09/15/2026
Scott will be back at Prairie Rose next May. Any level rider, any discipline-lots of one on one time to help with whatever issues you and your horse might be having.
Some horses see a tarp coming and their whole body says no.
Feet planted, head thrown up, eyes locked on it like it might attack. That's not stubbornness. That's a horse who hasn't been given a reason yet to believe the tarp is safe to be near.
Here's the piece most people skip, and it's the actual key to getting a horse to accept something new: approach and retreat.
Instead of walking straight at the tarp and holding your ground, you approach from one side, get close enough that your horse notices, then turn away before he gets worried. Then you do it from the other side. Back and forth, closer each time, never forcing the moment. You're not trying to make him stand there and take it. You're teaching him that you'll back off the second he needs you to, which is what actually lets him relax into it.
The turning away is the part that works. Not the approaching.
I've used this same pattern with tarps, plastic bags, clippers, anything that spooks a horse because it moves or shows up somewhere new. The method doesn't change. Only the object does.
Follow for more free training like this, and tell me in the comments if you've used approach and retreat before and what you used it on. I read every one.
