How to Put a Rope Halter On a Horse (Like a Professional)

hey guys today I'm gonna show you how to put a rope halter on a horse and before we get started make sure you like this video and subscribe to our channel for more weekly horse videos [Music] so today fat Bella is gonna be helping me here to show you how to put a rope around a horse and before you even go to put your halter on your horse the thing I recommend to anyone is to first take time to organize your holster it can be easy to confuse what part of your rope halter is what I remember when I use a rope halter for the first time and I was so confused on what exactly was happening so Bella as I was saying the Rope Poulter's can be really easy to get disorganized and tangled so before you go get your horse you're just gonna want to make sure it's untangled and it's ready to put on the horse as soon as you get out in the field what I always recommend is find the noseband first and the way you find this is it just kind of looks like where nose would go and it's connected to the rest of the lead rope and the halter okay so once you find the nose band you can pretty much figure out everything else with the rope halter this long strap here is what's gonna go over the horse's ears and you're gonna put this strap through this little hoop and this hoop will always be on the left side unless your rope halter was made wrong I've made a rope halter before it was a mess this ended up on the right side so this will be on the left side you tie this through and so basically there's your rope halter so then I go to catch my horse in the field I'm gonna approach them at their shoulder I don't want to approach them walking directly behind them or directly in front of them because I want to give them the opportunity to see me if I were to walk directly behind them or in front of them they actually have blind spots and they can't see you so I may actually freak him out a little bit and they hear me coming so I'm gonna walk to the shoulder so that they can see me come in I'm gonna let them know that I'm there I'm gonna let them know my intentions of catching them and then I'm just gonna put the lead rope around their neck so I can capture that and make sure they're not gonna walk away or run away from me so I've got my horse I got my rope around her neck so she can't walk off and now I'm ready to put the halter on and real quick let me just talk about where you're supposed to stand and relation to your horse you never want to stand directly in front of them like this when you're putting the halter on they can throw their head up and hit you in the face that's happened to me it's painful they could rear and you could be in the way they could even jump for it and run into you so ideally you want to be standing next to them on the left side because that's where you're gonna have to tie the halter off I would say stand away from this front leg because if they're at a paw or kick-out you're gonna get kicked so if you stand to the side more so if they were to move that front leg you're not gonna get stepped on our kick she's mad because she hasn't gotten her breakfast this morning she's actually doing this video I won't get through it and then she'll eat Bella was being difficult so she's gonna get in time out and get some ground work done after this video so in the meantime we're gonna use pepper here we left off talking about how to put the rope halter on the horse so once that I once I've caught my horse I have my lead rope around her neck I'm gonna put on the rope halter and I'm gonna start by putting on the nose band around their nose that's such I'm gonna make sure all my straps that they're gonna stretch behind not the other way because if it's the other way my rope halter is twisted and I'll need to fix it and then I'm gonna bring the strap over their ears and then I'm gonna take that strap and slip it through the loop like this and before I tie it what I'm gonna do I'm just gonna look at the halter and make sure that it's all where it needs to be so my nose band I want to sit just a few inches above the horse's nostrils if you had a bridle on your horse this is where their nose band should sit if it's too low like this the pressure is being applied in the wrong direction and I could slip over their nose and you could have trouble with that alright it's too high once again the pressure is just not being applied in the right place so you may get a different response so I want to make sure it's in the right place and then another I also I'm also gonna check this strap underneath that goes underneath the throat I'm just like a bridle I'm gonna see if I can fit four fingers in between the strap and the horse's head just to make sure it's not gonna choke them once I've checked that I'm ready to tie my halter so once I've checked my halter it's time to tie the knot and this is probably the most difficult and intimidating thing about the rope altar but once you know how to do it it's pretty simple so once I stick my strap through the loop like this I'm going to take the end of it and I'm going to bring it around behind the halter between the halter and the horse many people bring it up here and they tie it like this this holster is so old it's kind of falling apart the thing about this knot is if you're in an emergency it's gonna be much more difficult to get off your horse so I'll show you a knot to tie that will be easy to get off your horse so instead I'm gonna bring my strap beneath the loop like this and I'll bring it through I just need to adjust it a little bit and that way if your horse is having an accident or you're in an emergency and you need to get the rope halter off fast all you have to do is push up on the loop up here to loosen this knot and you can quickly untie it okay and I'll do it one more time for you guys in slow motion so you can see what it looks like so as you can see with the knot tied like this the rope is pointing towards the horse's neck rather towards their eye if you tie it I guess the opposite way the rope will be sticking up here and the horse will be running around it'll be hitting it in the face and hitting it in the eye and it's really unpleasant so you just want to make sure that the rope is gonna face back since I still have such a long piece of rope something I like to do is I just tuck it in here and I'll kind of just get it out of the way so it's not going to be smacking the horse in the face and that way they're able to concentrate better and it's just not being a nuisance so you may be wondering what's the difference between a rope