This is an issue many horse owners and riders have been confronted with throughout their career, me too. But how to solve it?
There are many advices from private horse owners as well as from professional trainers, and a lot of them are good and reasonable, but it has a few you should simply forget the moment you read or hear them, this are the ones that recommend physical violence, like a hit with a whip, a slap on the nose with your hand or even a hard punch with your fist.
For example, the "Slap on the nose", what will it do?
When your horse is trying to bite you it is trying to tell you something, this can be simple horse - play, a sign of pain or it just dislikes something you do with it, and your horse is actually expecting some kind of reaction from you. If you don't figure out the reason for the bite attempt the horse will continue to do so and the attempt will become painful.. In each case it's a sign of dominance and disrespect you should never tolerate and immediately punish. But if you do it with the slap, the horse will very quick figure out a way how to escape this punishment, until it is able to move the head away from the already expected slap before you can get even close to the nose.
Always keep in mind what you want to do with your hand, you groom, you tack, put the halfter or the bridle on or just remove something from the face of the horse that doesn't belong there... It's better not to make the horse afraid of your hand.
The only thing the horse can't escape from is your voice and your body language.
If a horse is trying to bite me I usually react with a harsh "NO!!!" and I take in an "agressive" Position towards the horse, with my hand just raised, palm facing the horse, and a short grim look in it's eyes. This "punishment" should follow the crime immediately, not later than three seconds and should not last longer than three seconds, after that I go over back to normal, without keeping a grudge and start to figure out what that bite attempt was meant to be. This has worked perfectly for me and I did not have to repeat this procedure more then two or three times for the same horse.
For example, the gelding I used for my trip in Mexico was a real good buddy, he did the entire ride with me without any vices or bad habits with an incredible patience. It just happened that out in the desert I didn't always have the possibility to shave, just when I was staying at a ranch for the night I put my face back to something to look at and used aftershave. the first time I approached my buddy in the morning to tack him for the ride with that to me nice smell he he pinned his ears and really snapped after me, without getting me??? I was really irritated, during the entire grooming and tacking procedure he was just grumpy, and I couldn't figure out why.
During this day and the following days he went back to normal and I didn't think about this incident anymore until about a week later the exact same thing happened, this time I, remembering the first time, already got an idea, a few days later I shaved again, put the aftershave on and watched my buddy while starting to handle him, and got the same grumpiness, but already without the attempt to bite. Remarkable to me was the fact that the horse during the same day, either because he got used to the strange smell or the smell started to disappear, it went back to it's normal behavior. From this day on I either shaved in the evening or didn't use aftershave - no more problems. The punishment for the first attempt to bite was my above described procedure - he never did it again. I truly believe that the psycological effect of this method gives a better and longer lasting result without damaging the horses trust in you than any physical violence.
There are many advices from private horse owners as well as from professional trainers, and a lot of them are good and reasonable, but it has a few you should simply forget the moment you read or hear them, this are the ones that recommend physical violence, like a hit with a whip, a slap on the nose with your hand or even a hard punch with your fist.
For example, the "Slap on the nose", what will it do?
When your horse is trying to bite you it is trying to tell you something, this can be simple horse - play, a sign of pain or it just dislikes something you do with it, and your horse is actually expecting some kind of reaction from you. If you don't figure out the reason for the bite attempt the horse will continue to do so and the attempt will become painful.. In each case it's a sign of dominance and disrespect you should never tolerate and immediately punish. But if you do it with the slap, the horse will very quick figure out a way how to escape this punishment, until it is able to move the head away from the already expected slap before you can get even close to the nose.
Always keep in mind what you want to do with your hand, you groom, you tack, put the halfter or the bridle on or just remove something from the face of the horse that doesn't belong there... It's better not to make the horse afraid of your hand.
The only thing the horse can't escape from is your voice and your body language.
If a horse is trying to bite me I usually react with a harsh "NO!!!" and I take in an "agressive" Position towards the horse, with my hand just raised, palm facing the horse, and a short grim look in it's eyes. This "punishment" should follow the crime immediately, not later than three seconds and should not last longer than three seconds, after that I go over back to normal, without keeping a grudge and start to figure out what that bite attempt was meant to be. This has worked perfectly for me and I did not have to repeat this procedure more then two or three times for the same horse.
For example, the gelding I used for my trip in Mexico was a real good buddy, he did the entire ride with me without any vices or bad habits with an incredible patience. It just happened that out in the desert I didn't always have the possibility to shave, just when I was staying at a ranch for the night I put my face back to something to look at and used aftershave. the first time I approached my buddy in the morning to tack him for the ride with that to me nice smell he he pinned his ears and really snapped after me, without getting me??? I was really irritated, during the entire grooming and tacking procedure he was just grumpy, and I couldn't figure out why.
During this day and the following days he went back to normal and I didn't think about this incident anymore until about a week later the exact same thing happened, this time I, remembering the first time, already got an idea, a few days later I shaved again, put the aftershave on and watched my buddy while starting to handle him, and got the same grumpiness, but already without the attempt to bite. Remarkable to me was the fact that the horse during the same day, either because he got used to the strange smell or the smell started to disappear, it went back to it's normal behavior. From this day on I either shaved in the evening or didn't use aftershave - no more problems. The punishment for the first attempt to bite was my above described procedure - he never did it again. I truly believe that the psycological effect of this method gives a better and longer lasting result without damaging the horses trust in you than any physical violence.