hello it's Josie here today I'm going to show you
how to tie a rope halter and Spider is going to be my model today
Spider was my attempt at breeding myself an up to
height dressage pony dad was a 13-1 mum was 15-2
and as you can see Spider is a very big boy
okay so we're going to show you how to tie a
rope halter but first of all you need to make sure your rope halter is fitting your
horse and I can tell you now this one doesn't
really fit Spider it is too big okay so I've got one here that will fit
him but I just wanted to show you one that doesn't why doesn't it fit him
because these knots are up here in his eye and could actually do him
some damage okay and there's so much here underneath it needs to be a little
bit tighter and a little bit lower I double my lead up like that and drape
it over my arm never through or around when it's
attached to a horse because I actually know of a young girl
who did that and the horse got a fright took off and literally took her arm off
at the elbow always got to be thinking about safety
around your horses they're big animals and they can do
damage and not not knowingly obviously but they do so I want it like this
because you don't want to rope the rope coiled around your foot
and your foot stepping into the middle of the coil and then the same thing
happening okay so the other thing you need to do
obviously to get your horse to allow you to put a halter on him it's okay if
you've got little ones you can just pop your arm over them and
throw them but these halters have long bits and if you have to flick it over
you run the risk of flicking it into your horse's eye so
your horse should put his head down for you
these are all training step steps you should do before you actually
attempt to halter your horse so I can get Spider just to lower his head I'm
just putting a bit of pressure up here and he will just drop his head down for
me because he's a good boy so I'll get this halter off it is dinner
time he might do a runner all right so I'll get this halter off so
he's he needs to have his head down there because I'm little and he's
big and then you need to organize your halter so the little
loop is on the side you're on and the long bit goes over it so you pop
this bit over his nose and not in his mouth like that but sometimes it goes
that way if he were to put his head up I'd I've
got my hand up here you can see it I'd ask him to drop his
head down for me sometimes I use my actual rope good boy
so I can get that over, hang on to it so this bit
here, this little knot here needs to sit up in the throat lash
groove don't get it tangled in his beard and
then it goes through and these are a tiny bit short for him i
had this custom made for him a few years ago and he's grown a bit
since then and so this needs to sit up here your
two little knots should sit just underneath your cheek
piece here and there should be enough room through here this allows your horse
to chew if it needs to now if you can bring
the camera in close up here I'm going to show you the way I
remember to tie this the last thing you want is this
flapping into your horse's eye and hitting him in the eye
and people tie these wrong a lot of the time
you don't tie on that knot you tie onto the loop so the way I remember it
is because this is just the way I work excuse me Spider creeping forward it's
tea time just wait there is I don't I want it to
go away from his eye so I have to go towards the
eye under over that and then you just see that loop there you just go back
through that and then you pull it and the reason we
do them that way is that if the horse pulls
this will get tight if he does a pullback this will get really really
tight and almost be impossible to undo
if you've tied it this way what you do is you give this a wriggle and you give
that a push and you can undo it people who do them
the incorrect way which is to tie the rope
up there on itself will pull quite tight and you'll have buckley's of getting it
undone and you will probably have to cut it off the horse okay so let's do
that once more so let's come in close with the camera
so it comes from the inside to the outside
under we make a circle around towards the eye because we want it to go away
from the eye that's how we do it okay so once more
thanks Spider see he thinks that you should do it that way too so
under there under that loop towards the eye
and then under this loop away from the eye
and that is it done up the other thing I'd like to tell you
is never ever ever leave them on your horses in the paddocks
these halters don't break your horse will do itself an
injury okay they don't break webbing halters will break but even them
I don't think that you should leave them on your horse in
the paddock either if you can't catch your horse that's telling you some
training that you need to do okay so you should be able to walk up
out in the paddock and catch your horse (good boy) the other reason we want to up
here and not down here now you don't want
your rope holder down there that is actually soft part of the
horse's nose that's cartilage and soft tissue in there and you
actually hurt them and it doesn't give you any as much
control as up here will the other part of just while we're on
this is if I pop my finger in his nose he
won't mind you can see all the way up there
is actually nostril flare and horses use that bit
to actually open their airways when they're working hard
and get air so nose bands that are on very low
actually cut off half of the horse's anatomy that allows it to breathe and do
the work it's meant to do so that's another reason we need this one up nice
and high to me this would be a perfect halter if this was a tiny bit
longer because it is short that sometimes it's
difficult to get it in there but it's not too bad we'll go down and get
this one the one that was too big and I'll just
pop it on over the top so you can see the difference
I'll just take the actual rope off hang on we'll drop that because Spider's a
good boy
okay so let's watch me tie this one again so it goes
in through there get it up see this fits nicely up in the throat lash
go so it was under and then it's under towards the eye to be done up away from
the eye but you can see this is way too high and
can actually hit him in the eye this bit if they're too long you can
tuck them down in here or you can just sometimes do another half hitch just to
stop them flopping around if they are a bit long but you can see this is
way too long the reason I like to use a rope halter
is because they give much more definition of
pressure and a much more instant release to a horse
I sort of think a little bit like webbing halters if I'm trying to train a
horse with a webbing halter on is a little bit like
knitting with crowbars it's absolutely terrible you have very limited feel and
I don't believe that the horse gets the same amount
of feel so that's why I use them and my horses yes go out to dressage
competitions with their rope halters on
if you like do you mind
if you like this video please hit the like button if you don't
hit the unlike button we're all allowed to have an opinion I'd love to hear in
the comments though whether you do or whether you don't
I'll also pop a link in the description under the video
about three training principles a small ebook that I've written it's just a
short e-book of three principles that I keep pretty
much in the forefront of my mind whenever I'm working
with a horse so that's there for you if you'd like to download it and read it
he wants his dinner