Haltering Blue

Finally got back to the young ones again. Blue nickered at me and followed me through the gate, poor boy, he thought he was going to dinner. It was easy to get a rope around his neck and not bad to touch but was not going to let me put on a halter. He kept taking his head away and touching his girth to bend him was not working.  Every time he took his head away and therefore pushed his ribs towards me I pushed his hips away and lunged him forward and started again.  He would let me rub his forehead but each time my hand went over the bridge of his nose he would bend in to me again. Eventually he let me rub his nose.  I needed to be able to have my right hand, holding the halter strap over his neck while my left hand reached over his nose to take hold of the nose band while my third hand held on to the rope around his neck.  Where did I leave that third hand? Finally he let me rub the nose band on the far side of his face and while slowly backing away let me slide it up over his nose. Yay, success! I gave him a bit of grain and took the halter off.  That only took 2 hours. The thing was, I had haltered this horse before, once.  For a horse, once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, three times they start to see a pattern developing and four or more times it starts to become a habit.  So I proceeded to start to put the halter on, again.  Did I not just halter this horse, did he not get a nice bite of grain, apparently not.  After much repetition of the preceding tactics I got the halter on again.  More grain, halter off, start again...  After another long stretch I got the halter on a third and fourth time, hello coincidence, habit, where are you?  Finally about the ninth or tenth time it felt like it was starting to get easier so I left the halter on and let him go have his dinner.
The next day I put the rope around his neck and took off the halter. After rubbing his face a little I put the halter back on with only a little backing up. After a bite of grain I repeated the procedure and let him go back to his friends.