A thought on “rope wiggling”: I don’t like it, in particular, but one of the NH practitioners I’ve worked with (Libby Lyman) showed me how to use it – as an escalation if the horse doesn’t back up from a much milder cue. The first cue (while standing in front of the horse a few feet away) is to lift the leadrope up. If the horse doesn’t respond, lift and give one wiggle so the knot hits the horse under the chin (gently!!!). If that doesn’t work, try ONE “big wiggle” and if that doesn’t work, do only as many as needed.
When the horse has backed enough, lower the leadrope again. Very few horses seem to require a big cue to stop backing up
So I think part of the problem may be that people don’t start with a simple gentle cue, and just go straight to the big wiggle because they know it will get results.
We worked on this with my horse, who can be a bit … inattentive, mostly because she’s sensitive and I’ve been “shouting” too much, and it took only a few minutes for her to understand that lifting the rope means back up – and this is much more pleasant for both of us than a rope wiggle. Learning how not to shout is my main goal for this year.
(Highly recommend Libby BTW – she is based in Maine but does travel some. She keeps her groups small, and mostly works individually with people who are new. For people who’ve done the basics with her, she has trail clinics. I like her enough that I put down a deposit for two trail clinics this year, even though I am not 100% sure my horse and I will both be sound enough to participate.)
I seem to remember one of the Gurus teaching that keeping the horse just slightly behind your shoulder puts them in a “subordinate” position as they would be if they were walking next to herd member of higher rank. It is, in effect, using an clearly NH practice to accomplish a goal quickly, efficiently, and with reasonable safety. I’ve used this practice for years with every kind of horse and taught it to foals as they learned to lead.
This is NOT having the horse behind you as they clearly have a lot of the body in front of you. But the shoulder position appears to be important to the horse and that make the difference. Bunk or gospel? I don’t know. But it works so I’m willing to “take the cure without a diagnosis” (vice having a diagnosis without a cure ).
I also tend to stick my elbow next to the horse out just a small amount. This increases my “personal space” (where they are not allowed to be) and means that if they push into me it buys me a small moment to maybe move effectively out of any “zone of danger.”
Teaching a horse that a small wiggle of the lead rope has one or more specific meanings is not at all a bad thing. After all you have the lead rope in your hand and attached to the horse. What’s wrong with using it?
I learned to lead a horse staying about even with the shoulder over 50 years back. Considered the safety zone in 4h, you see their head and expression, they know you are there, they can’t bite you and would need to jump ahead to kick. You have pretty good control of their balance from there and can step back to turn the head towards you and get the haunches going the other way if they explode for some weird reason…which they are all capable of doing if something scares them enough without warning.
Believe that leading position, at or slightly ahead of the shoulder is in all the old reference books to, like the Cavalry Manual and standard practice in most of the industry.
ok, honestly- this is how I lead my horses. They are very well trained to honor my position and pace. I slow, they slow, I stop, they stop. I lead them through a gate and turn to close it, they come with me. Rarely, very rarely, do they take the slack out of the line. I did teach them the wiggle to back up, it’s a good way to enhance their awareness of the rope as a signal, not just a dead tether between us.
Yes he was a trained stallion. He had been in the movies and taught to fall over dead if you shoot him. He had only just come to our place of work after retiring from the movies. It was not his fault. It was the idiocy of the person taking the mare out of her yard to braid her. She could have braided in her yard to wait for me to arrive at work to catch him if she couldn’t.
The mare. I made her get up. Got her to her paddock and let her go. I was berated for not putting her rug on. I said she tried to throw herself on top of me. I would go and put the rug on, I was just letting her run off steam.
As the berating stopped and no other comment was made that makes me think it was not the first time she had done that. I should have been warned. A brood mare so not being ridden.
I step to the gate. I leave the horse and open the gate. The horse walks through the gate and halts. I close the gate. I step back to the shoulder and he walks before I walk. All when I ask.
This is with trained horses of course.
The time wiggling a rope is bad is when you have the weight from an extrememely heavy clip and rope attached and the horse throws it head up and inverts to step back. You will need a chiropractor before long.
Yes it did say 45 degree angle. The post also used the words directly behind which people are picking up on when they post.
