Episode 361.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Speaker1:
So when I think about preparing a horse to be tied to a wall, I think the horse deserves to understand pressure from straight forward. But in order to safely teach that pressure that comes from straight forward, let’s do it while we add some bend. But we start to sneak in moments of straightness.
Speaker2:
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy’s goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.
Speaker1:
Hi, I’m Stacy Westfall and I’m here to teach you how to understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. If you’ve been following along on this season of the podcast, I’ve been sharing things that my horses learn in preschool. School. I am using Baby Whisper, who was born this year, as my main example. She’s with me right now in the indoor arena. She’s about six months old, and the thing I really want you to keep in mind here is that although I’m using Baby Whisper as the example, when I think back to starting older horses or restarting double checking the foundation on older horses, I follow this same path. I was the first woman to win the road to the horse colt starting competition back in 2006, and in those three hours that I had to train the horse who many of you came to know as popcorn. Popcorn had never been haltered, and in that short amount of time he had to learn halter pressure, leading, saddling, bridling and riding and these same lessons. I’m going over with you in this series of preschool with whisper. I taught those in the same order. I was just moving very, very quickly during that competition, which in short means that these lessons apply to all horses. Today I want to discuss tying a horse for the first time. I’ll share with you what I do to prepare them and why I do it. As a recap, if you haven’t listened to the other episodes, go back because I talk about your ability to create a lot of draw with your body, about walking away, about the releasing of pressure when the horse gives to slight movement.
Speaker1:
And I really talk quite a bit about how bend reduces a lot of things, like for example, rearing. And that’s going to matter when we look at tying the horse, because when you think about tying a horse up, there are things that are going to start breaking. A lot of the rules that we were just talking about in these earlier episodes, for example, you’re going to tie the horse up to a wall. Let’s say a wall in the stall, which is where I start. You’re going to tie them up and then you’re going to walk away, but they can’t follow you. And if you go back and listen to the earlier episodes, a lot of what I was talking about was them following your body, them following you as you walk away. Now also think about the wall that’s going to just simply hold pressure. And although the wall will release pressure, if the horse steps forward, it will hold very firm pressure. It will not soften if the horse is standing there pulling back against it. So the horse deserves to be prepared for the way the wall is going to behave. And that other thing that I’ve talked a lot about, which is bend bending, prevents rearing. But if you’ve ever seen a horse that’s pulling back, fighting when it’s tied up to, say, a wall, they are typically pulling straight back.
Speaker1:
They are locked in that battle. They’re not bending. So when I think about preparing a horse to be tied to a wall, I think the horse deserves to understand pressure from straight forward. But in order to safely teach that pressure that comes from straight forward. Let’s do it while we add some bend. But we start to sneak in moments of straightness. And the best way I have found to do this is by lunging the horse. That means sending the horse around me. So Baby Whisperer started to learn this pretty early on. I have a cute video of my mini foal that I raised a couple years ago, and I was lunging her around me at a walk with a stick and string at 30 days old. So you can teach this concept very early. The thing that I love about teaching halter pressure in the situation of lunging is that when you send the horse around, you have the opportunity to do an inside turn. That comes with pull energy, meaning you are sending the horse around, say counterclockwise, and then you back up and pull or draw that horse in and then turn and push them back out. So basically it’s like if viewed from above, it would be a giant yin yang symbol. So this is where I start really teaching the horses about halter pressure. That is mostly adding bend, because think about it, if they’re going around you and you apply halter pressure and you’ve done the lessons that I’ve taught up till now, the horse is very likely to bend into that pressure.
Speaker1:
Now we’re adding you, backing up, drawing that horse in and then sending the horse the other direction. And I love this pull and then push energy because Cause, especially when we start adding speed, like, say, the horse is trotting. That’s where they get a chance to feel a higher pressure on the lead rope. That’s going to be a lot more similar to, say, if they’re tied to the wall and they turn suddenly to look at where another horse went, and they feel that pressure from the rope tied to the wall that is almost simulated when you’re trotting the horse and you ask them to do an inside turn by using a pulling pressure on the rope. The biggest mistake I see here is that people will often avoid pulling on the rope when they’re doing these inside turns, and you can for sure teach a horse to do inside turns on a lunge line without pulling on the rope, or by pulling very lightly on the rope, simply by stepping back. By using the wall effectively, by stepping in front of the horse, or in a way that your body blocks or redirects them. Just keep in mind that method by itself is not wrong, but it will not help prepare the horse for learning to understand pressure on the halter. So if you skip it there, you’re going to have to do it somewhere in order to do the horse the favor of setting them up for success when they’re tied to the wall.
