Re: New horse advice please

Louise B — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:46:33 GMT

Hi Nicky,

If he was mine this is what I would do:

Put a break-away-headcollar on him and leave it on him until you have retrained him. That will reduce the chance that you will need to fit a head collar until he's at the stage where you have sufficiently changed the associations with it.

Then,

Using the biggest head collar you can find and fed him bits of apple or carrot with your hand through the nose piece and the head collar just handign down on your arm. Once he is really happy to take the food try moving it around a bit on your arm until it is looking more like a head collar position to him (feeding treats all the time and multiple trials). When he happy with this advance it up your arm a centimetre or so (feeding treats)and then walk away. Keep repeating this until he is happy and gradually work towards having it over his face and then buckled up. Once he has got to that point start using a small head collar (one that fits) and repeat the process above (it should go much more quickly). Never move further than the pony is happy with. If even having the head collar in your hand is too much then I would reinforce the pony just for being in close proximity to a head collar - e.g. hanging on the fence, lying on the floor, etc and then move from that point.

I personally wouldn't use a lead rope to catch him first if he is very fearful of the head collar as you may find that he becomes sensitised to that also as it becomes a reliable predictor that the head collar is going to appear and that may make even catching him harder. However, if the aversion is only mild then I probably would catch the pony that way and then start the desentisation process / counter conditioning programme.

I have said him but I cannot remember from your post the pony's sex! Apologies if it is a lassie.

Re: New horse advice please

Katy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:34:26 GMT

Obviously your horse may have had an incident or incidents involving being caught using a headcollar in the past.

My friend and I have done lots of work with horses using Monty Roberts' techniques.

Have you tried "join up" with him yet? Or have you a friend that can help you with it?

My horse Roger responds very well to join up, and it can help with trust issues, which may be the cause of the headcollar problem your boy has.

Both Kelly Marks and Monty Roberts have books on the subjects, and if you have been to any of Monty's demos, you can see the results that you can get when you use his techniques.

Just an idea

Re: New horse advice please

Nicola Russell — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:53:51 GMT

Have you tried putting a lead rope over his neck to restrain him first? Most horses will give in once they feel caught.