@Palm Beach if people are misunderstanding the positioning you’re describing, I would suggest you post a link to a photo that illustrates what you’re describing. Having a horse 4’ from me and (somewhat? a lot?) behind my shoulder seems like a dangerous proposition.
And yes she stops when you lift your hand. Unless of course she has decided to blow up.
I don’t have a problem with a horse being taught subtle cues on the lead! I was more thinking of folks who don’t yet have the feel to get a response whapping on that lead libe while the horse just looks at them
We have a Monday about 3 times a year, mostly in winter, and I’ve learned pretty much how to predict, how to prevent, and how to muscle through if I’ve failed those
But I think we will just beg to differ. For some reason, people feel there are horses who are kid safe, husband proof, never buck, never stop at a jump etc, but there are no horses that can be taught to lead safely. To me, a safe horse to ride begins with a horse that is 100% safe on the ground. It boggles my mind that people think a horse can be trained to compete at something difficult in a difficult environment, but can’t be taught to lead properly. What about the rider who drops the reins and hugs the horse at the end of a great performance, or stands up and fist pumps? How does that rider know the horse won’t spook at that moment? If you truly have a feel for the horse, you have it whether on the ground or astride. You don’t need to be looking at them to feel what their mental status is or predict what they are going to do, or not going to do.
Think some problems occur when handling horses you don’t know well or at all. Seems an awful lot of people assume because they can lead their horses from a certain spot, they can lead all horses from there and they can cite all sorts of written and video references before picking up tne lead rope of a strange horse and having it walk up their spine, knock them over bulling past them or, worse, spin and let loose with both barrels.
Used to see it all the time from new WS types. Caught quite a few horses they lost trying to lead them to tne field. There’s a reason those used to handling multiple horses they don’t own or work with regularly will seek that “sweet spot”, it’s safe and offers good control of the horses body in Oh sh*t situations.
Unless you are confusing me with a dog who is simultaneously a black man, I’m not asking you to post a picture of you. Poke around and find a photo that demonstrates what you are describing and maybe you’ll find that some of us agree with you, and some still won’t. Pictures are worth a thousand words, PB.
I want the horse to lead where I put him or her. And that’s a different place depending on the horse and the situation.
I prefer Solano, my main horse, to lead behind me. Not directly behind me but enough to the side so I’m not in his blind spot. No, I can’t see him, but thanks to all those NH lessons about knowing where each foot is at all times, I know what he’s doing. I can hear the footfalls and I feel his weight changes through the leadrope. Doesn’t take talent, just a lot of practice.
But sometimes Solano needs me to be right beside him. It makes him feel more confident in scary situations. I guess he figures the last critter in line is the one most likely to get picked off by the mountain lion. So I let him do it until he feels like he can go back to walking behind me. I don’t mind because when Solano spooks, it’s more of a large shudder that doesn’t move his feet.
Conjure, OTOH, has a reflex spook that shoots him sideways by about a meter. He does not get to walk beside me. If he’s behind me, he can spook sideways all day long and not mash me. And if he’s far enough behind me that he can see me, he will avoid me if he spooks forwards. If I’m right beside him he just can’t help it. Conjure is a supremely confident horse who does not mind being last in line. (The spooks are just sort of an over-developed startle reflex - he’s not actually scared of very much.)
My buddy’s horse is a bossy little mare who knows no fear. She does, however, know how to throw a shoulder into the person leading her, knock them to the ground, and go on her merry way. So I lead her right beside me, with her nose tipped towards me. This rounds the little witch’s shoulder away from me so I get to remain upright and in charge.
What Bluey said was what I was trying to say. How I lead my own horses is not how I lead other horses that I don’t know. That is not what I would say on the net to people and horses I have not met. People can be hurt.
Exactly. This is how I lead all horses all the time. We are in a mildly unpredictable environment with lots of roadside grass to dive for, no gate before exiting into heavy traffic, and sharing space with the public in a park. Something that might be fine in your back pasture at high noon is not necessarily safe when you could have loose nutjob condo dogs or children on bikes or joggers in headphones emerging anywhere.
Oh and bears who like to come watch us ride, bobcats, coyotes that explode yipping when a fire truck goes by, beavers slapping tail, and turtles, which are particularly worrying to some horses.
