Faster horses said:
Silver, would you share with us how you teach a horse to ground tie?
One horse I knew of, a sorrel mare; you could drive a herd of horses past her and she wouldn't leave. She might move her butt around to be able to see, but her head and the reins never moved. It truly was like she was tied to something.
Ground tying is one of the first things I now teach when doing groundwork. I start by holding the horse right at the halter snap with my left hand, and hold the halter shank in my right. Slowly raising my hand towards the horses shoulder to move her away. If she doesn't move off, start swinging the end of the shank, if this doesn't get her to move you may have to strike her lightly with it. As she moves away you should be pivoting on your left foot, controlling things with your left hand on the halter snap. The idea is to get the horse to move across at the hips, because this is hard work for them. In no time you will be able to controll the speed of the turn with the positioning of your right hand, it will be like there is a bubble between your hand and the horses shoulder. Once this is working for you, you need to make a definate "release". I pivot away and back on my left foot, say "whoa" or some such, and make a big deal of throwing the halter shank on the ground. At this point the horse should be quite happy to stay right where she is, so walk past her shoulder to her rear, and around behind (this direction seems to work the best, they are less likely to follow you). Walk away and move off, turn your back to the horse. After a couple of minutes you kinda hope they move off (they will eventually), and when you do you catch them right away and repeat the whole performance. Pretty soon they're dang happy to stay right where you put them. It makes the right choice easy and the wrong choice hard.
The exercise is also good for teaching them to lead past you, which is a must for going through gates and loading into trailers.
The whole circiling exercise then becomes the only 'discipline' my horse gets on the ground, so when they get it, they know to start thinking of a different choice of actions that will save them from that dang circling.
I didn't invent this method, but I sure like it.
