I mean the ones that sit back and thrash until something breaks.
Pretty much any horse will “test” the rope at some point. But the ones that panic and thrash themselves around, flip backwards, etc.? I’ve not met one yet that could be reformed to be truly safe while tied.
I get what you’re saying now.
They can be reformed. But it’s not like there is a “one size fits all” method for doing it. It depends on why they were thrashing or flipping in the first place.
But I’m derailing the OP’s whole thread. I’m kinda mindblown she has a weanling standing for 45 minutes tied.
Showing that cross ties weren’t the source of the problem. They were certainly making things worse in the situations you described! Was the general reaction a sort of “meh, it happens” when horses pulled back and broke the ties?
Every barn I have boarded at has had cross ties in daily use by multiple people. Horses breaking cross ties happened maybe a couple of dozen times in my 30+ years. Hunter/jumper barns included. As a percentage of cross tie use that is far closer to zero than it is to one percent.
Thinking about it, it seems the smaller barns had the majority of broken cross tie incidents. Maybe it was less likely someone would point out a potential problem to the human who didn’t know, before the incident occurred.
I should probably admit that I deliberately train my horses to stay on the crossties when spooky things happen - dragging noisy things around, rolling stuff down the aisle at them, etc. And they graduate to standing in cross ties without the ties hooked up - until another horse comes in the barn.
My personal hard line for tying is absolutely never, ever use a bungee to tie a horse. I watched a horse sit back against brand new bungee ties and realized that we couldn’t use the quick release snaps without turning them into dangerous projectiles, and the same thing would happen if they broke (if anything broke). That horse eventually got pulled off her feet when she attempted to shift her feet to pull harder. It seemed like it took a long time to happen, but was probably less than a minute.
That particular school was very “meh” about the jail breaks, yes. It killed me.
On the bungee ties, we agree 100%. Those things shouldn’t exist. They are incredibly dangerous.
The worst about aisle ties is if you have, say, 3 in a row and the center horse gets loose. Now he’s panicked and trapped - likely he will try to run by one of the other two horses and either clothesline himself and freak the other horse out who then gets loose and… and… and…
I agree that aisle ties are NOT my favorite.
@Montanas_Girl (and anyone else), in the spirit of this thread, do you mind sharing a bit about what you’d do to teach a baby to give to pressure? Before tying? Perhaps I missed it but I think it would be educational for OP and others to talk about this.
I see a lot of people say things like “don’t tie until they learn to give to pressure” or “I hold the other end of the rope until they have learned to give to pressure consistently”, but not much about HOW to teach that or what signs to look for before moving on to tying. I know it’s not something that can be taught on a message board, but I think it’s something that gets glossed over on a lot of these discussions.
I’m not a fan of aisle ties, but it’s the most common setup in my area. I’ve done a fair amount of tacking up in a stall, and prefer it, but that’s not always available/allowed.
Agree 100% about bungee ties and know a horse who lost an eye, and its ability to stand tied, when one broke.
BTW… the 2 instances of pony in the aisle, mare was cross tied. The other 2 involved the trailer and one was entirely my fault - I used the wrong lead rope on the Blocker tie. I asked her to do the right thing (self unload) and she hit the end of the lead when it got stuck on the Blocker. Again, thank heavens for halters that will break, and a good mare who came to me when I called her name, rather than running into the road, and stayed still long enough for me to grab her broken halter from the trailer and fasten it around her neck. I went back to using the velcro ties in the trailer after that. She never learned to set back “just because” when tied, cross or single.
Sure!
I start with basic halter/leading training. I use a butt rope on newborns and do not pull on their faces until they understand that “follow the human” is step one.
The first pressure/release lesson I give is in the stall, with mom right there (usually eating her dinner) for reassurance. I use literally just the weight of a couple of fingers on the noseband of their foal slip. I will hold ever so gently - don’t even fully close my fingers - until the foal turns its head even 1/2". Immediately (this is key!) release the pressure, give a sing-song “Good boy/girl!”, and rub baby’s neck. That’s it for day one. I do that maybe 3 times the next day, and the next. Once the foal understands that, I will add a lead rope and start asking for a step to the left or right in response to very gentle pressure. I build on each day’s lesson until the foal is happily leading a couple of circles each direction in the stall and stopping when I stop (“whoa” comes a bit later).
