Today we are talking about the importance of tie time and how it will help to create patience in your horse.
Watch the video HERE or read the transcript below.
To instill patience, we need to ingrain tie time into our system every single time we ride or bathe a horse. Whenever we bathe a horse, they’re going to stand and dry. That creates a bare minimum of an hour to an hour and a half tied up while they’re drying. Then, if we come around the corner with the next horse that we just worked that we’re about to wash and the first one is still dancing and prancing and moving around, we’ll leave them for an additional hour while we work the next horse.
How To Tie Your Horse
Horses are like sharks; they’re always constantly meandering. When you see them in the field, you think they’re completely relaxed because they’re always meandering around. So when you take that meandering away a lot of times you’ll have the pawing and you’ll have the dancing around. We have a couple of places where we like to tie the horses, the main one is to an “H” hitching post. If you don’t have an H post, you can tie it from a line on the tree. You just toss the rope up over a branch and tie it. I like to put a swivel in it and you can tie the lead rope to the swivel. Ensure that wherever you tie your horse, they always have plenty of shade!
Again, all this stuff is just for the overall patience of the horse. So many people wait until they get to a trail and try to tie their horse up to the trailer for the first time. They don’t know why their horse can’t stand still. Or the first time the horse is asked to stand still is on the trailer en route to somewhere. If they are given the chance to spend time just hanging out, they will learn to relax.
Tying In Other Areas Of The Industry
One of the best horses you’re ever going to see is an Amish horse. Amish horses hang out in their stalls when they’re not working. They are clipped up with hay, they stand all day, and get turned out at night. The reason for this is they’re working horses so they have to be able to get hooked up to a load, go from Point A to Point B which could be a five-minute little walk, and then they have to stand still while the trailers are getting loaded and unloaded. During this they can’t move. They can’t be dancing around, they can’t be moving. So that’s how they work on patience.
It’s the same way with the cowboys and the ranch workers. The cowboy wakes up, puts his britches on, puts his saddle on the horse, and he’s either working or the horse is tied or hobbled somewhere hanging out waiting as he’s working. You’ll ride a good ranch horse and you’ll be cantering the second you stop and drop the reins they’re already going to sleep because they know they have to hang out and be patient all day long so they have an amazing ability to turn on and turn off.
What To Tie With
We’re going to take you around and show you some of the other places that we tie. You’re going to see the same theme: places that they can’t break or pop free from. We’re not tying with clips and we’re not tying with anything metal. We want them to have a rope halter on. We’re tying to things that they’re not going to move such as hitching posts, telephone posts, trees, and things like that. This way they learn out how to be patient if they’re out and about. We put fly spray on them and we like to have them in the shade if it’s in the summer and just let them relax.
Places We Like To Tie Our Horses To Create Patience
So follow me and we’ll go see places that we tie. Exhibit A is a quarter horse waiting to be worked today hanging out in our tack room until I get back to him. He got saddled up and he’s hanging out here waiting. Again, notice everywhere that we go there is shade and they’re tied to something that the horse can’t get away from. We can feel confident leaving him there and he’s going to become very patient just waiting around for us. This is one of the best ways to create patience in your horse.
On to the next one! So out here beside the Thunderdome, we have places and telephone poles to hook up to. The big thing is I don’t like to tie to 4″ x 4″s unless they’re concreted into the ground. So around the railing here they’re 6″ x 6″s and they’re concreted in. I have all the horses that I’ve already worked today hanging out here spending an hour or two getting some shade, spending some time outdoors.
I love to have the horses out here getting more patient, getting more relaxed, seeing traffic, seeing all the horses pass by them. On the deck they have people walking right past them and they hear horses getting worked in the round pen. All this stuff makes them easier and more forgiving horses
Guys thank you so much for reading this article on how to create patience in your horse. Trust me, tie your horse more and you’ll make a more forgiving horse.
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How Safe is your Horse?
Can you control every part of his body, even if he’s scared or unsure?
There are some specific things that I believe every horse should be able to do before he or she is considered completely safe to ride. So that you can see how safe your horse is to ride, I’ve created this FREE Horse Safety Checklist.
