Not standing on crossties/Dislikes grooming?

I'd absolutely call it bad behaviour. A horse is expected to stand while tied, for the safety of it and its handlers. Is it, say, as bad as striking or biting? No. But it still needs to be corrected.

It would be my opinion is that the horse is lacking in patience. He knows that when you brush him down he gets to go out and do what he enjoys to do, which is being ridden by you. I would take the time to practice tieing him for lengths of time with no interaction from you. When he stands quietly reward him with some strokes on his whithers and take him back to his stall/field. Don't allow him to predict what is going to happen every time you take him to the cross tie area. One time tie him and groom him and work him and the next time just tie him without your grooming.

I would not recommend belly kicking a horse for a lack of patience. This is a lesson that he should be able to figure out on his own. Tie him and leave him. Let him figure it out that standing still has much more desirable effects than moving around. If he dances when you are grooming him just step back and wait for him to quiet himself again. Then reward him with his favorite scratch.

Good luck!

Thanks so much everybody :) There's tons of good advice here.
It's something we're going to have to keep working on. He kind of lacks any ground manners at all, so I'm going to have to be really patient and consistent.

What I did to train my young mare to stand tied was every time she moved forward I would quickly make her back up to the place she started. If she backed up I would make her move forward. She soon found out that standing still is a lot easier and there isn't as much movement involved. Most horses are naturally lazy.

But everyone elses opinions and experiences are great as well.
I believe it mostly depends on the horse. One method may work for one horse but not the other. I think a key factor to training a horse to doing something new though is patience.

~Good Luck!

Thanks :)
He is really lazy by nature, so that sort of consistency does work for him. He's starting to get the message slowly. He's the kind of horse that gets over habits really fast, but then the next day is trying something else.
Especially since he's been spoiled his whole life, he doesn't think he has to listen.

I'd never ever feed a horse to keep it occupied if it fidgets. A horse should know that he has to stand for grooming, which, by the way, should be enjoyable. No pawing, dancing around, none of that is acceptable.

My horse came to me as a paw-er. After about 3 minutes in the crossties she'd start pawing and scraping her hoof on the ground. If I was close enough, I'd give her a firm "NO" and whack the shoulder that is attached to the pawing leg. Then I asked her to stand. If I was out of reach or down the aisle, I'd again give a loud firm "NO" while placing one loud stomp on the ground. Then I'd ask her to stand. It took about 5 days for her to stand like a lady.

I can put her in crossties and wander off and do something else and she'll stand for a very long time. She loves being groomed, and she really gets into it.



Just a thought-- a horse that hates grooming and offers to bite/kick when grooming the barrel area is showing you major warning signs of gastric ulcers.