This is great! Thats really amazing that he's so desensitized to the tarp, it's useful for you and makes him a lot safer to be around and ride too since you know you can have confidence in him that he won't spook :)
congrats on the good work!

Hi Kleinne
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Congratulations on your achievement with the tarp. It's a great tool. When I did my Intro course, we also worked with the horses to walk over a mattress, a piece of ply wood and we also had them walking through a waterfall (a whole lot of streamers hanging down - I have also heard of these called a curtain). After doing my course, I now do this with all my horses. It's great for desensitizing.
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The other thing Monty Roberts says in his books and videos is that you have to 'generalise' your training. That means you start off in the round yard with the scary object, and once the horse masters it there, you do the same process in a different place eg. your arena etc.
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When you do this, it helps the horse not to be so spooky in different places.
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Do you know what specifically makes your horse spooky? If so, you can work on those things with your horse in the same way as the tarp to desensitize him to it.
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I have found that the work I have been doing has helped a lot with general spookiness. Some times it's a bit hard to identify exactly what the horse is spooking at when you are out and about :-)
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Work like this kind of thing gives me the opportunity to do different things with them that builds trust between us and gives the horse confidence in my leadership. I feel like they understand that I won't ever ask them to put their feet anywhere that's unsafe. This kind of work has helped me so much in western trail crossing bridges etc. my horses accept the challenge so much easier than the others who don't do this kind of thing at home.
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Your horse must trust you a lot which means you are doing a great job :-)
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Kind regards,
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Gen

This is great !!!!
Star too allows a lot but some days she just won't.
I figured it out. We have a lot of wind here and she hates the wind.
I guess most horses do. If it is a calm day I can get her to do just about anything but if it's windy she shakes in her skin.
Have you seen Kelly Marks making a horse a war horse video? It is so cool, she wraps the horse in a tarp and walks it around the arena.
Now that is trust and you have it by the sound of it.
Good for you,
Ronda
PS: Thank you Gen for sharing about your training, I will try this.
A friend sent me a video of training a horse to walk over brush and twigs. He said so many of us teach our horses to go around them but suppose we have to cross a country side that has a lot of under brush, they need to get use to the feel of it under their feet and learn to place their feet safely. I have been walking Star through this, we'll see.

Hi Ronda
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The Graf thing is about desensitizing training is that you are only limited by your imagination. I have never thought about desensitizing to twigs and brush - that's a great idea. I have put the tarp on Renacer, like what Kelly did. He is doing so well.
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Other things you can get them used to is umberellas, strollers, cow hide laying on the ground (sounds wired, but they pop up every now and then in western trail), walking with a bag of cans and whatever else you can think of. Renacer is still having trouble with the stroller... But he will get over it eventually :-)
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You are doing well with Star.
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See you later,
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Gen

I dont have a tarp for Princess, but as for twigs and brush, we have an over abundance of them so far. Neither she nor Emmett are concerned about them. I try spooking them with whatever comes to hand, feed bags, whatever, but the only thing they seem concerned about is bears, whch we dont have any of as of yet. Any ideas on that? Ha ha. Another problem we have is when there are antelope or elk hanging around, they love watching them and its hard to get their attention when the critters are around. Where we are, there is a lot of wildlife, mostly elk and antelope, but a lot of bears too, and its about time for them to show up. I know they wont bother the horses, but they do scare them. They arent concerned about the coyotes either. Just the bears. We are working on clearing out the brush, but we have only been working at it for less than a year, and there is over 30 years of brush to deal with, so its taking awhile. And thats where the bears like to hang out. Jim has been taking Emmett out in the pasture where there is a lot of different obstacles he has to deal with, hes doing fine. Cant wait to get Princess ridable so we can sneak over to the ranch next door, (where Jim works) and go up into the mountains, thats gonna be fun. But she needs a lot of work first. Corral until she does what I want all the time, WHEN I want, then the pasture, and eventually the mountains. By that time, she should be strong enough and worked enough there wont be a problem. Meanwhile, they go through trees, brush, and whatever is there to get to the grass they want. I think it is good for them.

Thanks for the great advice, Shadow as I said really isn't a spooky horse in fact I built a dummy rider like "Heidi", I thought this would be a good idea for starting horses. I used this on Shadow to see how he would react I put it on him, let it fall off of him under his feet, behind his feet he never even flinched. I did the plastic bags on a stick first a few years ago and now he's not afraid of them. Gen I love your advise about the curtain and other stuff. I noticed he's much more comfortable in the round pen with these things than out of the pen, I haven't really worked with him at all outside of the round pen. His biggest problem is if I ride him in unfamiliar places he gets very anxious even if we're riding with another horse. He rides out alone great if we go where he's used to going but if we go somewhere he's not familiar he gets down right neurotic. He's also very heavy in the mouth and tends to push through the bit a lot. I'm not exactly sure how to make him soft in the mouth. I've been long-lining him (about 3 or 4 times now) he's picked it up quickly and I'm thinking that if I can get to where the sides reins are tight and he has to bend his head down he'll learn not to push through the bit. Am I right? I would like to say that he really trusts me but the truth is we don't trust each other 100%. I'm working on that but it seems to be taking time and maybe I feel that way because he does get so nervous and that makes me nervous although I do my best to keep my pulse rate down. I would like to trust him with my younger daughters (ages 9 and 14) but I don't, we'll keep working. Thanks for all your thoughts everyone I really appreciate it.
Kleinne