him from up there, stroking his face, scratch, love-on him. Warmly.

Then have him yield the head all the way over to the other side and repeat the same, this time on the  opposite side. You want that going well for you there and if he cannot do that there, dismount and get him doing that well on the ground first before climbing back up and repeating.

Don't ever hesitate to climb off a horse at any time when in training to back up training when needed, to fix something better on the ground, so they get it down stronger there, then climb back up. Nothing whatsoever wrong with that. I do it all the time when starting green horses or restarting problem horses. So many humans I see get locked in linearly, too goal-focused, thinking erroneously, "once I'm up here, I stay up here," and end up getting in a fight with the horse when, actually, the horse doesn't understand, because: he probably didn't understand it on the ground earlier; and it's far wiser to climb down and work on the groundwork in that area more so the horse gets it better there. Then go back to trying it again in saddle. Nearly all problems in the saddle can be traced to a hole in the foundation on the ground, so get off and fix that hole on the ground (safely!) when you flush it out!

 More Despooking Horse Continued: