Trouble with Tying

Hippophilia

Hippophilia

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When I bought my 20-something year old mare told she didn't tie, that she would seem to be fine and then suddenly pull and panic. This was fine until we moved to a new barn with limited facilities so not being able to tie her became a real pain. We have worked on ground tying and she does this beautifully, as long as we are in the middle of the arena. She seems to have problems being made to stand at or near the arena wall. I also used a safety tether for a while but I feel this made the problem worse and simply reinforced her tendency to pull back. My yard owner thinks I should just tie her and let her panic if she needs too, that she will soon calm down and accept. I tried this once, she panicked, reared and thankfully broke free so no damage was done (except that she got rewarded for pulling). I'm not comfortable with this doing this again and I'm hoping that someone out there can offer some advice and or experience of curing a pulling horse.
Is a horse ever too old to learn new tricks?
 
Why do you need to tie her? At her age, I would just work round the problem. I rarely tie up. I groom and tack up in the stable without tying. I hold the horse for the farrier etc and if I wanted to do something like bathing your horse I would ask someone to either hold the horse or hold it myself while the other person did the bathing. It really isn't necessary to tie up very often. I would also work on ground-tieing your horse, so that you can extend the places she feels comfortable.
 
This what we did at the old yard, but we have no stable at the new place (she's out 24/7 in an large outdoor pen) so she has to stand for me in the arena to groom and tack up. Today I did ground tied her in the middle of the space and it seemed to work well so maybe we'll just build on this.
 
I am a proponent for teaching horses properly to stand tied, meaning I don't use the British way of tying them to something that will break, I don't want what they are tied to to break so my horses are all taught that you simply do not pull back and they don't. However in your situation, this is an older horse who's obviously not be taught properly in the first place so I'm another who would say why bother if you can work around the horse without tying.
 
I'd probably just fasten a lunge line to her and put it through the ring so when she runs back you can just let the line out, then when she's quiet bring her forward again. That way you are still hold of her but not getting into a situation where she gets pain/reward if she goes into a panic.
 
We had a similar problem with a new SJ horse who would panic if he thought he was being restrained and couldn't see what was behind him. But if you tie to something that breaks you keep the horse safe - and accidentally reward the behaviour. We found the Idolo tie at YHL. You can see the link to it here http://www.softhorse.co.uk/

It is expensive. But it did realy work for us. The horse could pull back if he really had to - but was still tied. And using a long line we had that much time to get back to him and reassure him before he broke free. It only took him a few weeks to learn that pulling got him nowhere and that he was still safe.
 
There was a post on this subject a while ago and someone suggested tieing the horse to a bicycle inner tube a least that's what I think it was .
I can see that might work in this sort of situation try a search and see if you can find the thread .
I tie my foals up young to something fixed and they learn young not to fight its a difficult thing to do with an adult the chances if them damaging them selves is quite high.
 
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