I'm no expert, and certainly every horse & rider are different, and we all
have to pick our battles -- but I follow Mike's philosophy and it has
worked for me, on several different horses. In fact, I've recently begun
going one step further -- I won't even let the horse run past and spin him
around -- when he bunches his quarters, I immediately pull hard on the
inside rein and push with the outside leg, so that he has to continually
face the object, even if he goes in complete circles around it, but I
won't let him turn his head away from it, even to spin him around the
other way.
I have found that the best cure for fear (or stubbornness, which is a much
bigger problem with Lakota :) is boredom -- if the horse spends 5 minutes
circling objects every time he tries to shy away from or run past one, he
quickly decides it's faster and more fun to face it and go on.
One day Lakota decided he simply was not going to cross a particular
bridge that he had in fact crossed several times before -- but this time
was just after a heavy rain and the water was rushing loudly, which scared
him, I guess. We spent 1 hour and 15 minutes, I promise you, going
forward and backing up. It started to rain on us, and we still kept going
at it right in the middle of the road. When a car came by, we stepped to
the side, let it pass, then got back out and went at it some more. I had
been told repeatedly that you can't ever let a horse win an argument, even
if it's fear-based, so I stuck it out. That was over 2 months ago, and
Lakota has not once since tried to back away from anything -- including
that bridge, which we crossed every day for a week after that episode.
Not that he won't ever do it again, mind you, <g> but now I can get him to
step on or over just about anything simply by pulling on the inside rein
to make him face the object -- he remembers that day, I'm sure he does!
Some horses are so squirrelly that they won't ever stop spooking -- and
those are the horses you put into dressage!! <VBG> But I think that if you
bore a "normal" or "average" or "intelligent" horse to death on things he
spooks over, he will most likely get over it eventually.
Glenda & Lakota (are you saying I'm stubborn?)