How to Tack Up a Horse Western Style

hi everyone and welcome to humble heart horsemanship my name is Sabrina and this is my horse gunner in today's video I'm going to be showing you guys how to tack up western-style so one thing to take note of is that we do a lot of things on our horses left side we leave them from the horses left side we also tack them up from the left side now the reason why we tack them up from the left side and we mount them from that same side is because soldiers in the army would carry their swords and their weapons on their left hand side so they found that when they would go to the right side of the horse and try to mount over there they would end up accidentally stabbing themselves with their weapon so they actually figured out that if they want to go on the opposite side the left side and mount from over here they would not stab themselves with their weapon so that is where that tradition came from so most equestrian mount our horses and tack them up from the left side so the first piece of tack we are going to put on our horse is the saddle pad now the saddle pad is a really important piece of equipment because it helps to protect our horses back from all of the impact that we just create as riders in the saddle so make your saddle pack Danny on the left side of your horse now you want to place your saddle pad on the horses wither and the wither is the base of the neck right here so we have the neck starts all the way down here and the base of it is this little bump right here called the wither so you want to put your saddle pad pretty up high on the wither just because of your horse moves around everything is going to slide back a little bit so we want to put it up there pretty high my next piece of equipment is our western saddle now what the difference is between English in a western saddle the main difference is that western saddles have a horn English saddles do not going to take your saddle slider standing on the side of your horse you're going to grab your strip fender which is this part right here and your stirrup down at the bottom as well as your billet strap and you're going to pull everything to the side you're standing on that way nothing gets in the way when you go to lift the saddle on the horses back then you're going to stand up and very gently place it on the horses back right on top of the Sabbath hat take your strip and your billet straps and very gently allow it to fall back in place wrap the front of your saddle pack and pull it up towards the gullet of your saddle the goal is this spot right here all of this space right there the reason why we want to pull this up and create a little triangular V is because if we don't we're gonna get on a horse and there's going to be a lot of pressure right here on the horses wither so we need to make sure that there's some clearance over there first before we tighten our cinch the next step is we want to make sure that our saddle and our saddle pad are situated right behind the horses scapula scapula is a fancy name for the horses shoulder if we have our saddle too far up front it might be laying on top of the scapula and that can actually decrease your horse's forward movement they can cause pain for them so how we're gonna situate the saddle back behind the scapula and then you're going to take your hand follow along by the top of the horse's neck and when you come down right about where their elbow starts you're going to feel a circle it kind of feels like a plate it's like a little bump and if your saddle is situated behind where that bump is like right here and you know that it's in the good spot if your saddle is way up here you're gonna find that when you run your hand along the scapular you're gonna feel a lot of pressure and you'll see that your saddle is not sitting behind that's going to be on top of it we're going to go on the other side of our horse around to the horses right side our next piece of equipment is the cinch and the cinch is a really important piece of equipment because it is what keeps our spat 'el in our saddle pad on our horses back in place find your village strap your village strap is going to look like this some of them are made out of leather this one is made out of nylon to determine which side of your cinch to use most cinches have a little keeper right here this little loop this is the side that you're going to use for the village strap with the since you see this loop right here this metal loop you're going to take your billet strap and you're going to feed it from the back through now to estimate where your cinch needs to be in one of these holes estimate a good spot where you think it might work play it underneath of your horses belly a good way to figure out is in the right spot is that we want these rings that are situated in the center of the cinch to lie about the center of the horse's chest so as you can see there that looks pretty close to the center of gunnars chest now that we know that the cinch needs to be placed in hole number three from the top one two three put it latched right through that hole to take the bottom part of the billet strap and feed it through the keeper now I'm going to make my way to my horses and we're going to start tightening our cinch take your stirrup and lift it up over the seat of the saddle or you can put it over to battle board that way it's out of your way this is a smart scent it's a little