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I admire you for such an effort! Do you know of any books, tapes, anything on how to bring about the trust of a severely abused horse? I think this gal has promise. She has really come a long way since April. I sense her affection for me. She responds to my asking her to leave or enter the stall, comes to me of her own free will, and comes when I call her. I would like to get her to the point of letting me give her affectionate pats or scratches. We have 'round penned' her, but no true join up yet. We have had her 8 months. We had to stall her for almost 3 months to get the weight on. She was a bag of bones. She now has a social circle, and is very fond of one mare and little filly. She sees us working with the other horses. I just hope we can really connect.

One thing I did, in the round pen with the two stallions (one at a time) was sit down on the ground with a bowl of golden grain in front of me. I made sure to sit so that the horse was to the side, and I never looked directly at him. I just sat still while he approached me, sniffed me. He left, came back several times, and at last he ate the grain.

I did exactly the same thing several days in a row, then put my hand in the feed and let him eat it off my hand.

After several more days, I held one hand up a few inches, and touched the horse's head on the side, briefly and gently. At first he shied away, then came back. After that, I always touched him while he was eating--he didn't get the grain unless I was touching him. All the time, I'm sitting down on the ground.

After that, I brought a halter and laid it on top of the bowl of grain. Again, he was shy, but he didn't get the grain unless he reached his nose through the open halter. When he was comfortable with that, I rubbed the halter on his face while he was eating.

One day, I just fastened it. He didn't even get nervous, by then, although he looked at me suspiciously.

After he was wearing the halter all the time, and eating grain from the pan, I brought a long shoestring from one of my son's tennies. After he got used to it, I tied it to the halter, let it hang.

In the next few days, I got up with grain in my hand, took hold of the string, and started to walk away. He followed me.

Thereafter, I could lead him around with a shoestring on a halter.

Then, I brought a saddle blanket and put it on the ground beside me. After he got used to seeing it, I put it on my shoulder while I was petting him. After he got used to that, I used the blanket to rub him. Then I put it on his back.

See...incremental teaching. One stallion took to it, the other didn't. The vet recommended gelding, to reduce the nervousness. It worked with one, not the other. The second one, that I couldn't tame, was explosive, although except for biting me, never hurt me. If you touched the second one, his skin jumped and he could never hold still. We drugged him, hoping it would reduce his anxiety, but the dose required to sedate him even a little was too high to use on a regular basis.