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It's lovely to hear this lucky girl is going to have you as a lifetime owner.
I have an ex racer who I have had about 6 months now and although she is not headshy she is very dominant, defensive and mareish which I believe is due to being beaten in the past. I have never really bonded with her until about a week and a half ago.. A friend introduced me to some natural horsemanship methods and we haven't looked back since. We do some 'playing' every night and celine not only loves it but her general attitude has done a complete 360 she is a totally different horse - chilled, confident and 100% trusting in me. I think it could really benefit you and your girlie in building the trust needed to overcome her fear. We also use a rope halter, just on loose and I just love it and so does celine she just immediately chills when it's on compared to a normal head collar.
(might be worth looking into as they sit further behind the eats and generally I find less confining than a standard head collar)
Good luck with your girl
but I thought I'd post in case someone wanted an alternative to that.For the people who are having ongoing issues that haven't responded to desensitisation, has anybody ever explained counterconditioning to you?
in a nutshell, it's based on the same principles that are used to treat people with phobias, and although you need to devote a bit of time to it, it's a long term solution - you don't get the slight improvement then back to square one you get with desensitisation.
It's based on the fact that a horse (or person) can become "sensitised" to something as a result of a few bad experiences... with an ear shy horse who's sensitised, yiu get a range of reactions from not too worried to very worried, and these vary day to day and with the situation - desensitisation works in these cases. However a horse who has an automatic fear response to having their ears handled (again usually as a result of one or more bad experiences) and who always displays the same extreme response has the equivalent of a human phobia, and can't be dessensitised... for these horses, you need a different approach.
This is called counterconditioning, and it works for all extreme fear responses, be they to ear handling, bridleing, clippers, trailers... The approach means that you replace the automatic fear response with a new non fearful one, using rewards and associations with rewards.
How do you do counter conditioning? First, you need to choose a time when you don't have to do the thing that your horse is fearful of... so you take a break from bridling/ear handling... this is because the one big unbreakable rule of counter conditioning is that during the process, you never trigger the fear response, you always work within the horse's comfort zone. If you think of the fear response as a pathway in the brain... every time it's used, it gets stronger... but you want that pathway to grow grass over it
You choose a place where the horse is relaxed and can be left loose so that they can move away if they're worried, and you choose something the horse likes... about 10 small pieces of carrot would do well, but a few fibre nuts would work too if the horse enjoys these. Start by working out the horse's comfort zone... where can you touch the horse without it becoming anxious (wwrinkles over eye, tightening mouth, horse moveing away from you). If you can, for example, touch all the way up the neck to about 6 inches behind poll, that's the comfort zone and where you start. If you have problems touching the neck at all, see if you can touch the withers... Work out the comfort zone, and start the process.
You start by gently touching at the last comfortable spot and immediately feeding a reward. Repeat this until your rewards are used up, keeping a close eye on the horse's reactions and stopping if they look worried.
Repeat this a few times - once a day is fine, if you can do it a few times a day, that's even better. For the first few 10 reward sessions, you will still be working at much the same place... at the limit of the comfort zone... but as the horse relaxes, and starts to anticipate the rewards when you touch them, you can move very slowly so that you touch a little closer to the head and ears. Again, if the horse looks worried or moves away, go back a step.
As you work on this, you will gradually move closer and closer to the head and ears, until you can touch, then stroke, then gently enclose an ear in your hand, all with the horse staying relaxed and with you, and still anticipating the food reward.
You should then introduce a soft cloth, and then possibly a soft lead rope... for each of these, go back a few steps, and introduce the touch of this in the same way you did your hand. Eventually yu should be able to drape the leadrope over the poll and around the ears with the horse still staying relaxed and enjoying the process. Work towards pulling ears gently under and through the rope as you would when putting on a bridle.
The final step would be introducing a bridle... and for this, you may want to evaluate how the horse feels about the bridle even without it being pulled over the ears... if they show any anxiety, break the process down as you did for the ears... until you can gradually ask the horse to take the bit and have the headpiece pulled over their ears. You will need to keep offering small rewards for a short while after this process is complete to keep the association pleasant but you should now have retrained the brain pathway that controls response to ear handling and bridling to a positive one - and if you make sure it stays gentle and painless, the horse should continue to cooperate well.
This scientific process works very well (in human, horses and other species) but I appreciate that people may not always be able to take the time out to work through it, and prefer to just stick with their "work arounds"