Horse pawing in crossties

[Momateur]

Any advice for stopping a horse from pawing in crossties? Here’s the background…

He’s never been great in crossties. Tends to get impatient quickly and start moving around. Then he was moved to a stall next to a pony who’s a chronic paw-er. Lo and behold…my horse learned how to paw.

It seems like an attention (or food) seeking behavior, because he mostly does it when I walk away from him to get things from the tack room or trunk. Although, he sometimes also does it when I’m brushing him. I have never rewarded this behavior with food, just FYI.

Anyways, I’d love advice on teaching him to stop the pawing.

[endlessclimb]

Leave him there for a really long time.

[blue_heron]

If my usually fine horse is being impatient or pawing, they usually get a tummy tap and I say in a rather irritated tone, “stop.”

If this horse doesn’t have an ounce of patience, I would put him on the crossties and sit nearby with a really good book. As long as it takes.

[Xanthoria]

Anytime he paws walk away (or stay away if he does it when you leave) Don’t correct him, say anything - don’t even look at him. If you’re standing talking to someone turn your backs. Don’t look at him until he’s settled down. (This requires patience and can result in some stalker behavior peeking thru cracks in the barn to see when it’s right to return) Then you can praise good behavior.

Yesterday my young mare was pawing WITH VIGOR and the vet said wow - that’s some enthusiasm! We walked away to his truck to chat and she had cooled her jets by the time we came back.

[Spudsmyguy]

Don’t have any suggestions that weren’t already mentioned but kind of a funny story.

I was looking at a mustang mare that the newbie owner was looking to rehome for free. This horse walked all over her and had clearly taken charge and pawed or squirreled around the entire time she was in the cross ties. Owner trots off to get tack and as soon as she was out of earshot, I barked out “Quit It!” Horse just stopped and stared at me, astounded that someone yelled at her and she stood like an angel the rest of the time. I didn’t say anything to the owner but she commented “wow, she’s standing really good now.” I’m like, “nothing to see here, hum de dum”

[Foxglove]

Not sure how this will fly but it works for me in my one-woman-stable. On hunt days, I groom and saddle and load 2 horses --one for me and one for my gal-pal who meets me at the hunt [no, I am not being taken advantage of --all summer she hauls me and horse in her 48 foot LQ to our archery competitions all over the midwest --don’t mind her riding out to hunt on one of mine[ anyway, back to the pawing question: William Tell paws in the trailer when hauled alone. When that happens, he wears pawing bracelets --see on line --they keep his feet still.

Back to hunt days when I’m grooming and saddling and loading two (I haul saddled) --WT knows he’s going hunting and is extremely excited to do so --he will paw as I try to saddle him, and sometimes shift around in the cross-ties. I could try a million things, but what I do is I put on his hobbles --he freezes. WT and my other hunter are hobble broke big time --they stand absolutely still with horse-handcuffs on. Problem solved.

I haven’t fixed the problem exactly, just solved the issue. The only downside to having two such hobble broke horses is that when I put boots on (tendon support), it takes some convincing to assure the horse the boots are NOT hobbles and he CAN walk. Then I get the “my legs are broken high step” for a few strides.

[Momateur]

Thanks, all. I had a feeling this would be the answer, but guess I needed a little validation that leaving him on the crossties for a while isn’t isn’t horse abuse :).

[Lusoluv]

To set your horse up for somewhat quicker success and save a little time, doing the training session after a ride, lunge, etc. may get faster results. If he’s been in his stall all night and this is the first thing you do in the morning, he may have more ants in his pants, than otherwise. Just sayin’…

[Libby2563]

@Xanthoria

Anytime he paws walk away (or stay away if he does it when you leave) Don’t correct him, say anything - don’t even look at him. If you’re standing talking to someone turn your backs. Don’t look at him until he’s settled down. (This requires patience and can result in some stalker behavior peeking thru cracks in the barn to see when it’s right to return) Then you can praise good behavior.

Yesterday my young mare was pawing WITH VIGOR and the vet said wow - that’s some enthusiasm! We walked away to his truck to chat and she had cooled her jets by the time we came back.

I think this is generally a good plan and I’ve had success with it, but with one (probably obvious) caveat: make sure the pawing is attention-seeking or impatient rather than a symptom of full-blown anxiety. If you leave an already anxious horse alone in the cross-ties, they might escalate to something much worse than pawing. Even if they don’t get hurt, it can be hard to overcome a really bad cross-tying experience.

