Dropping A Horse’s Head And Gaining Respect

Gaining Respect From Your Horse

Gaining respect from your horse is one of the most important aspects of training, because it not only gets the horse more willing to do what you ask of him-it makes things safer as well. A good way to continually work on gaining respect is the lowering of the head's horse. This also helps the horse relax, leading to a safer horse.

A horse that is scared and on alert for danger has his head high up in the air. In contrast, a horse that is calm and relaxed has his head lowered. Moreover, a horse with a lowered head is not only relaxed, this is a horse adopting a more submissive posture that is amenable to your leadership.

To lower the head, put a halter with lead rope on your horse. Stand to the left near his neck, with your left hand holding (not grabbing or pulling) the end of the lead rope connected to the halter. Place your right hand on top of the head just behind the poll. Now apply downward pressure with your right hand.

When gaining respect, apply pressure when asking a horse to lower his head, however, don’t push down. Simply apply pressure and let the horse figure out that he can release the pressure by lowering his head.

Keep in mind that patience and rewarding your horse for small steps of progress are both important. That means you shouldn’t expect your horse to lower his head all the way down level with his shoulder the first time. Gaining respect takes time. If he simply gives in to the pressure by lowering his head just an inch-or even a millimeter-reward him for making this slightest try by removing the pressure and verbally praising. Then try again and ask for a bit more. Don’t expect too much the first session, keep your training sessions short and only ask your horse to lower his head a few times each lesson. Also, don’t forget there are really “two horses”. After working with lowering the head from the left side, ask him to lower his head while you’re on the right side. As time goes on, you can build on the previous days work and eventually your horse will lower his head to where you ask him to put it-which should be aligned with where the neck meets the shoulder.

Lowering the head is a great calming technique. Anytime your horse exhibits fear-say on the trail, consider asking him to lower his head. This can help the horse come back from that black-out mode horses go into when scared, and bring them back to a more relaxed state of mind.

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