Speaker1:
Because what people often overlook is that if the horse doesn’t learn the proper response when only halter pressure is used, that’s what’s going to happen when you tie the horse up and you walk away. The wall is only going to be using halter pressure. So however you want to prepare them, just keep in mind they deserve to get to the point where they understand halter pressure alone. So for me, I like doing that in the lunging first. I want to be able to get to the point where they can do inside turns off halter pressure at the walk and the trot. After my horse is understand that the next thing that I want to make sure they really understand is leading forward from the walk into the trot without the use of voice cues. Without the use of the whip or without another person helping. Again, I find that people like to switch when halter pressure alone doesn’t immediately work. A lot of places where you can see this happening would be somebody leading a horse through a doorway, and the horse stops and the person walks back to them, or they’re trying to lead the horse away from the pasture, and the horse stops, and the person releases the pressure and walks back to them, or uses, say, a whip or the end of the rope, or watching people loading horses into the trailer where the horse will stop, and then the person will release the pressure and walk back to try a different method.
Speaker1:
Back in episode 265, I recorded a podcast about Ember when I first bought her back as a yearling, and she had already been tied and was already leading, but clearly had some holes in the training. She had spots where she would just stop while she was being led. For example, when leading into the stall, she would just stop sometimes or going through the doorway from outside into the big indoor arena. It is very common when this happens to see a handler release pressure, walk back and try again, or to change methods into some kind of a driving energy. And again, driving isn’t bad, but it doesn’t teach the horse to give to halter pressure alone. So at some point you need to make sure the horse understands halter pressure alone. Back in that episode, I talk in detail about how I set up for first tying a horse, how I wrap the rope in a way that I can quickly release them from outside the stall. How I watch. But instead of repeating all of that here, if that interests you, I will put a link in the show notes so you can go back and listen to that episode. If you are actually in the process of teaching a horse to tie for the first time with all of my horses, including Baby Whisperer here. They get randomly tested on their first response to halter pressure. I do this by randomly jogging off. Let’s give it a test here. Yep.
Speaker1:
It worked. Tiny hesitation, but I’ve been walking around doing not much. It was pretty darn good. What that means is my random test is I just jog off with the goal of surprising them. That means I’m not clucking. I’m not jogging in place as a pre-warning. I’m not using a whip. I just take off jogging and I allow myself to get about 5 or 6ft ahead of them before I pull the slack out. This is actually because I want the slack to come out quickly. I actually don’t suggest that you go out and just give this a try without going back and making sure that the base exercises of giving depression are really good because many older horses, if I had to guess, I would say more than half of the older horses where I have people do this test and they are suddenly surprised will actually have big reactions in two opposite ways. The most common reaction is that the horse will actually hesitate, slow down, pull back, stop, throw their heads up, or some version of essentially declaring that they are going to respond to pressure with a pulling back type of an attitude. The opposite of that is more rare, but it also exists, and that is that when the horse feels that sudden pressure, they actually leap forward. And if you think about watching a horse, I’m sure you can go on YouTube and watch a horse that’s pulling back when it’s tied if you haven’t seen one. But when horses are tied up and they start fighting that pressure because they don’t understand.
Speaker1:
The two most common things you’ll see there are pulling backwards, where they can practically be sitting down, pulling backwards. And that’s very often followed by leaping forward. So these are the versions that tend to happen when the horse is surprised by pressure. Actually, somebody brought up the other day teaching a horse by letting them drag a rope around. And I did a podcast episode quite a while ago on that too, because the problem with letting the horse just drag the rope is oftentimes sure, they get desensitized to it dragging around, but it’s very common to see even older horses that when they step on the rope, their reaction to that feeling of halter pressure is to actually throw their heads up, and that throwing their head up motion will often pop their front end off the ground and release the pressure. But this is not a series of events you actually want them practicing, so double check the side effects of some of these training methods. If I had one main takeaway for you from this episode, it would be does your horse consistently come forward to halter pressure if they hesitate or lag or have a sluggish response? It’s a red flag to their understanding of halter pressure alone. The basic response of coming forward with halter pressure and backing up to halter pressure only, are the key ingredients to being able to safely tie your horse. Thanks for listening and I’ll talk to you again in the next episode.
Speaker2:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy’s podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall. Com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.
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