Getting Your Horse's Attention - Part 1

We see it all too often – a person holding the end of a lead rope while their horse dances and jigs around them, head held high, tail in the wind, paying attention to everything but their handler. Handler tries to regain control of the horse and get the horse's attention but the horse is too psyched up and often the handler just ends up getting frustrated which causes the horse to feed off of that energy and so on and so forth.

There are a few very simple exercises that you can teach your horse (and it doesn't take very long) that you can use in a high energy situation to regain your horse's attention. However, many people don't bother to teach them. In this article we will cover the simple and effective exercise of teaching your horse to yield at the poll (lower his head).

We are working to get our horses to yield out of respect, not fear. In nature there is a pecking order and with horses their hierarchy is determined by who yields to who. If you ask your horse to yield a certain part of his body, he had better do so – if he does not, he considers you to be the subordinate member. Yielding is a basic level of respect. You will ask your horse to yield in levels (in our case it will be levels of pressure). You have probably noticed in your horse's herd dynamic that when the alpha horse wants him to move he will snake his head, turn his rump etc. to get your horse to yield. This may eventually lead to physical contact (ie a kick or bite) if your horse continues to ignore the signals. When we want our horses to yield we must always start out asking lightly and then progress from there, not just immediately try to yank their head down.

For this particular exercise I find using a rope halter very useful as it puts more pressure on a smaller area (therefore taking less effort on my part). However, you can use a regular nylon or leather halter as well.

Yielding at the poll is one way we can bring our horse's attention back to us. When their head is up they are in an adrenaline fight or flight posture. When their head is lowered they are in a submissive posture. So obviously by teaching them to lower their head we can bring them out of the fight/flight response and get them a bit more focused. Asking them to do something very basic that they know very well in a high stress moment will help to jog their mindset.

Ideally you should have a trainer or someone who already knows how to teach your horse this exercise show you how to do it, but here are some basic instructions to give you an idea:

1. Stand at your horse's head facing your horse and grasp the halter/lead just below your horse's chin. It is best to grasp with your thumb pointing towards the ground as this will allow you to keep your horse from slinging his head around too much.
2. Put a small amount of light pressure downwards on the halter/rope. Wait. If your horse drops his head so much as 2mm, IMMEDIATELY release the pressure and tell your horse he is super! If your horse does not respond to very light pressure, gradually increase the pressure (to an amount that you could comfortably hold for 5 minutes). Again, wait until your horse offers to lower his head and release immediately when he does so.
3. Repeat the exercise. Always start out with very light pressure to begin with and increase from there – if you do this you will find your horse starting to yield softer. Offer your horse the best option first, but be prepared to use as much as necessary.
4. Once your horse understands how to lower his head off of pressure to the halter from under his chin it is easy to teach him to lower his head by putting your hand directly on his poll. Just follow the same instructions – place your hand on your horse's poll and have the other holding the halter/lead under his chin (so you can keep his head steady) > apply light downwards pressure and increase gradually until you get a response > release immediately when your horse “tries”.

Practice both these exercises daily (many times!) and in different situations/environments. You want them to be so good that you can just walk out to your horse's field, place your hand on his poll and have him drop his head below wither height for you (ideally you want to lower it to the ground). If you don't have the exercise going great for you at home on a good day when your horse is comfortable and focused, you aren't going to have a hope of your horse paying attention when he is in a high stress situation. So get it going 100% in practice – then it will be at least 75% in a tough situation.

Next month we will cover another one of the simple exercises that you can use to regain control of your horse on the ground.

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