Draft horse harnessing fear

Question
Greetings,

  I am 33, I have worked with horses since I was 15.  Up until recently, the bulk of my experience has been with light riding horses; trail rides and basic teaching to youth.

 I am currently working with 2 Belgian draft horses (4 and 5 years old) trying to get them conditioned to be solid for driving and hopefully for teaching as well.  I have spent the past 2 years learning and working with a Belgian draft mule team.  The mules are gone and we have the full drafts to replace them.

The issue at hand is the 5 year old (Roy) has a fear of the harness if it is moving.  I have worked with these two since February, but most of the training/work I've been able to do with any regularity has been in the past 2 months.

The 4 year old (Rob)...yes, we have Rob and Roy :)... has no problems with the harness.  If it's been a couple days since last harnessed, he spooks a little, but quickly calms down without issue.  

Roy however has always been afraid to some extent.  When I finally managed to get the harness on him without him freaking out completely, every little move he did that made the harness shift was scary.  If anyone touches him, regardless if he knows you are there (even if he is looking at you at the time even) he spooks.

I have left them standing in harness; doesn't matter for how long since whenever Roy decides to shift, he spooks a bit.  If I walk him around he will get spooked bad enough to eventually try to run away from it, but not with enough motivation to get away from me. In fact, no matter what happens he tries to avoid hitting/running into me.

I have approached him repeatedly with the harness, stopping when he shows signs of concern and backing away once he started licking and chewing.  After repeated (many times) approaches as such I have been able to walk right up to him and touch him with it.  I have put the harness on his stall fence and he didn't care, he actually tried to chew on it.  But when I picked it up it became scary again.

These horses are kept in stalls.  We are actually at the Phoenix Zoo for special events and wagon rides for the holiday season.  At least, that is our hope, to replace the mules.  We have an arena (60'x90')for turnout/work.  With it being summer, we only have limited time to actually work them due to such intense heat.

Hopefully I have provided enough information for you.  I can fill in any other info if you need.

Answer
Hey Roger, this sounds like a simple case of exposure.  You may be being too careful and making this worse.  Sacking out is all about removing fear and not creating it.  I have a section on my site about sacking out on my horsemanship page.  Do a lot of advance and retreat and then maybe some flooding.

If done right this horse will be ignoring within a few days.  Do other sacking out with plastic bags, paper bags and other things, the more you show this horse that you may do things to scare him, you or the things will not hurt him.

Tie a rope around his belly and let him carry it around.  let him drag the lead rope around and step on it, in a round pen or enclosed area, let him figure out that just because things drag, get caught up on his feet they will not hurt him if he moves slow and gives to pressure.

Do this slow and controlled at first so you can help him.  So put two lead ropes on him, you hold one and let one drag, don't pull or put any pressure with the one you are holding, if he steps on the rope and panics, you can take his head if he rears or tries to run off, then walk him off calmly.

Most spooking and fear issues are from lack of handling and trust, so spend more time with him, don't be sneaking around him trying to be quite, be noisy, drop things, throw things over him, drop things at his feet, soon he will think when he is with you, something strange will happen, but he will not get hurt if he just relaxes.

hope this helps,

Let me know if my site is not clear and I will give you more info,

Rick