Well, agree to disagree then. Because I’ve seen FAR too many severe injuries and almost disasters from horses pulling back to ever want to teach a horse that behavior. I’ve also trained enough horses to tie properly to know that it can be done. Perhaps it’s my Western training, but I don’t believe in using any moving/breakable parts when tieing horses. Period. Too much can go wrong otherwise. HOWEVER, I also don’t hard tie any horse until I have taught that horse to give to pressure so that it will react properly, even in a scary situation.
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My big horse can ignore the rope halter if he wants to. He has a much harder time being a bully with a chain on, so I’d stick with the chain at the stage you are in. Most horses seem to respect the rope halter but not all of them and of course mine is the exception. I do think it has a place but for example mine has been off several weeks now and I need the chain to make sure he minds his manners which I’ve already taught him (but being fresh he may choose to try to take advantage of me having a lack of tools, or he may need a firmer hand if he gets excited). The first time around when I was working on teaching him better skills, I used the two rope method Simke describes. I’ve also used a rope halter under a bridle as well as a flat halter with chain over a bridle, in certain circumstances.
For this two rope setup, do you just use regular lead ropes? I don’t think I have enough “hand capacity” for that. I guess I’m answering my own question and I could just use two leather leads, but how did you set it up?
I just use two regular lead ropes. The round nylon ropes, with a knot tied in the end. Wear gloves, especially if you’re not using cotton ropes. I’ve never found it difficult to manage, and I don’t have terribly large hands. Do you ever lead two horses at once? It’s easier than that…
Nice enough in theory but the vast majority of horse owners don’t start their horses from day one. Sellers are also reticent to mention a one time scenario or may have handled the horse in a way that didn’t set off a setback.
My mare was not a reliabe cross tie or straight tie. She had about an incident every 6 months. No one disclosed it at sale and perhaps because she was a quick flip, the seller didn’t know.
Most horses who sit back panic because of the pressure and don’t “slingshot” across the barn. They tend to stop once the pressure stops. I always preferred replacing a brow piece to replacing a horse because a rope halter wouldn’t give and she flipped.
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I’ve used 2 regular lead ropes. Also had one chain that was on a leather lead so used that plus a regular rope. Always gloves. Preferably, at least the second rope is long (because 17+++ dinosaurs turn into really high up off the ground kites).
Now, I use one long rope on the chain–one of those NH yacht braid type ropes is what I prefer. Easier to create more slack if it’s needed without having 2 lines now that his ground skills are better.
I prefer chain under the chin or cavesson. Chifney bit?
I bought a super nice, well bred TB off the track with clean x rays and ‘no vices’ for 600 bucks. Got him home and he flipped up and over on the hot walker, went straight up and back in the cross ties as well. I figured out why I got him so cheap 
pulling back/not tying is a totally different topic.
if he’s good with the stud chain I’d just stick with that. What does he do on the ground?
After moving to montuckey and being around a zillion ranch horses I don’t think I’ll ever switch back to leather or nylon halters.
ive also done the two different lead ropes for walking etc. I’ve also had bridles set up just for hand walking.
He’d been getting pushy with his shoulder, not respecting human space and would walk through being asked to halt. Pretty normal baby stuff. Barn staff was letting him run in circles around them while walking to turn out, so he wasn’t getting a lot of reinforcement that stop means stop. I was riding my others and working and not paying attention to him, so it’s my bad.
I did his turnouts myself for a week with a chain and a dressage whip and he’s decided to be civilized again. I think I’ll keep both, mostly so I can poke his shoulder with the whip handle if he crowds me. He’s 16+hh and just turned 2 last week so I’m sure we’ll have another round of inattention. That’s why I don’t want to go back to a regular halter, but the chain isn’t really that much trouble.
A rope halter is not always “on”. That’s just fact - unless you are pulling on it and thus placing pressure on the horse’s face, it sits pretty harmlessly. I use them exclusively, hard tie in them, trailer in them, etc. But I teach the horse that he must, under all circumstances, give to pressure.
Having lived in both worlds I recognize where the difference in opinion comes from, but I can give you two scenarios where the horse knowing full stop that he must give to pressure no matter that circumstance likely saved his life.
The first was a gelding I took into training. One of the things I do with every horse I get is teach them how do respond if they get a leg caught by using what’s called a Dead Man tie. The horse is cuffed by a hind pastern and brought to the end of the rope and allowed to feel that he can’t come forward any further, then carefully worked back and forth until he learns that when he feels the pressure on his leg that indicates he’s stuck, he stops and backs off it, creating the release for himself instead of panicking.
One morning I got a call from the farm I was working out of that they’d found the gelding caught in the fence that morning. They think he must have rolled near the fence line and hooked a leg in the lowest strand, taking it down when he got up. The fence was high tensile wire - it would have degloved his leg or taken it clean off the way it was wrapped on him, but the farm owned said incredulously that when they found him, the gelding was just standing there with his leg cocked, calmly waiting for someone to help him. Had he not been taught how to yield a leg, he almost certainly would have been euthanized or had some pretty ghastly injuries. He walked away with a couple minor scrapes.
The other was my own horse. I trailered him to a friend’s house to go out on a hack Memorial Day weekend last year. As we were getting ready, her neighbors decided to start target shooting. My friend lives in the sticks, and her neighbors are shooting fanatics, so we aren’t talking well-aimed shots, we’re talking dozens of rounds a minute, shot for the fun of it. My horse pulled back, hit the end of his tie, realized he was stuck and put slack back in his own line. He piaffed in place for almost a minute before the shooting stopped and my friend could run across the field to her neighbor’s. Had he broken free, he very easily could have run directly towards the field where the shooting was occurring. You could tell by the look on his face as he was prancing that he was scared, but he also KNEW he Could. Not. Pull.
Point is, yes, accidents can always happen. But chain shanks cannot be used to tie a horse, and at the end of the day we humans are the ones who put the horse in domestic environment fraught with things that could hurt him. It’s our responsibility to teach him how to handle those things for his own safety, so teaching a horse he can pull back and continue to pull until something breaks is irresponsible.
Rope halters are not any more work to put on than any other halter. The knot is simple - OP, you can have someone educated with them show you how to tie one.
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Interesting thread here! I used to always use a chain over the nose, because my big guy just was not respectful enough on the ground if I didn’t. He is way stronger than me, and if he decided a patch of grass looked good, well, we went. Which really irked me. I was given a rope halter a few months ago, and decided to try it, because I hated using the chain and sometimes it still just wasn’t enough. The difference is night and day! I don’t know if it’s partly because he knows it is there, but I rarely have to be forceful anymore, and his manners have improved. I was skeptical at first, but now I’m glad I gave it a chance. I don’t use it to hard tie to anything though, for many of the reasons mentioned. I want something that could break in a panic situation.