Our barns are also somewhat unpredictable with 60 horses on self board, so you never know when a feed delivery or farrier or power tools or leaf blower or tractor is going to turn up. Or another fractitous horse. It’s usually quiet enough but I have no.control or even forewarning of what others are doing.
We are pretty much acclimatized to all this but you never know when 25 Girl Guides carrying flashlights are going to climb out of a bus in the dark behind some trees. That was fun. I try to live each day as if a semi trailer is going to skid off the highway into the trail. That only happened once and I wasn’t there but you never know. I am sure I would be more lax on my own property. I also do handle other folks horses, some green.
I am also currently on human stall rest because I let my safety sense slip just a moment, so all this is fresh on my mind. Leading the horses behind me would have made no difference once they spooked.
Sorry, OP, it occurred to me just now I got sidetracked by the leading issue and didn’t answer your question.
I guess I would describe NH as a method of horsemanship that borrows heavily from the ways of the Great Basin buckaroos and Californio vaqueros of the last century. That’s because the practitioners I admire came from that tradition - the Dorrance brothers; Ray Hunt; and of course Buck Brannaman. And so that’s who I’d recommend learning from.
Sadly, none of the above are around anymore except for Buck. But some other good clinicians practicing now of that school are Bryan Neubert, Joe Wolter, Martin Black, Leslie Desmond - and definitely others I can’t think of now. Bill Dorrance’s True Horsemanship Through Feel is kind of the Bible, so I’d recommend a copy. Ray and Tom both have DVDs which are great - although I have to say I was unable to appreciate Tom until I’d been learning a couple of years. He is deep, but oh so subtle.
A good place to get a sampling of a lot of good, grounded (not flashy showboat) practitioners and their work is Electic Horseman magazine. They have a website, of course: https://eclectic-horseman.com/magazine/. They offer articles and DVD from lots of different sources so you can try a few and see what appeals to you.
Once you settle on several, I recommend going to a live clinic - even just to audit.
Most importantly, look for someone in your area whom you can work with regularly. The whole reason I bought my first Buck Brannaman DVD was because my real-life instructor was trying to show me a tricky groundwork exercise that I just.couldn’t.get. I stumbled across a video called Three Legends, Three Masters where Buck was doing the exercise with a green horse. Once I could stop and start and slow down and replay the exercise about a hundred times I got it! But of course I couldn’t make my poor instructor do that IRL. That, to me, is the real value of the books, DVDs, etc - as a back up to real life lessons. So much of this is about timing and feel and while you can learn a lot of that from the horse it sure helps to have someone who can talk standing right there to tell you what to do and when.
ETA: Who to stay away from? In general, anyone who markets merchandise, e.g. a Dually halter; a carrot stick; or a downunder string.
Anyone who is loud and flashy and whose clinics have the feel of a performance.
Anyone who obviously doesn’t respect horses, for example, who calls them “cowards, claustrophobes and panic-aholics.”
Finally, anyone who consistently has to use physical force to get compliance. Now, please don’t think I mean I never use a physical correction. I find one emphatic physical correction far kinder than repetitively nagging a horse. I mean I’d stay away from someone who, for example, has a heavy metal snap on the end of their lead rope so they can routinely clunk their horse under the chin with it.
That’s is where you are wrong. You TEACH horses to lead, just like you teach them to stand still for mounting, to jump, to do a lead change, etc. I get about 5-7 tbs fresh off the track every year and every minute that I am within 10 feet of them I am training them. When I slide open the stall door they turn around and face me and stand quietly so I can catch and halter them safely. Same thing in the paddock. When I approach, they turn and face me and stand quietly so I can catch and halter them safely. From the minute they come off the trailer they stay out of my space. It might take me 10 minutes for that horse to walk 20 yards from the trailer to the stall, but they will do it how I want them to do it or we will stay outside and work on leading until they understand. Really the longest it ever took was 10 minutes. Sometimes they need a little remedial work here and there, but I am willing to nip bad behavior in the bud and I don’t have horses that walk up my spine or bull past me or kick at me.
A horse is only “strange” to me until I pick up the lead rope.