[sascha]

I take as hard a line on pawing (“striking lite”) as I do on biting, kicking, and rearing. There will be none of it. As long as we are careful to listen, the horse will easily be able to communicate with us without using any of those Kindergarten block letter/Neon sign/“high volume” methods that can so very easily put us in danger.

I will reprimand as many times as necessary with whatever the particular horse needs to get the message across that I will not be spoken to in that manner. The behaviour will disappear and be replaced by much more subtle communication methods.

Be sure your horse is absolutely 100% comfortable and relaxed on the crossties and absolutely 100% understands that there is no pawing in crossties before you tackle wandering off out of line of sight. Once you are at that point, ignoring the behaviour and not returning until it has stopped can work as can suddenly surprising the horse as soon as it has started with a quick reappearance and use of the verbal command that you used alongside whatever other method to get the horse to stop pawing when you were teaching it that particular manner in its manners vocabulary.

Most of all though, it’s a long haul of patience and perseverance. Horse moves a foot? Put it back. Horse paws, make it stop. Always correct firmly, fairly and CONSISTENTLY (always, always, always, never ever let it slide not even once), carrying on with what you were doing immediately the correction has been made, and in time you’ll have a horse that stands quietly like a rock, and communicates with you in a safe manner.

It’s super simple … but not easy for many people. We want to interact and listen and have the best pet horses on the planet who adore us. The hard part is knowing that that sort of relationship develops through having consistent expectations and setting absolutely solid boundaries for acceptable behaviour.

[oldernewbie]

Pawing is annoying. But, I’ve had an experience over the last 2 years or so that has caused me to think about it in a different way. The horse is trying to communicate, though we may not agree with what the horse is trying to say. Kind of a long story, but here we go.

My horse is the son of a pawer. His sister is in our barn too, and she paws as well. At first it was just a little when the trailer stopped or on the cross ties and I usually just ignored him. I wrote it off to his upbringing LOL! But, in the summer of 2020 things got really out of hand. He pawed madly in the trailer and in the cross ties. I could not for the life of me figure out what was going on. All attempts to stop it were unsuccessful. Around November he got lots of hard lumps on his barrel, had the vet out, had the lumps surgically removed, and found that they were eosinophilic tumors from reactions to bug bites.

Spring of 2021 he started the mad pawing again and broke out in hives. Gave him dex for the hives and the mad pawing stopped. Duh! Duh! Duh! Poor thing was trying to tell me that he was itching to death! Put him on Benadryl for the rest of the summer and the hives and the mad pawing stopped. He was like a different horse. Kept him on Benadryl until late November but wondered when I would have to put him back on it.

Fast forward to now, when the mad pawing started again last month, I put him back on Benadryl. Mad pawing stopped. But, he was still doing bouts of pawing on the cross ties, what I would consider his baseline level of pawing. So I have been working lately to stop that because I know now that there’s no reason. A couple of sessions of backing up a few steps with a stern QUIT or WHOA every time he tries to paw seems to be working. He’s also learned to be much more patient on the trailer, which is likewise a lot easier when he’s not itching from the inside out.

So, I agree with most of the advice above - if it’s just a little boredom pawing, it’s worth working on to get the horse to stop. But make sure the horse isn’t trying to tell you something else. If it hadn’t been for the eosinophilic outbreak, I’d still be trying to fix the wrong thing. I feel pretty bad that it took me as long as it did to recognize that the poor guy was doing his best to tell me something was wrong and I just wasn’t listening.

[masConfetti]

I’ve had my new mare for only 6 months but we did go through this problem for a short time. So I’ll add what finally worked for me, maybe it will help someone else.

I will start by saying that my mare is an alpha mare and quickly took advantage of that fact I am not. When we started having issues (from pawing, to not walking on a lead, to pushing/shoving) everyone was full of suggestions. Limiting this to pawing I’ll say that the suggestions were exactly what everyone here has mentioned (so obviously this is a tried and true method and works for many horses). I tried it and honestly it worked, for a time. But it would reoccur every few days. She loves to test her boundaries.

