Horse Problem - Wand-Training Fear - Horse fears training wand with plastic/How to desensitize (Contd)

Try all this and you should get him past his fears of being touched with the training wand/close contact.

However, you will have one last obstacle to surmount there with a horse such as yours who some time in his past probably has been beaten/struck with a whip (or even something that looked like a whip/this wand) and that is this: you are going to have to, toward the end there, after you've done all the above (and this might or might not take more than one session, let the horse be the lead there for what he can handle in one lesson) you are going to have to desensitize him to the wand coming at him. And by that I mean, the movement we make overhand that the horse could construe as "going to hit him now." But we aren't going to hit him with the wand. We're going to help him get past that one final fear to show him that no matter how it might look like the wand is coming at him to hit him, it never will connect to him in a way that will ever harm him. Here's how:

Have one hand stroking the neck or face, and that would be your hand holding the lead rope. Don't look the horse in the eye, look away. Keep stroking. While that hand is stroking (never pat a horse, only stroke or scratch) let the hand with the wand come overhead and down onto the horse, then retreat it. Do this many times until the horse realizes you are never going to strike him with this tool, even if it flies down from above onto him. You are only going to gently touch him with it, in the end. Keep your other hand on him at all times at first, stroking/scratching, because a hand on the horse speeds along getting them past such fears. If he has trouble still with that, retract the wand to smaller size and start small, building up incrementally and he'll get there.

Do all the above and you'll get this horse past his fear of the wand with plastic once and for all. And he will stop fearing the wand or even whips, though we don't like to use whips in NH. I personally wish horse whips were outlawed! They are absolutely unnecessary for training horses the natural, gentle way. The extendable/retractable training wand is better, but if a horse has been whipped before, like I can guarantee you yours clearly has sometime in his past, then we have to back up and compassionately desensitize them baby step by baby step to the tool to undo the damage there that clueless, unenlightened humans have caused there. But it can easily be accomplished going the above route.

Try all that and I assure you, you'll get him past this fear once and for all, and before long you'll be able to swing that wand all around him, every direction, and you'll get no reaction from him at all.

Desensitizing horses is a fine training art. Takes perception, intuition and compassion, infinity patience, understanding advance/retreat and full knowledge of applied prey animal psychology, as well as a "taking your watch off" mentality. It takes as long as it takes. But, as we say in NH, "the long way is the short way." The time you take to compassionately, methodically baby step him there, the sooner he will permanently be fixed with this problem -- forever!

I teach all of the above plastic/wand desensitizing (and much, much more!) in my Whispering Way 12-Step Total Training System DVD set. Usually it helps to see this natural horsemanship art taught visually, to really understand how it is all done. You can get that DVD set here: CLICK HERE

And incidentally...my Whispering Way Complete Training Package contains all my videos and training tools that you need to train or retrain your horse yourself the natural horsemanship Whispering Way. You can check out/order the Whispering Way Complete Training Package on my web site here: CLICK HERE

One last tip: tie plastic bags around his water feeder/food feeder, fences/wherever he's living life. This will help him get past the plastic part of his fears once and for all and it's "passive desensitizing." While you're off busy with the rest of your life duties, he's getting desensitized.

Hope this helps and let me know how it goes there. You're doing great!

 

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