When we’re good in the stall (usually takes a couple of weeks, max, with my good-minded babies), then I will start working on the same skills out in the pasture. I keep a butt rope on the baby just in case, but I almost never need it by that point. We walk little circles around mom/the other horses and gradually work up in time and distance as appropriate. My very general rule of thumb is no more than 1 minute of attention span is expected per month of age.
Once leading is going well, I will start on “whoa” as a true concept and ask baby to stand while I’m grooming, handling feet, etc. Usually, by a couple of months of age, I can loop the lead rope around a post and pseudo-tie the baby for basic grooming. After that, I will start working on a “head down” command. I start with the palm of my hand and later progress to downward pressure on the lead rope. At first, I am just looking for the foal to not push upwards against my palm, which is their natural reflex. That will build into them dropping their head as low as I’d like with just a gentle downward pull on the lead.
Around weaning age, I will start working on more lateral pressure exercises using a rope halter. I find that the rope halter gives a clearer signal and faster release than a flat leather or nylon one does. I stand at the foal’s shoulder and apply gentle sideways-and-back pressure on the lead. As soon as the foal starts to soften, release and praise. Eventually, a “two finger” pressure from this direction will bring the nose all the way around to where I am standing by the shoulder.
Once I have both lateral and downward softness, I feel ready to start working on more body control. I teach my youngsters to move a shoulder or hip laterally on command. Usually this starts with a flag - it makes a lot of motion and noise and makes my intention clearer. Very soon, just a pointed glance and a cluck will elicit the desired response. This is important because almost all babies will at least contemplate leaning back against the rope at some point while tied. When I see them start to move back, I look at their hip and cluck, they step forward, and we start ingraining that reflex to getting to the end of the rope.
After these basics are in place, and only then, will I start actually tying a youngster. Most of mine get here sometime in the middle of their first winter. I still stick with the “minute per month of age” attention span rule and don’t ever set a baby up to fail. And I never tie while introducing something new, even with very solid adult horses.
It is 1000% easier to train than untrain/retrain.
That may be more of a novel than you or the OP wanted! There are many roads to Rome, so I am not saying this is the only way. But, after being exposed to a wide variety of methods and traditions, from hunters to race horses to ranch horses and everything in between, I’ve settled on this system, and it works for me.
This is perfect!
Like I said, I think sometimes the basics get skimmed over. A lot of full grown horses may never have been taught these things either, or unlearned them. New horses in the barn always find ways to surprise you!
DD would take him back through the woods, up and down ravines, thru the creeks. Our neighbors have a business yard with tractors, backhoes, cranes, trailers, storage units, salvage materials. He liked to stop and spend time looking at everything. This became an everyday thing and he looked forward to it. Geese on the pond, deer in the woodlines.
This is so ideal – horse brain embeds the idea that ‘weird’ things, smells and sounds are benign, very early, as their inner impression of the world takes shape.
I think one of the biggest training challenges that can come our way in a horse, any age, gender, background, is that they never learned at a deep, intrinsic level, that new/different doesn’t mean PROBABLY A PREDATOR or I MIGHT GET LOST FROM MY HERD – AND DIE !!!
There are pro trainers who say that a lack of this at an early age can produce issues that are permanent. That may be possible to work around, but that will always limit the horse’s usability by any rider, later on.
I have used the Blocker tie ring a lot on my last two horses. I got them both at about long yearling age so I didn’t do the early work and it was obvious they weren’t worked with enough.
Horse before my current one was just the claustrophobic type. It took a lot of work but the tie ring defused so much of the panic and she finally understood the task at hand…giving to pressure and standing tied. The current horse was jusr a hot and spicy youngster. React first, ask questions later. Now I seldom use the tie ring. She has the concept. I do keep one for trailer tying. I use a 12 foot rope.
