What do you think about tethering hard to catch horses and explain why it is?

Tethering a hard-to-catch horse — securing him to a fixed point by a rope or chain for a period of time so that the human can approach and handle him at will — is a training technique with genuine merit in specific situations and a long history of use in working horse cultures where practical results mattered. Used correctly and humanely it is an effective tool for breaking the avoidance habit that difficult catching has established. The training logic is straightforward. A horse that successfully avoids being caught is practicing the avoidance behavior and having that practice rewarded by the outcome. Each successful avoidance makes the next avoidance more likely because the behavior has been reinforced. Tethering removes the horse's ability to practice successful avoidance entirely. When the human can approach, touch, halter, groom, and handle the horse at will — without the horse having any option to move away — the handler can systematically replace the horse's experience of approach as something to flee from with the experience of approach as something that produces neutral or pleasant outcomes. The important distinction between tethering as a training tool and tethering as a management shortcut lies in what the handler does with the access it provides. A horse tethered and then ignored for hours gains nothing from the experience. A horse tethered and then systematically handled — approached from all angles, touched all over, haltered and unhaltered, groomed, given small feed rewards for calm acceptance — is receiving the specific training that addresses the behavioral cause of the catching difficulty. Correct application requires attention to safety and equine welfare. The tether must be of appropriate length — long enough that the horse can stand comfortably, short enough that he cannot generate the running start that would make a pulling-back episode dangerous. The tether point must be solid and the halter must fit correctly. Never leave a tethered horse unattended, because a horse that becomes entangled or panics while tethered and unobserved can sustain serious injury. The goal is a horse that can be caught freely, and the tethering is the transitional tool that gets from the catching problem to that goal. As the horse's acceptance of approach improves, transition to haltering the horse in the paddock with a progressively longer lead rope that limits but does not eliminate his movement, until free catching is reliably achieved.