Jake - avoiding me

For about the last month or two Jake has been avoiding me. He is acting very unlike himself and I can't figure out why. Jake is my 11 year old ClydeX gelding who is the herd leader and who has always been solid as a rock: dependable, friendly and affectionate. For some reason though, the past several weeks he's been acting very afraid of me (or anyone for that matter) every time I walk up to him, he won't look at me, and turns his head completely away from me (like in the first photo) and if I continue to walk toward him he walks away. Jake has always been one of the first horses to come up to me and start nosing around my pockets for treats. So it's really strange for him to not only avoid me, but to be acting so afraid of me. Obviously I've done something that has scared him, but for the life of me, I can't think of what!

So today I started working with him in the round pen just to see if I could get him to first look at me; 2nd: not turn away from me when I walked up to him and 3rd: get him to follow me. I filled my pockets with crunchies to use as treats for when he either came up to me or turned toward me. Lately treats haven't inticed him to come up to me in the pasture (again, very strange since he always was the first one up to me), but maybe if he's alone with me it might help.

I started just moving him around the pen in different directions and allowing him to stop if he turned in to me. If he looked away or turned away, I'd push him away again. Then after a few times turning toward me, I would walk up to him and see how close he'd let me come before turning away and worked on getting that distance shorter and shorter until he'd reach out and touch my hand without turning away. Surprise! A treat! I backed away and then approached his left shoulder, he didnt' turn away, but neither did he turn toward me. I draped my arm over his head and asked him to lower his head and turn toward me. He's always responded well to this and today was no exception and when he turned his head toward me he got another treat! I went around to his right side and he immediately turned away from me. He's always been uncomfortable with me on his right side. But I stayed there and rubbed him all over until his head was facing forward. I then put my arm over his neck again and asked him to lower his head and turn toward me. Some resistance, but he did and got another treat.

We kept this up for a while working on reducing the resistance and then I moved away to see if he'd follow. He did, licking and chewing and he started acting like the old Jake I know and love. I decided to do a few of the Parelli games with him just to refresh his memory and he did great. So I thought I'd climb up on the fence and see if he would mind my getting up on his back. He moved along side me and didn't try to avoid me when I leaned over to mount up. He had a very positive look on his face, so I just did some pushing passenger in the round pen for a while and then opened the gate and continued pushing passenger into the paddocks with the other horses. He had his head low and was licking and chewing the whole time, so we called it a day and I let him out to graze on the lawn for a few minutes. Will see if his behaviour changes at all over the next few days when I come up to him. It was a pretty good day.