Ridecamp: Re: [RC] Training horses to calm down...

A neighbor where I used to live had a nice warmblood she used for dressage.
You don't find many breeds as calm as the warmblood breeds.  The horse was
bomb proof. She had it for three years when one day something happened while
it was tied in her barn where she was grooming it as she had done hundreds
of times before. It panicked and ended up breaking its neck. 

So never assume that a horse will not panic and that there is not something
breakable in the chain. If the halter, rope and what is tied to are stronger
than the neck the the neck might just be what breaks.

Horses are half ton beast with many more years of programming for fight or
flight than it has for standing and listening to humans. Love em but respect
the for what they are. 

Truman

Becky Huffman wrote:

 

If a horse decides not to be tied, eventually something will break, either the rope, snap, item they are tied to, or the horses neck.

 

Training is the answer in 99.5% of the cases, but I would not take an unbreakable halter and lead and leave them tied for days in order to teach a horse to tie unless this is a horse you would rather have dead then loose.  Some horses have a panic button they cannot overcome.