At first your horse won’t be able to touch his nose to his body. So you start with small successes. At first you pull his head back towards you until you get resistance. When you do, hold lead rope tension. Don’t make tension more or less, simply hold it there. The second he looks back toward you more and creates slack in lead rope, you give him immediate relief and take tension off lead rope completely. Then you tell him what a good boy he is. Pet him too. Let him know that’s just what you wanted.

As you do this, you will want him to bring his head farther and farther back until he begins to touch his nose to his body. Don’t try to get him to touch his nose to his body within first one or two ground sessions. That’s rushing it and you likely won’t make it happen. This takes time to get your horse to understand what you want him to do.

Remember to do this on other side of your horse too. What your horse can do on his left side, he should be able to do on his right side.

When you have your horse touching his nose to his side, then you’re ready to get on him and test his emergency brake. Get on your horse and go for a test ride. If he starts to run and you don’t want him to, grab a rein and pull his head around. Don’t jerk reins…pull. Then boot him into a circle. When he slows down or stops like you want him to then release pressure. Remember to do it on left and right reins.

If your horse doesn’t easily touch his nose to his body while riding him, then you need to have him practice it more. Also, before you go riding have him touch his nose a few times on each side with bit in his mouth. Doing these things will cinch your riding into a pleasant experience.

Other reasons horses run from their owners is they may lack good training. Another reason is maybe horse is getting positive reinforcement at wrong time. How can that be? A horse could learn to run from his owner - and if he does he gets a carrot or some kind of temptation AFTER he runs. So how do you stop running and catch your horse?

It depends why horse runs. If your horse is fearful then you need to get his trust back. You do that by doing positive things with your horse. When you catch him, don’t ask him to work. Get out your brush and groom him. He’ll like that. You want him to think of being with you as a pleasant experience – one that he wants when he sees you. This is especially crucial if you’re going to take him away from his buddies in herd.

Because horse feels safe being with his buddies in herd, you must make him feel safe being taken out of herd. Thus, when you catch him you can groom him and give a good experience to make him feel safe.

A good practice is to put your horse in a small pen and go up to him. Teach him that it’s good to be with you. This will give you a good foundation to catch him later when he’s in an open field.

Another nifty trick you can do is use lunging to teach your horse to come you. Don’t simply run him in boring circles. Have him change directions, go over and through obstacles, etc. Make sure to praise him when he does well and give him rest. Don’t run him into ground. If you do, he’ll go back to thinking you’re going to make him work real hard.

As you’re lunging him, use commands to get him to do what you want him to do. As you and he get good at this, he’ll respond much better to you in open field.

A mistake many people make is chasing horse to try and catch him. You simply can’t do it. They’re too fast and agile. Not only that, it tends to reinforce a horse’s instinct of being preyed upon and they need to get to safety…which means…get away from you.

Sometimes you can use another horse to help you catch a horse by being buddies with horse you don’t want to catch. If you go to pet a horse it can sometimes draw horse you want to catch. He may want petted too.

Be sure to never punish a horse once you catch him. First, he won’t know why he got in trouble. And second, it’s a great way to get him to NOT want to be with you . If he doesn’t want to be with you, he will evade you often.