GROUND TYING AND HOBBLES

This is what I use for training hobbles. Two or three strands of cotton rope.

These two go hand in hand because they accomplish the same purpose: They keep the horse in one place without needing to tie him to something--more or less.

Ground tying is accomplished by the continuos repetition of dropping the lead rope on the ground and insisting that the horse stand there. At first, you have to stand there while he stands there. After a while you can step away to get the curry comb and brush. Then you can step further away to get the saddle. And, so on, until the horse learns to stay where you parked him.

Or, you can put a pair of hobbles on him.

I mentioned above about making a pair of hobbles. Commercially made hobbles are fine for pack trips or something of that nature, just make sure that the horse knows how to be hobbled before you put them on him.

The fleece-lined, leather ones are the best--the unlined nylon ones are the worst. Nylon has its place, but hobbles is not one of them.

I make my training hobbles out of five or six feet of an old broken cotton lead rope. (I said cotton, not nylon. Nylon will tear the hair and hide off a horse about as fast as anything I know of short of dragging him down the road behind a truck.)

If your horses are taught to tie properly, you will probably have to go over to the neighbors to find a broken cotton lead rope. Of course, you can always buy a chunk of cotton rope from the hardware store, but don’t buy anything you can scrounge.

Untwist the rope, tie an overhand knot in both ends and an overhand knot in the middle, just to help keep everything together. What you end up with is a loosely organized bunch of cotton string that won’t burn or chafe the horse’s legs.

The general method of teaching a horse to hobble is to put the hobbles on his feet, go back to the tack room, get a scoop shovel, come back and whack the horse on the butt with the shovel, and, after the horse lands on his knees and head, say: “There, I taught you not to try to go any place with the hobbles on.”

Actually, what you’ve taught the horse is that he is going to be whacked on the butt with a shovel when the hobbles are put on. This is not what we are trying to teach him.

As I’ve said before: In training horses, we’re not as much concerned with right or wrong as we are with better or worse. Let’s try for something better.

If at all possible, I like to do this procedure some place where the ground is soft in case the horse does try to run off with the hobbles on and does fall down. I enjoy working with horses--I don’t enjoy doctoring on them, and skinned up knees are hard to heal.

Teach the horse not to fight the hobble by using it to pick up one foot at a time.

I start out by wrapping the rope hobble around one of the horse’s front feet, telling the horse to stand still while I’m doing this. I pull on the hobble, backwards, frontwards, sideways, and pick his foot up with it. Basically, I’m teaching the horse to give his foot to the hobble. Work on one foot for a while, then the other, until the horse gets the idea that he is supposed to stand whenever something is wrapped around his foot or leg. I imagine that any of you people who have had to pick a horse out of a wire fence can see some advantage to this training already.

After a session or two or three, the horse becomes used to this idea. Now, take a wrap around one leg with the hobble rope, about in the middle, make three or four twists in the rope, between the horse’s legs, then take a wrap around the other leg and tie the two ends of the rope in a loose knot. At this point I do not go off and leave the horse standing by himself--I want to be there to remind him that he is supposed to stand when his feet are tied together.

If you need something to do while you’re standing there teaching him to stand there, have a sack or an old shirt or saddle blanket handy and rub that around on the horse; drag it over his back and under his belly and around his legs, all the time reminding him that he is supposed to stand still.

WARNING: A horse can still kick even if his front feet are tied together--don’t put yourself in a position to be kicked.

Always work both sides of the horse. One of the strange things about a horse is that they have two definite and distinct sides that, at times, seem to have no connection to each other. Just because one side of the horse is gentle does not mean that the other side is gentle automatically. This unusual situation will manifest itself in all your training sessions. You have to train both sides of the horse separately. There is a European theory that you only need one spur because, if one side of the horse goes, the other side has to go also. That may be fine if you have all of Europe in which to turn the horse around, but, if you want an old pony who can turn around in half his length in either direction when he’s after a “hot” cow, train him on both sides, and both ends.

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