It’s completely normal for horses to get nervous or anxious while tied up, including when they are in cross-ties. Sometimes horses will get anxious about activity going on around them or a strange object nearby. This can be especially true if you’ve taken your horse off your property to another location.
Whenever your horse is frightened or nervous about something, he uses the reactive side of his brain. You need to get him to use the thinking side of his brain and you do that by moving his feet forwards, backwards, left and right and rewarding the slightest try.
My go-to solution in this situation to build the horse’s confidence and get him to stand quietly in the cross-ties is the Sending Exercise from the Fundamentals Series. Take your horse off the cross-ties and get him as close as you can to whatever is causing him to react. Maybe it’s a donkey in a nearby pasture, an ATV idling outside the barn, a group of kids playing on a swing set … it doesn’t matter what the object is, just that you get your horse off the cross-ties and start moving his feet.
Your end goal will be to send the horse between you and the object in a 4-foot gap. However, where you initially begin isn’t important; what is important is that you establish a starting point you can build off of. So, depending on how scared of the object your horse is, you may initially be 20 feet away from the object, and that’s OK. You’ll gradually work your horse closer to the object until he can walk calmly between you and it in a 4-foot gap.
Practice sending the horse between you and the object until he walks through the gap with a relaxed attitude. If he’s worried about the object and races past it, continue sending him back and forth in front of it until he walks calmly through the gap and uses the thinking side of his brain.
When he’s confident around the object and no longer worried about it, you’re safe to put him back on the cross-ties. If the object is something that’s new to your horse’s environment, you may have to practice the Sending Exercise next to the object for a few days in a row when you first bring your horse to the cross-ties. Each day, you’ll have to reinforce to him that the object is nothing to be worried about. After a few repetitions, you’ll have built his confidence and he will no longer be worried about it.
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