bit different than the traditional cinch so just keep that in mind all right by taking the end of your latigo strap and feeding it from the back through the first metal loop you're going to pull it all the way through then taking the end we're going to pull it up and down the back of the first metal loop up here pull in it all the way through taking that end piece again and pulling it from the back through the first metal loop now we don't want to tighten this too much because it's going to be hard to finish our Texas T knot so we can keep it pretty loose until we're almost done gonna take the end over down the back picking the end once again but this time we're going to go to the second metal loop this one down here we're gonna pull it from the back all the way through then to tighten it you're gonna hold the bottom tail you take your right hand from the bottom first layer right here so we're not gonna take all of this bolt we're just gonna take the first layer grab you from the bottom we're gonna pull up and that's how we tighten it before we finish our knot and taking the tail under and towards the horse's face then over facing the horse's hind end and under and then pulling the tail part right through this circle loop right there this is a breast collar and some people ride with breast collars others don't kind of depends on what you're doing so if you're doing like team penny roping working with cattle or if you're doing a lot of hilly trail rides you might want to have a breast collar because it allows your horse to kind of lean and push up against it if they need it they're doing athletic things it also will help keep your saddle in place on your horses back take your breast collar and hold it out like this so you can see which side you need to be attaching the strap to so I can see right here this is the front it's gonna lay like this on my horse peak this stock right here now typically you would be feeding this strap through this d-ring most saddles have them some don't but most do but because the strap over here is a little bit too wide for the steering I'm going to be feeding it through here instead feeding it through and then pulling it over are going to take it through this buckle here pulling it up and then putting it through the keeper [Music] to check if your breast color is too loose or too tight make a fist and put it up under the center of the breast collar you want to be able to fit a full fist in there if you can't put a full fist in there the breast collar is too tight and you need to bring it down a few holes if you can fit a fist and a half or even two fists it's probably too loose and you need to bring it up the few holes taking the strap thats hanging down you're going to pull it in between your horse's legs and fasten the clip on one of these metal loops I'm gonna put it on the second one forget ready our last step is putting on the bridle I ride gunner in a rawhide single strand side pull here some people ride their horses and bits I like to ride bitless but that's just my preference so taking so forces halter just buckle off here pulling it back and looping it around the horse's neck loosely waiting keeps my horse were to try to walk off I would have some control and be able to pull him or her back now taking my bridle two main pieces of a bridle are the head stall this part here and the reins okay so we're gonna take the raise I'm just going to toss it over my arm that way they're out of the way so taking my right hand in between my horses ears I'm gonna take my left hand holding the top of the bridle and bringing it over his nose very gently then I'm gonna hold it my right hand over his nose and one at a time I'm going to be tucking his ears into this space right here so you're going to gently tuck your in gonna do the same over here tucking in it and we want to be gentle with the ears there are very sensitive we don't just want to grab them and force them under also it's shedding season right now so he has like buckets of hair coming off of him and I just can't stop it right here we have the throat latch this piece right here I take the other piece of leather and pull it to the horses left side bring it up through here now to figure out if your throat latch is too tight or too loose you want to be able to fit a whole fist from the horses eke bone to the end of the throat latch for the chin strap which is this piece underneath of here we never want this too tight it could hurt the horse that way but take two fingers and have one touching his chin the other one touching the strap if you can fit like three or four fingers in here it's too loose and it could actually get caught in the horses now [Music] and then your horse is all tacked up western-style are you Betty honey thank you so much for watching this video and make sure that you scroll down and hit that like button and subscribe and gunner and I will see you in the next video bye [Music]

Channel: Humble Heart Horsemanship

Views: 21,073

Keywords: how to tack up a horse western, how to tack up a horse, humble heart horsemanship, sabryna damm, natural horsemanship, bitless riding, western riding, barn vlog, clinton anderson, missy wryn, how to groom a horse, trail riding, smartpak, western tack, pat parelli, pacific northwest, equineinspired, vlog, youtube, horse, horses, equitation, western pleasure

Id: JjQUa211AYk

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2020