My horse is somewhat ear shy. I do work extensively with him to address the behavior, but he has said no to having clippers near his ears. You can handle the ears and area around them without the clippers. I have tried both body clippers and smaller/less noisy/less vibration clippers and it doesn’t seam to make a difference. He also will not let me roach his mane. I have tried twitching him and while it helps, it is not enough. I would like to avoid drugging him to clip such a small area.
Does anyone have an alternative to clippers? I tried the horse grooming razors and they didn’t work on his coat. I ended up taking scissors to cut the area, but as you can image, it doesn’t look great.
Not much help here - I do not clip my horses’ ears. Live in Florida - little bugs have enough ways to aggravate them w/out adding “naked” ears. Very rarely a few tufts stick way out near bottom and I will get them with scissors. I can keep bridle path tidy with scissors, although neither cares about the clippers. Roaching mane - if it has to be done, you will need clippers; cant imagine any other way.
To clarify, I don’t clip the ears or head. It is the area around them that is the issue. I generally use the throat latch line as a divide between the clipped and non clipped area. He will not tolerate the clippers within about 6" the ears.
My Paso had a phobia about clippers. The first time I tried clipping him, he pulled back, wouldn’t stand still, and trembled the entire time. I ended up clicker training him to accept clippers. Lots of food, treats, and patience. He was much, much better this year. Apparently, he remembered because I didn’t even need cookies this time.
Forget the twitch- it isn’t going to help. You need trust.
Not sure why you Must clip the ears. I’m also in Florida and agree on the bugs issue.
My boy can be the same way, I am very careful and can never get right up to hid bridle path when clipping but through plenty of work he is not quite good. What does he do when he objects?
For my guy, he will hold his head up and away to simply standing on a stool and taking away that evasion has allowed me to get more done. The other option is to just not do a full clip. Will he let you clip his throatlach area?
He objects by tossing his head around. I worry about accidentally jabbing him with the clippers, get hit by his head or teaching him to pull out of the cross ties. I clip everything but his head, legs and belly. I can’t clip less as he gets too hot or takes too long to dry after riding.
My boy is the same about having his ears clipped, even though he absolutely adores having them scratched and played with otherwise.
We’ve tried cookies, twitch, different clippers, etc. He is super good about clipping everywhere else, but he will only let you get so close to his ears before he decides it isn’t ok anymore.
Now I just skip the ears and do everything else. If we have a show or clinic I pop a bonnet on. If he needs sedation for something else like dental, I might just take advantage of the sedation and tidy his ears at that point. I never clip inside the ears, just the wooly bear outer fluff - we are in southern California and he stays in work through the winter. He would be miserably hot if he didn’t get clipped, but the ears are a hill not worth fighting for.
I do clicker training but I also think the clippers can make a huge difference. I recently bought a set of Oster A6 clippers that are super quiet and even my mare with strong opinions about her ears accepted me clipping her head and the outside of her ears. With clipper adverse horses I think lots of treats and the quietest clippers you can find help.
We were warned that my daughters POA was very clipper shy and wouldn’t tolerate them anywhere on his body.
When USPC camp was imminent, daughter wanted to “just try”. We turned the clippers on and let him hear them and as I approached with them, my daughter started crooning “rock a bye baby” into his ear. Weirdly, it worked like a charm. We were able to clip him everywhere we wanted as long as she continued singing.
we still have him and he still goes goofy calm if we sing to him.
I second the idea to do clicker training. Also, to teach the horse to tolerate extremely short contact with the clippers to begin with. It’s a really funny sensation to them, they just need time to desensitize.
However, I also think using some tranquilizer is not a big deal when needed. I use tranquilizer and a twitch for certain horses.
It takes a lot of time and patience to desensitize. Start out by putting the clipper body on your arm and turn on the clippers then run your hand over the areas of the horse that are clipper “sensitive”. The horse will hear the noise and feel a little bit of vibration through your arm. Slowly move the clippers closer and closer to your hand. Eventually work toward have the body of the clippers (not the blades) on the horse. Without touching the blades to the horse, move the body of the clippers around the sensitive areas. The objective is to desensitize one thing at a time. He is only being asked to accept the sensation of the clippers vibrating on his skin near his ears. Once he accepts the vibrating sensation. You can try tipping the clippers upright and begin clipping. This could take several sessions. The objective is to press a little closer to your goal during each session. Obviously there should be breaks as needed and plenty of positive reinforcement.
I can’t help. Jet LOVES to be clipped. I can even do his ears and face with big body clippers. He drops his head so low, i am practically kneeling. And can do him untied letting the leadrope drop while i do his belly and body. The biggest problem is he “drops” when doing his belly, so i have to push it out of the way! I have a strange horse. He is normally kind of high and playful and can need a chain over his nose being led from the pasture, but if I stand in front of the barn and turn on clippers, he stands stock still, and won’t even try to go eat grass 10 feet in front of him.
OP, this is a training issue, but-- and I won’t lie-- it’s a harder/longer/slower road for a horse that already has learned that ear clipping is bad news. They can swirl their head around a make it hard, can’t they? LOL.
If you want to fix this, you have to commit to making a little bit of time spent with clippers part of your regular work with him. Don’t plan on clipping anything the way you want until you have a horse that agrees to that. He doesn’t have to like it, but he does have to say reasonably still while you touch him with the clippers.
