I had two horses I dealt with this problem on.
The first was a spoiled young Quarter Horse I dealt with during my firat couple years really working with horses, over 16 hands (I’m only 5’4") and the owner('s husband) thought it was cute when he was a baby to rear up and put his forelegs on his shoulders. I saw this happen as the gelding was a three year-old and it was NOT cute. Short version: the horse was a terror.
He kicked me twice, once trying to mount up at a clinic and once while leading him to pasture, head thrown to the outside and a parting “see ya sucker” kick. The lady didn’t like stud chains and this was before rope halters were much of a thing so I had to work through it with a flat nylon halter, lead rope and lunge line.
I ended up using a long cotton rope lunge line that I put over his nose like a stud chain to give me a little leverage and the length of the line gave me the ability to stay out of kicking range and get in a position to my advantage (stepping sideways to bump him back around or letting the rope come around the length of his body to give me the leverage to push his hips over and spin him back around). The lady did give me a hard time about the rope over the nose, but thankfully the farrier was there and gave her a half hour long lecture about why it was okay for a 120lbs teenager to put a rope over the nose of a 1200lbs horse who is being a jerk (said much more eloquently).
It took months of daily ground work to get him into being a respectable creature and in the end he ultimately worked well in the flat nylon halter with a normal length lead rope. We didn’t have any sort of song and dance needed to get him safely lead anywhere as he eventually realized if he was a jerk it meant more work and the quickest way to get turned out was to walk along like a gentleman.
As others noted it all boils down to training, how you do it and not necessarily what you use. Steady pressure will only lead to more pulling from the horse and you aren’t winning that tug of war.
My husband’s Percheron mare had a period where she took exception to loading in the horse trailer. Thankfully she wasn’t one to kick out, but 1800lbs is going to go where it pleases unless given a good reason to do otherwise. For her it was a stud chain over the nose and getting her to, ideally, give softly to lateral pressure instead of sullying up against it and realizing that getting in the trailer was a LOT less work than not. She loads fine now, but I do keep a chain in the trailer’s tack room just in case.
Our Fjord has a tendency to drag students to the nearest pile of food, but that’s entirely on the individual handler and how much they are paying attention to their charge. I get within 10 feet of her and the head pops up and she pretends to look innocent like she didn’t just drag the student into the yard to eat the grass or pine trees (or dive into a wheelbarrow with hay, whatever the edible distraction is). She will happily scarf down food while a kid hangs on her head.
The hardest thing about a horse that bolts while leading is breaking the self-rewarding cycle. Horse pulls away from handler, no more pressure and often times a snack. You have to give yourself the time, distance, and leverage necessary to redirect the horse and make the bolting more unpleasant than the reward they have gotten by getting loose in the past. Intermittent pressure (harder to ignore), lateral pressure (harder to lean on/pull against), and getting the ribcage and hips to bend away from the handler to prevent a kick or knock-down.
Lots of good advice piled onto this thread over the years.
