Suggestions? Help needed!

[prizmbluekigers]

I am not one to give up easily, but I am out of ideas and methods to halter break our mare. She is 12 and is not at all interested in being touched by humans. I know as long as we have had her she has never been mistreated, never shown anything but respect and loving care and I don't think she was abused before we got her, just not handled and used only as a brood mare. This will teach me to buy a horse out of pity. Gale Hunt/BLM said some mustangs are just not candidates for gentling. Lesley Neuman worked with her at the Wild Horse & Burro show in July but did not get to put a halter on her. We seem to make some progress and then the next day it is back to square one. We can approach her most of the time in a round pen, but in the pasture she moves away. She is very jumpy, a sudden move will cause her to jump away. On a good day we can touch her on the neck, shoulders and back, but she hates to be touched on her face. She either moves her head away or sticks her nose straight up in the air. We have tried tossing a rope across her back or using a bamboo pole and after a few minutes she doesn't squirt away at top speed, but won't stand for the rope being looped around her neck. She dislikes the pole as much a hands. She occasionally nips at hands and looks terrified (eyes rolling and wide and she flinches sometimes also). She will tolerate us within a few feet as long as we don't appraoch closer. The only time I could work with her is 24-48 hours after she foaled and after that, no way). I am fortunate that she is healthy and we can medicate her through feed for many things and her hooves wear down naturally from the rocky pasture. She nickers when she sees me and always for food so I get hopeful that I can make headway only to have her distance herself again. I can move her around our place by pointing toward where I want her and walking slowly behind her until she is in a different pasture and we put her into the trailer in July the same way (open the door and point) so she is somewhat of a contradiction.

I don't know what else to do and I would love to give her to someone who wanted her, but I doubt anyone wants a middle aged ungentled mare. She is a good mother and her babies have been easy to gentle. Seems I am good with foals, but not with a horse this old. I want to halter break her and then try to find a home. I doubt I can turn her into a riding horse with my skills. Professional trainer is out with this economy.

If anyone who had tried to gentle an older horse has any ideas I am open to anything reasonable and almost frantic to find a solution. For her sake, I need to get this done soon. Thanks!

[DianneC]

I think that there are some horses that don't roundpen well. Sky was extremely wild when I got her as a weanling. After two months of not being able to touch her I sent her to a trainer experienced with mustangs. He said she was the only horse he was never able to reach. Then she slipped in the mud and bruised her shoulder, so had to be on stall rest for a couple of weeks. A neighbor girl moved in and was missing her horses back home. She came over multiple times a day and talked to her and gave her sugar cubes. In two weeks you could walk right up to her, but it never left her. She needed daily attention or she reverted back and became wild again.
I think a large part of it is anything moving toward their head triggers strong flight instincts. In the round pen you can make them faceup, so they are bringing their head to you. In the pasture they are very skillful at not being caught. Can you feed in the round pen?

[fantasykiger]

My wild mare Salsa took several years before you could approach her at the head or on the right side to catch her. The left shoulder is your best option and she still picks and chooses who she will allow to catch her and who she will lead for.
I think the key is day to day effort and interaction, sometimes life gets in the way. I think you have tried lots of ideas but they may have been to much to fast for her or just not practiced consistantly for a long enough period.
These are the kind of challenges I love, but I have to have my horses to help with these kind of horses that are hard to reach. As well as time, it takes awhile. The majority of horses I have worked with have developed hard to catch issues from abuse they were not hard to catch in the begining. Nor have I worked with a mare right out of the wild, without some halter training.

[dunbnwild]

Is she a BLM mare--even if she wasn't "abused", her first experiences with people were probably quite terrifying.

I have a soft spot for the shy onesbut was a bit over my head when I got Mari. She was a rescue, but the previous owners claimed she could be handled. Ha. Plus she had broken her shoulder when in the wild, so I just couldn't round--pen her in good conscience. I'm pretty sure she would've out lasted me anyway. So I started using clicker training--instead of chasing her--she would have to approach me, soon she was putting the halter on herself, which was less scary than having me put it on her. Admittedly, clicker training never fully brought her around--and I certainly wouldn't recommend it for every horse--all of my others would turn into brats real fast. But for her, it helped.

I'd use a fanny pack filled with goodies and first would click on her looking in my direction--then drop some feed in a bucket. Soon we progressed to her touching my fist with her nose and eating out of my hand--and boy did she make faces that first time she tasted me. Then eventually her touching the halter, then her putting her nose in the loop. Keep in mind that when I started she would not even approach me if I had the halter in the pen with us. I was travelling a lot with work, so there would be times weeks would go by and she always retained where we'd left off, more or less. Of course she was very food motivated!

I did end up sending her to a trainer that I fully trusted and she would run Mari into a small pen and then work at catching her. Since I'd already gotten her used to the halter, this wasn't a big deal. When I got Mari back 2 months later, I was able to resume approaching her in the pasture and haltering her, using one or two treats to simulate the clicker training (by then, I'd adbanoned using the clicker noise).

It was a slow, but very rewarding process. With some horses you just have to think outside the box--or try reverse psychology.

Good luck! Keep us posted!

[prizmbluekigers]

Thanks for sharing and the advice. We shrunk the round pen down so we weren't working in a large area, but I am going to try a stall for a while to see if that helps. She will touch my hand and take treats most days, but just seeing the halter brings snorts and flinching or moving away. She is food motivated for sure though. Put grain in a scoop and shake it and she knows what it is and will come toward it. She is a Riddle mare from the 1999 adoption, had one owner prior to me, spit out babies and avoided humans. I have never really used clicker training as my stallion was "nippy as a two year old and the foals we raise practicaly halter themselves. Her babies are sane and very agreeable to training. I have her daughter and grandaughter and if I hold out the halter under their noses, they stick them right in. The foals will come to me in the pasture with a hand signal so perhaps I was thinking I am better at training than I actually am. Good to be humbled now and then. I am pondering all of this advice and will keep trying. Maybe we were trying to go too fast for her mind set.

[dunbnwild]

If you are using the food as simply a lure--and not a reward for a specific action, then she'll probably start taking advantage or never quite make the connection between her behavior and the reward. So just be sure that the food is a specific reward for a specific action, the click noise helps mark the correct behavior so the horse is clear about what the correct answer is-- since your mare is food motivated, she will learn that she has to make some effort to get the food, and will probably come around as soon as she realizes it.

Also, if she opts to not participate, sometimes it is good to just leave and try again later or the next day. Work on building her confidence and trust in you as much as on building her acceptance of the halter and touch.