Aw thank you! With horses, the easiest and most straightforward way to desensitize them is just exposing them to their fear until they realize it’s fine. You don’t want to send them into a full blown panic, obviously.

The horses I had as a kid were afraid of tarps, so my mom would take the tarps and rub the horses with them until they stopped being afraid of them.

I plan on doing the same with Sandy and the bathing hose, but showing it to her close up before touching her body with it. She likes to examine things before she lets them touch her. She has to sniff and move her lips on each brush before I use it on her during grooming. She knows what they all are now, but she still wants to check them out when they come out of the bag.

Once she’s cool with the hose being around her and touching her while it’s off, I’ll do the same slow introduction to the hose while it’s turned on. Then start getting her used to getting sprayed off by spraying around her on the ground, then work up her body from her feet.

It’s gonna take forever, but my hope is that for just a single day, she’ll be super clean. I’m going especially slow with her and doing it in stages like this because she’s suuuuuper old and I don’t like to push her boundaries too much in one training session because of her age alone. Stressing out old things too much isn’t good for them lol.