Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or something?
Anything that can be done in a rope halter can be done in a flat halter. That’s like saying someone who uses a fatter snaffle doesn’t know what they’re doing in relation to someone who uses a thinner one. Uh, no.
I like them to be distracted and eat the grain while I walk around behind to grab the butt bar. Its a safety thing - id rather have them eating then going backwards on me alone. On my personal show horses - they probably dont need grain, but gosh its quick when I use it. There is no harm in using positive reinforcement. There is no harm in telling your horse yep, walking on was the right anwser.
I also trailer load alone a lot of sale/training horses. They dont know me but they go on! Way more successful then trailer loading with a whip that gets them excited from behind.
Actually I grew up with a parelli fanatic trainer - i know how to tie them.
Rope halters don’t “come untied and fall off” if you tie them correctly.
Regarding using grain to load, I have often used grain as a bribe with green horses who have never seen a trailer. But at some point you’re not going to have grain. What then? Which is why while I might start out with grain I wean them off it because at some point they need to respect me and not be looking at the food. Respecting me sticks, where a horse might decide he’d rather starve to death.
My horses either self load OR they stand while I walk around to do up the butt bar. They learn that backing off without being asked just ends up with them being loaded back onto the trailer.
Feel free to send them to me. I have no trouble with knots and have literally never had one fall off. Doesn’t take me any longer to tie a knot than it does to do a buckle! 
I’ll cover the shipping, and send you my now sitting unused chain shanks in return…
Flimsy? You must not be using good quality rope halters. A good rope halter isn’t flimsy - the knot doesn’t come untied, and it’s super easy to get a nose in, especially with the stiffer ones.
I also want my horse to watch me.
I don’t pull my horses around by their heads. I want them to feel when I switch the rope from my left to my right hand to smoothly roll over and go the opposite direction. I want them to feel the slightest touch in order to back up.
As a result, on one I’ve worked awhile, I don’t need any tools at all. But a good quality rope halter is a heck of a tool.
So bizarre. No, you don’t need food to teach a horse how to load. Laugh as much as you want.
Such a bizarre post. No, things that can be done in a rope halter can’t be done if a flat halter but I won’t explain why. So bizarre.
Cool. Distraction isn’t training, and that’s where I was coming from. Training them to load because you’re telling them to load is key. You reward them for the right answer.
You use a whip behind if the horse is balking strenuously about moving forward. You reward curiosity. Horses learn to understand how to load without pressure or bribes. That’s training the horses mind.
Bizarre is right.
It’s really rich to be dosing out training advice when you can’t consistently get your horse in one corner of an arena.
Show me your best rope halter trick, and I’ll do it with a flat halter. Bet.
Have you ever had a horse fly backwards and almost crush you as you put up the butt bar? Repeatedly.
As you walk around to put up the butt bar have you ever had a straight off the track ottb with a ouchy hindend try to kick the snot out of you or nervous untrained half feral horse start rocking and rolling before you can get that butt bar up?
How do you self load with just a whip?
What if the horse you are loading was beaten with a whip and pretty terrified of it and is coming to you for training? Would you still use the object that the horse is terrified of to “show em who is boss?”
Thats an akward first impression.
Lol! I had a horse come in with the hybrid halter yesterday and I dont mind that one at all so I must really hate tying that knot on a non-hybrid rope halter.
It seems to me that your horse is extremely unconfident loading into a trailer. I’d address this lack of confidence first and foremost.
Again, I don’t use a whip to load. But i will use one to load a horse who is ignoring me. I don’t beat them as you suggest, I annoy them. Mostly, I don’t use a whip. I don’t have to.
You can train confidence into a bad loader by simply working with the horse. This happens ALL THE TIME at my barn and no horse has failed to load with ALL of the training horses coming for almost a decade. A horse that flies backwards as you put up the butt bar isn’t confident in that trailer. Or trainer. And it seems you aren’t training confidence to that horse. Don’t raise the butt bar for a horse that isn’t confident standing in the trailer - you’ll just make the horse less confident and feel trapped, which you seem to have done in the past. Get the horse to stand comfortably in the trailer. Period. No butt bar. That’s horse training and it happens all the time at my barn. Some horses take more work than others but all horses get there with a good trainer. If you can’t get there, consider working with a good trainer.
Tying a knot on a rope halter takes 10 seconds. I still don’t understand your dislike for them. Do you know how to properly tie them? So that the excess leads away from the horses eye rather that to it?
I think you misunderstand that as I told you up thread I usually have 4 to 8 personal horses and they load just fine.
I asked you hypothetical situations because you didnt understand my reasoning for trailering techniques with sale/training horses.
Actually you kind of attacked it. It was really bizzare.
But to conclude, Of course a training/sale horse will be will be unconfident! They dont even know me and probably arent trained. Also, you want to get that buttbar up fast or they will learn quickly they can go back. And I have a trainer btw, that I ride multiple horses with weekly. And I do know how to tie those halters correctly, and it is okay for me to not like them.
I use food to get them to stand on the trailer if they are inclined to back off quickly. I do a lot of loading by myself and hang a bucket with some carrots or a bit of grain to get them to wait for me if needed. I never use it to get them on, I have seen that backfire a million times!
There’s a HUGE difference between rewarding a horse with a treat AFTER it loads and trying to bribe/lure the horse onto the trailer with grain. The problem is that the vast majority of people who use food for loading don’t understand the difference. I usually - but not always - give a treat after the horse loads and is secured in the trailer. Never, ever before. Using bribes to load works fine and dandy in a low-stress situation with a highly food-motivated/hungry horse. I need my horses to load and stand safely 100% of the time in all circumstances. Not when they feel like it.
A lot of people on this thread don’t seem to understand how rope halters work, but that’s nothing new here…I use them for daily work mostly because I can keep/use one halter in the barn aisle for all my horses and not worry about water or sun damage. A bonus is that I don’t need to switch equipment if a “learning opportunity” presents itself. 
My nice leather halters are used for traveling, shows, etc.
They actually sell a piece of hardware that eliminates the need to tie the knot. It’s called a halter hook. It goes on the tail end and has a hook for the halter loop.
I like my rope halters, but what I have really fallen in love with is the combo of rope halter + long, loop-end heavy lead rope. I happened across a Weaver Ecoluxe bamboo loop-end 12’ rope at a farm store one day a couple years ago, and I’ve been collecting them ever since. Lead ropes with heavy snaps bug me.
I’m sorry you believed I attacked you. I thought I was explaining my reasoning. Re-reading what I wrote, I’m kind of surprised you read it as an attack. Many people don’t tie the rope halters correctly, the end can poke their horse in/near the eye and that’s why they don’t like them. I was just asking you if maybe that was the case - it’s a valid question. Also, we’ll agree to disagree on using the butt bar to keep a horse from backing out of the trailer quickly. I’m not attacking you at all I’m just mentioning that we seemingly have different beliefs regarding groundwork. And that’s OK! I can only glean information from what you post and comment on that. The unfortunate part of message boards.
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