Wont stand still tied up!

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Beckie65

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Hi i've had my boy for about 4 months now and he hates to be tied up, to be groomed and tacked up or even just to stand there, he is a bolshy welsh cob, i thought in time this would get better. Ive tried just tying him up on a safe place and pondering around him to see if repetition would improve things but its not, he bucks, rears and stresses out. Any advice appreciated.
 
My horse took almost a year to stop pulling back when tied. Sometimes she would be very nervy and fidgety, then would feel tension on the rope and would freak out and rear or just go backwards. Other times she could be as quiet as a mouse and then all of a sudden would just break free. When she got out of doing it in a panicky sort of way, she then started doing it just because she knew she could.

What I can tell you is that mine now stands as still as a statue and hasn't pulled back for some time. I don't know any special method, all I did was buy a break tie thing from Robinsons (a velcro one) so that she couldn't hurt herself. She was always tied to baler twine anyway but I like to have the velcro tie too. Everytime she pulled back, I just caught her again calmly, tied her back up and carried on. I think it was also down to the fact that she just took a long time to settle in to her new home with us.

I had never had a horse like this before and was so frustrated and upset (as she did lots of other things I didn't anticipate too). But now I am so glad that I persevered as I have a lovely horse at the end of it. I'm sure other people on here will have better advice but good luck and don't worry because they can easily come out of it with time. :)
 
Beckie65 said:
Hi i've had my boy for about 4 months now and he hates to be tied up, to be groomed and tacked up or even just to stand there, he is a bolshy welsh cob, i thought in time this would get better. Ive tried just tying him up on a safe place and pondering around him to see if repetition would improve things but its not, he bucks, rears and stresses out. Any advice appreciated.
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He's a welshie?? Says it all :D Do you tie him up with a net of hay?

Ours are all little stars now but they all learned whilst they had something to munch and take their minds off it. If a welshie can get into trouble, then he will.. you have to be one step ahead. Funnily enough all ours now stand untied as good as gold.. but it has taken some getting there, the youngest was the worst, probably a minimum of 6 months before she stopped being a pain, and she still tends to fidget when the mood takes her.
 
Think of him like a tantrumming toddler - eventually you give in... He has learned that the longer he messes about then eventually you will give in. It could well now be a battle of wills :(

You will have to got right back to basics and teach him that good behaviour gets rewarded and bad behaviour gets ignored. It involves a two phased approach.

Get a pocket of treats (or use the session to hand feed him his dinner - a hungry horse is a cooperative horse lol) and get him on a lunge line. Thread the lunge line round a solid object and have it at 'tie up length'. This way if things get hairy you can let it out a bit... If you treat him the second he stands calmly eventually he will learn that tying up is a good thing. Treat and then take him for a short walk around the yard - he learns that standing calmly gets him untied. Any bad behaviour, ignore - don't reprimand him for it - in his mind you are reinforcing that being tied up is a bad thing. As he cottons on, you can increase the time between treating him and untying him so he then learns that standing patiently gives the reward of being untied.

If doing this with a youngster I would set aside a couple of hours to do this the first time - not a couple of hours tied up but a couple of hours of tie up, treat for good behaviour, take for a short walk, tie up again, rinse and repeat ;)

The second phase I would use is to tie up and ignore - there are times that you will have to tie up while you are going through the learning process. Get yourself one of those quick release clips and tie him to a solid object that will stand up to horse power. Don't use baling twine - if things get too dangerous then you have the quick release at the rope end to untie him. It is extremely unlikely that a horse will injure himself tied up but the quick release is there just in case. He will thrash around and rear - let him. He needs to teach himself that behaviour like that does not get him untied. Keep an eye on him while you are doing your chores - if for a split second he stands calmly, treat him though :) Clicker training can actually be of value here if you want to be able to treat from a distance.

Be persistent - being tied up is not a big ask and you are not being cruel insisting on it. Be strong x

Another couple of things to consider though are pain - does he have any poll pain? This could cause a bad reaction to being tied up. How does he react to being asked to flex at the poll, either vertically or laterally? It might be worthwhile eliminating this.

Also does he have to be tied up while you are going through the retraining? Could you muck out around him? Could you tack him up loose in the stable? Could you get one of those webbing things to go across the stable door to keep him in with the door open? A leadrope tied across works too ;) You can always go back to tying him up, but to reduce the stress in the short term, and break the cycle, you could just use tying up when you have time to use it as a training exercise and do the other for other times...

It's a hard one - I've been there, with my own and with others' horses. It does take a lot of time and patience. I do believe in reprimanding horses for bad behaviour but this is one of the situations where it really can be counterproductive. Some may see the treating as bribery - I see it as teaching a horse that being tied up is a good and pleasant thing :)

Edit - my entire colt is a welshie - I do sympethise ;)
 
Maybe get everything checked out and make sure he isn't in pain, and then talk to someone like Jason Webb, who will be able to show you what to do and help you with some ideas.
 
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