One day, after watching my vet have to chase her around and use a whip on her to get her to lunge for a lameness exam, which resulted in rearing, bucking, and a VERY stressed out mare (who was not lame or in pain), I decided to go back to the drawing board for dealing with issues. Forcing her or reprimanding her does not seem to work for her.

I liked the idea that horses don’t want to do any more work than necessary. So I now try to apply it to any issue we have.

For pawing that meant, if she started pawing, I went up to her (without a word or glance), picked the foot up and made her stand on 3 legs. I would hold it and pick the foot or play with the foot and fetlock for a good 30 seconds then put it down. We did this 3 times and she has never pawed since and it’s now been 3 months.

Not saying it would work for anyone else’s horse, but it worked for her.

[Always_WIP]

This is a great approach. Sometimes you need to muscle through things but other times it just leads to a totally shutdown horse having a meltdown.

[eightpondfarm]

what a great idea! i have a funny, smart, playful ponymule that is a degenerate paw-er. I’m going to try your approach.

fwiw…i have not tried punitive measures. But have done more than my share of ignoring and that doesn’t work. He’ll dig a hole to China whether i’m there or not. I did once tie him to a tree that was dying and i wanted to remove stump and all though…lol. Might as well make some lemonade out of lemons you know

[TBKite]

I have one that paws out of anxiety, which I made worse for years with all the usual responses. I could make him stop in the moment, but the additional anxiety I generated made the need to move that much worse. Seriously, his need to move was so great that if I managed to get him to stay completely still, his chin would start twitching.

I finally started using food rewards when he wasn’t pawing. That cut the pawing and tension way down really quickly. I am strict about correcting him for moving, but I ignore pawing and reward standing still. It’s been way more successful for managing my tense, squirelly horse’s fidgeting.

[endlessclimb]

My young mare will paw if there’s food involved, or if she believes that food might be involved.

To start, I’d make her take one step back every time she did it, with a little AHH AHH AHH at the same time. Now, all I need to do is do the AHH AHH AHH and she will stop.

That said, I leave her in ties for hours, while I do other chores or work another horse. She learns the pawing gains her nothing, so she cocks a foot and goes to sleep.

Here’s where people may think I’m a heathen - She was having a particularly bad day because it was feeding time, dancing around, had too much gas in the tank, would take the correction and then start right back up again when someone walked by… Without saying a word, I threw a rubber curry at her from all the way down the hall and it nailed her right in the chest, startling her. I could see her wheels turning, and though she didn’t relax per-say (MOM ITS FEEDING TIME PLEASE COME GET ME IM HONGRY), she did not dance or paw for the additional 30 minutes I left her in the ties.

[endlessclimb]

I will also take one who is being a snot rocket out of the cross ties, and then tie them in their stall.

Ok, you want to go back to your stall because you think food is in there, got it. Ok, now you’re in your stall but you still can’t have your food yet. Patience, padiwan.

[DawgLady]

I also have a horse who paws in the crossties. I talked to my trainer about it the other day. Here’s what she suggested, and it’s working:

First of all, a caveat: mine paws ALL the time. Doesn’t matter if I’m grooming him, walking away from him, whatever. He just paws and paws. He moves around a lot in the crossties, too.

I put him in the crossties but I leave the lead rope on. I hold the end of the lead rope. When the pawing/dancing starts, I put pressure on the lead rope to make him put his feet down and shift his weight back. It only takes a couple of these “corrections” for him to figure out he can’t just dance around and paw ad nauseum.

[atlatl]

I had a horse that fussed when tied. He spent a couple of days safely tied to the arena fence most of the day. Got his breakfast in his stall, got worked, watered, then tied. If he dug a hole, he got moved to another location but still tied to the arena with a couple of breaks for water, lunch and then back in the stall for dinner and the evening. It took 2 days, but he was cured. Not a big deal, just “you’re going to stand here until you’re quiet.”

The same horse didn’t like getting ponied. He became “the pony horse” for a week, with the asst trainer ponying every other horse off him. No fuss, no muss, just repetition.

[PNWSunnyDay]

@endlessclimb

I threw a rubber curry at her from all the way down the hall and it nailed her right in the chest, startling her

I have thrown pebbles at the hindquarter of a cheeky pony who tries to paw and smash her groom kit. She’s not spooky so it confused her enough to distract her from the behavior. Perhaps I’m part caveman, but it worked. I obviously wouldn’t try this with the hummingbird-type OTTBs.