I have never understood the idea of using something that will break. Well I understand people think it will be safer…I don’t think so.
In the situations I described above, the breakable leather halter probably saved my horse serious injury.
People use “baling twine” a lot, but now that it’s almost always plastic, it’s a lot less breakable. But at the same time, if you’re using something breakable, you don’t want it to be easily breakable. The zip ties @Montanas_Girl described above were marketed heavily, but don’t seem to be used much now.
When I still had my trailer, I would not trailer a friend’s horse in a rope halter. Rope halter plus a Blocker ring would have been ok, I think.
I often trailer in a rope halter, but I tie using one of these:
These things pop open if you look at them sideways, I have discovered, so I don’t suggest them for tying elsewhere. But I like having the peace of mind that, in an accident, my horses will be untied but still wearing a halter and lead.
I refuse to trailer in a rope halter. WAY too many places and things for that halter to get stuck on, and without someone there to bail the horse out. Not worth the risk to me.
Well, I have a stock combo trailer, so, once the horse is tied up, there is nothing available for them to get stuck on.
If I’m going to haul loose, I do generally use one of their leather halters. But, since my halters are really good quality, it’s unlikely they’d break if the horse got caught up, either, so that’s kind of a false sense of safety on my part.
Grundy has one halter with a fuse on it, because I don’t think she’s big enough to break a real halter, either.
And you’d be shocked what they can get the halter stuck on. I had one get stuck on the tie ring on the side of the trailer. Got the angle just right. Rope halters are honestly super dangerous. Unless they fit perfect and are knotted tight, I’ve seen them end up in horse’s mouths, under their chin, etc.
Poorly used/fitted halters are dangerous. That is not exclusive to rope halters by any means.
When I say there is nothing for my horses to get stuck on in my trailer once tied, I mean it. There are no parts of the trailer that project out into the horses’ space. Period. There are no tie rings. There are smooth loops of steel in the roof of the trailer to which the horses are tied, and even those are above ear height. It would take some serious contortions for a horse so get its halter all the way up there, and even then, there are no edges for them to catch. When the divider is removed and the horse is loose, the situation is different.
Even then, if one of my horses were to get caught, they’d in all likelihood assume they were “tied” there and just hang out waiting for rescue. Another value of horses well conditioned to give to pressure. 
My palomino once somehow ripped a (closed front) blanket liner enough to get a front leg through the neck hole of the liner but not the turnout sheet she was wearing over it. When my farm sitter arrived for morning feeding, she was just hanging out on three legs waiting to be rescued. She was 3 at the time.
Rope halters are tools that, used properly, have minimal risks associated with them. Having observed multiple horses owned by other people who learned how to pull back and break the fuses on their breakaway halters to avoid loading, or being led anywhere they didn’t want to go, then galloping off free repeatedly, more than once into traffic, I can easily make the argument that those halters should never be used for anything other than turnout. But of course I don’t say that, because every tool has its place.
It doesn’t matter if it’s fitted perfectly, I’ve seen top-of-the-line rope halters stretch when a horse really sets back on them. I will not tie solid with one, for that reason. The knots tighten and make that perfectly fitted halter suddenly looser than you thought. The rope itself also stretches more than I like.
I’m familiar with teaching horses to give to pressure. This is how the Old Man was found in the pasture. It’s a fly sheet. He had been shuffling around like this, basically front feet tied to his head and blindfolded. Fly sheet entirely undamaged.
Horses are still horses, though. A seasoned horse can make a mistake or panic, and having nothing that will give way (not saying snap and release them) is a danger that is entirely avoidable. Rope halters should not be used unless the horse is under DIRECT supervision. I guarantee there is a way your horses could find something to catch their halter on on your trailer. It doesn’t have to protrude in order for them to do so. If that’s a risk you’re ok with, you do you! I am not ok with it, and will do me. 
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