I wanted to share with you guys this little clip that I did working with my horse Harvey on desensitizing him with groundwork. It’s a great tool to use to help get your horse over fear, starting with working them on the ground and the flag.
Groundwork is a great place where you can do some desensitizing work with your horse. I like to start the desensitizing work with a flag. The flag can be really useful for desensitizing as well as for an extension of your arm. If a horse is not responding to you, you can also use the flag to get them to be just a little bit more respectful of you. Harvey is a really sensitive horse, and he’s kind of afraid of the flag, so he is a good one to show you guys with.
The first thing is, when you first bring the flag up to the horse, you always want to start by bringing the flag up to the hindquarters. When I first show Harvey the flag, I’m on his left side. I make sure he’s not going to come in front of me, and then I just slowly bring the flag up to his hindquarters. I just get to where he’ll let me touch him with it, and then I’ll take it away again and let him look at it.
It’s really important to make sure that you stay on the same side of the horse as the flag. If you get the flag on the opposite side of you, the horse may jump on top of you.
Once he’s good on the left side, now I’m going to try the right side.
Then I just keep touching him all over the place, making sure I can touch him up and down both hind legs, on his neck, and then carefully down the front leg, which he’s really sensitive to.
Once he’s pretty good, where I can touch him with it at the halt all over the place, the next step is to see if I can touch him with the flag and kind of move it around while he’s walking. I’m going to ask him to just be walking around me here on the small circle, and then I’m going to repeat the same thing at the walk, just seeing if I can touch him with it all over while he’s walking.
Make sure you keep changing directions. You’ll notice that when I changed directions, it was like I was starting over. All of a sudden, it was like he saw the flag again for the first time. So I just take my time to reassure him.
So these are some things you can try with your horse with a flag. Go slow. Don’t overface your horse, but you also want to work up to where the horse can tolerate more and more because if something happens out on the trail or when you’re riding your horse, you don’t want them to be so afraid.
I hope this is helpful!
Amelia