halter and a normal halter so row posters are used for training a lot of times because they apply direct pressure to the horse's face while other alters they don't do that so you see these knots here and here and sometimes they'll have them in the middle of the nose band and behind the ears those knots apply pressure to the horse's face so it makes it perfect for training if you're gonna train your horse to respond to that pressure you're gonna want to use a rope halter if you have a rope halter that has a halter connected to the lead rope this is great for groundwork because it allows the horse to feel any pressure or anything you're asking them to do through the lead rope and it communicates that pressure a lot more clearly to them rather than a normal halter that would have a buckle so I love rope holders and I use them the majority of the time however there's some instances where you're not gonna want to use them just because they don't allow the horse to breakaway rope Porter's are really strong and so you're not gonna want to use them if you're trailering your horse I'm if the horse were to freak out it's not gonna work out for them you're gonna want to use a breakaway halter and those are the holders that have the leather strap right here that can snap if you're tying your horse up for a long period of time you're gonna want to use a breakaway halter and not a rope halter now the flies just randomly appeared and I don't have fly spray so we gotta go to the store and get some sorry pepper alright so let's talk about some common problems you may have when it comes to getting your halter on your horse maybe you have a horse that is a lot - other than you and so it's hard to get them to put their head down so you can put the rope halter on one way you can work through that is to teach your horse to soften and basically what that is is I'm just getting my horse to lower its head apply pressure to either the lead rope or behind their ears let's see there we go there we go you haven't done that in a while so how do you teach your horse to soften so how you teach your horse to soften is you just apply light pressure in a downward way to the lead rope so I'm slightly pulling her head down and I'm just gonna apply that pressure until she lowers her head and then I'll release and let go so fine pressure she lowers her head so I let go so then once you can do that with the lead rope I'm gonna start applying pressure up here and so I'll apply select pressure up here and I'll pull down on the lead rope and as soon as she lowered your head I'll let go and that way she's just learning that pressure up here needs to get the same reaction as pressure down here so I'll apply that pressure up here there we go when you go to get your horse in the field and their Hut is way up all you have to do now is put your hand behind their ears and push down and they should lower their head for you so maybe you have a horse that's head shy and it's difficult to get the halter on them I've had one of these horses and I use the method I'm about to show you I can't guarantee that it would work for every horse but it worked for me and my horse in this situation so what I did is I would put my halter the part that's supposed to go up behind the ears I would put it down here because usually if a horse's head shy it's gonna be their ears and I would just hold it like this and I'd slide it up to her head and she would freak out and stick her head up but I still had that rope around her already and then I would just stick her nose through and then just tighten this right here so once you have gotten your halter on your head try course you can start getting them used to in desensitizing them to contact on their head so how exactly do you do this I just have a few times it's a few different horses and all I do Pepper's not headshot but I'll just demonstrate with her if I would take my hand and just start petting their face and when I reached it a spot but they would shy away from and stick their head up I would just apply that downward pressure to ask them to lower their head and as soon as they lowered their head I would take my hand off their face so and once they stick their head up like get away from me I'm gonna keep my hand here because they need to know they can't escape this unless they do what I asked so I'd keep my hand here I asked him to learn their head as soon as they learn their head I'll take my hand away and then you can work your way up to their ears and their forelock and just work all around their face so that they get used to that touch and that they learn that that touch isn't bad but it's good okay so once you have your halter on your horse it's time to lead them and I'm just gonna review how exactly to lead your horse so that you can be ready when it's time to go have some fun okay so when I'm letting my horse I'm gonna stand to the side as I have been I don't want my horse to be walking directly behind me and I don't want them to be walking too close to me that way they're just getting my personal space and I could get accidentally stepped on or kicked so I want to be beside them I want my horse to be level with my arm I don't want them way out in front of me or way out behind me and I like to keep two hands on the rope just in case my horse spooks our freaks out I got good hold cuz I've had my lead rope pulled on my hand so many times I'm gonna put my hand closest to the horse closer to their head and then I'll just hold the rest of my rope in this hand I don't want it to be looped like this and have my arm or my hand in it because if the horse pulls they can tighten and then they got my hands if this is your first video that you've seen of ours make sure you check out our YouTube channel because we have a ton of course videos I want to thank you guys so much for watching and make sure you like this video and subscribe to our channel for more weekly horse videos now you come to me alright now it's time for breakfast since our video is done so for those of you who don't know I have pepper Mela at my house and there they where my horse is growing up and then I have Tucker at a boarding saber right now just so we can train regularly and have a ring to ride in so these girls for videos when it's too much to go out to the barn and get tucker so this is the man who that Bella is she's so fat hence the name Bella [Music] breakfast is served [Music]

Channel: Carmella Abel - Equine Helper

Views: 74,044

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Id: _gTB-yTJTBw

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020