There are some few things I might try in addition to what OneTooMany wrote.
For the horse who already knows that clippers on his ears suck, I’d start with the clippers off. He has to allow me to touch him all over with those. I’ll spend as long as that takes. For a horse like this, I’ll start with the clippers low on his neck and work up toward the ears. Clippers are less disturbing when they are no muscle and fat, rather than on the boney or cartilaginous bits.
When he’s OK with that, I’ll use the clippers on, but never try to touch him with the clippers, but with the back of my hand holding the clippers. My hand dampens the vibration. Again, he’s got to let me get my hand cupped around the running clippers up to his poll and be comfortable with that.
I cup my hand around the ear to steady it, but I don’t grab. There is no earring a horse. This may have happened to yours; it makes them very ear shy. If the horse won’t allow that, I back up a step and train it. Sometimes scratching inside a ear feels really, really good and you can get a horse to change is mind quickly about you holding the outside of the ear by offering him a good scratch on the inside. When I am clipping, no matter what happens, I never clamp down on that ear because that would be confirming the horse’s worst fear.
One technique that is really effective with all of this-- take the clippers away when he puts his head down or toward them, even a tiny bit, even accidentally. There is a great YouTube video of a Natural Horsemanship guy doing this. The idea is that the horse feels he can push the clippers away. In other words, he feels safe and he also earns a reward by coming toward the clippers, not moving away from them. After all, jerking his head away is what is working to earn him a release from the pressure of being clipped. You want to change the behavior. When he can do this, he’s much more prepared to accept them as tolerable rather than not even bothering to stay long enough to see if ear clipping isn’t so bad. This is a smart twist on desensitizing the horse to clippers.
I also like a horse very, very broke on the ground (and I don’t mind working on that), so for me, I work on the horse allowing me to clip his ears with his head level or lowered and/or me standing on a stool. From what you have, I think you might have to work on this, but I teach horses who want to leave that they absolutely cannot move their feet. Having had this knowledge installed limits how much they can move to escape from clippers and that, in turn, helps me get them to address clippers and accept the training I want. Also, it helps me be more accurate with the clippers.
When you do finally have a horse that might let you cut, start out with agreeing to clip just the longest tufts on the outside of his ears. Do see if you can do both ears to some extent. Don’t worry about making them ugly or uneven; after all, you’ll come back in a couple of days and have another short training session with the clippers.
I find that horses spend a long time worrying about the clippers, then tolerating them being close but not liking it, and then, at last, really changing their mind and accepting them. How long that takes is none of your business; the horse gets to decide. You just keep showing up with your training that involves putting whatever version of the clippers you can, as close to his ears as you can and allowing him to push them away. Do this for 10 minutes three or four times a week and you’ll fix him. But you can see why so many people twitch and tranquilize. This takes time and thought.
All while I appreciate the training advice, that is not the question. I am looking for alternatives to clippers. I have spent significant time working on the issue. When I got him, you couldn’t get within about 1 foot of his ears. He is now good about them being handled, just not with the clippers.
OP, I don’t think there really are alternatives. You seem to have gotten your horse 80% of the way there with the clippers. You need to go the other 20%, no matter how long it takes.
If you want to roach the mane, it’s going to be very hard to do so without clippers and have it look halfway decent. Scissors can do small patches like a bridle path, but you’re not going to easily get clean lines with them.
Others have given you good advice on how to continue making strides in getting him okay with the clippers - you should continue on that route, regardless of how long it takes to get there.
My daughters mare is very head/ ear sensitive. It has taken me the last 9 years to finally get to where she will tolerate the outside edges of her ears to be clipped. She is good about her bridle path and muzzle so I would just work a bit on the are area every time I clipped her.
I would gently touch her ears with my free hand while the clippers were running in my other and then get them as close as she was comfortable with and eventually she just let me do it. You may not want to wait 9 years, but it was a no stress method.
If you’re dead set on alternatives, you could try picking up a pair of old fashioned manual clippers. You could probably get a mane roached with those.
My hands hurt at the idea of trying to do any more than that though.
I showed and did many clinics with my last mare with a roached mane and she lived with it. I used scissors all the time, and it looked pretty nice! Try good scissors and give yourself time. Mane is easy to cut with scissors, I don’t understand the comments that say it it “hard on the hands”.
PS, I clipped ears, legs and other places with scissors for no reason other than I didn’t have clippers. I didn’t bother to train my current gelding with clippers (even though I have them now) because I’m handy with scissors.
Alternative thought on the desensitization (I also have no alternatives for you, other than you can likely finish the top of you roaching job with scissors). Try teaching him that he doesn’t HAVE to move to get you to stop. Repeatedly work your way toward his ears as you clip, and then move away again BEFORE he tenses up or raises his head. If you move slowly and watch carefully, you should be able to see when he started to “notice” and get away then. You may be able to push the envelope a bit by holding your current position just where he started to tense up until he relaxes, then retreat, but the goal ideally is to not provoke a reaction at all.
I’ve been able get some touchy clip jobs done, including a wound behind the head on a very skittish dog, using this approach. It works fairly quickly and because there is no stress and resistance to push through, you can stop any time and pick it up again another day without losing any ground.
