What can I do to gain the trust of an abused horse?

There are some horses that are in your pocket. You can’t get them away from you.
Then you have other horses who don’t want anything to do with people, so they stay away. Those are the horses that are a little bit tougher.

It goes back to the same idea of teaching a horse that being with us is a good place. What I’m going to tell you seems counterintuitive, but if you can find a smallish area to confine your horse, you’re going to start asking that horse to move out. And again we talk about how horses can be lazy. So just ask him to move out. It doesn’t have to be anything dramatic, no frills or anything, show them where you want them to go. Take your steady stick and add some pressure behind them and see if you can get them to move out pretty consistently. Keep them moving. See if you can get to go into a trot and let them trot like crazy first few strides, you know, might be okay, but after a while, they’re going to start being like, “Hey, what gives? This is a lot of work and you’re asking me to trot.”

They might turn that nose towards your a little bit. If they do, take a deep breath and soften. Even though that horse isn’t standing right next to you, they’re showing interest by turning that nose towards you. Okay. Um, they might take a deep breath themselves, right? They might kind of soften their footfall in their cadence and that’s a good thing. They also might just start to drift closer to you. So be vigilant. Look for those things.