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I have a Mustang/Quarter Horse/Morgan that turned two in April. She's a level headed girl, and very smart about picking things up, wether they be good or bad. I've worked with her for about a year now 'despooking' her from tarps(Flying them over her head while she's moving, water holes, tree branches, milk jugs tied to the saddle with rocks in them. She picks it up quick and I always make sure she'd completely oky with the idea before we move on. There's only one thing that twarted us yet.

Clippers.

I know the noise scares her, and we've worked on that. We've went as far as to turn a radio on so she can't hear them. The vibration also scares her, so I work slowly from her shoulder forward. I get to about half way up her neck before she goes backwards violently. I talk to her the entire time.

What the weird thing is, it when shes interested in something else, i.e, another horse or something, she could care less what I'm doing. A good example is when she stands for the farrier she dosen't mind, then without any warning she explodes all over the place. After some work, she settles back down and stands, about ten minutes later she does it again. The farrier has dubbed her 'drama queen'. He thinks the Mustang in her is a little too willful and 'My-way- attitude of hers is going to be a hinderence to her training. I'm starting to believe that.

She had a bad accident before I bought her, on the fourth of July last year the previous owners were out and her and another filly spooked form the fireworks and went through a barbed wire fence. The other filly was fine, with a little abrasion on her cheek. Mine though had taken all the skin and upper layer of muscle off her leg right above the knee up to her chest. They through lots of hard work prevented her from developing proud flesh, but I tend to woned how many times they had to take foreign objects to her nose.

Like twitches===would probably be why I can't get anything that isn't cloth or my hand near her nose.

Eared her down====proabably explains why I can't touch her ears without her waving her head all over the place.

Knowing her past, I wonder how long will it take, now that I've been working on it for almost a year now. Any advice will help. I know it will take a long time, and lots of patience.

Is there a way you can get her used to the sound without them actually being on her? How violently does she explode to simply the sound. Find the very edge of her comfort zone. I'm guessing she's fine with them when they're off. See if you get someone to just plug them in and hold them while you're grooming her, stand a few feet away, and don't make any move toward her. Just have them on so that she gets used to the sound. If she's fine with that, see how close you can get before she starts to get nervous. Take a step back from that and sit there for a few minutes, then advance again. Don't push her to the point of actual anxiety if you can help it. I would work on getting her to allow you to get the clippers near her head when they're off first, then work on turning them on and just let them sit on her neck for a while, rubbing them up and down. Do it every day, each day working a little bit higher, but not pushing her comfort zone. Don't even try to go up her neck the first week or so, just rub them up and down her shoulders. And just start slowly moving them up a few inches every day, until she's comfortable with you moving them with just the back of the clippers against her skin (not actually clipping, just for the feeling of the vibration) all over her neck and up to her jaw.

And I'm sure you've already tried this, but what I found helped was to let them sniff the clippers when they're off, turn them on, let them hear the sound, then turn them back off and sniff them again. Sometimes this can convince them that they haven't transformed into horse-eating monsters.

Oddly enough, my horse wasn't too horribly afraid of the clippers. However, I still couldn't clip his muzzle because they TICKLED! His lip would twitch and he wouldn't stop wiggling and trying to eat them the entire time I tried to clip him. It was really cute, but a little annoying. xd

Good luck with your filly! I hope that was somewhat helpful, but was probably mostly things you've already tried.

Thankyou for the advice, just patience and time I guess. For her 'exploding' it's a weird thing, she dosen't realy 'explode' but she throws her head into whatever you're holding i.e. the clippers and whacks herself. Then goes, "I KNEW it those things were evil!"

But when you pull them away to keep her from doing that she spooks because they're right THERE.

The disposible(sp?) razors worked for a while before it pulled out one of her whiskers, now they're evil too. For those shavers do they catch whickers and pull?

This is probably going to sound strange to most of you but, while I had several horses, I didn't have a lot of money to buy extras with. So, I had no decent clippers. The one pair of clippers I had, didn't cut fine hair well and always pulled muzzle whiskers so, I could only use them on the bridle path. In order to trim muzzle and ears, I used scissors. I started with a pair of school safety scissors so that my horses would get used to the snip snip sound but, once they got used to that, I used normal scissors to trim muzzle and ears. Yes, you have to be careful and be prepared to move the scissors away but, my horses were really good and learned to stand very still for me (they realized that they more they figeted and moved, the longer it was before they got to get away from the boring part and go for the ride, or the bath, or whatever it was that was fun next.

I've used scissors on clipper-shy horses in a pinch several times, or if the clippers just don't want to work. Clipping my roommate's horses before we went foxhunting over thanksgiving, she hadn't plugged her clippers in in a very long time and they were completely dead. They also desperately needed to be cleaned (which we tried after they had been plugged in for like, 45 minutes and still wouldn't even start). I did her thoroughbred's muzzle completely with scissors, but worked really hard to do under his jaw and his bridle path with the clippers to work to get him used to them. He was getting a lot better, but the vibrations on his muzzle just freaked him out. If I could mess with him every day, I'm sure I could have him fine with them in a week or so, because he wasn't really afraid of them, just weirded out by the vibration. Unfortunately, he lives at her house 2 hours away from school. Oh well.