How To Put A Rope Halter On A Horse

Hey guys, Jack from Slow Feed Nets.
Today I’m gonna show you how to put a rope halter on a horse.

Organize your rope halter

Before you even go to put the rope halter on your horse, the thing I recommend to anyone is to first take time to organize your rope halter.
It can be easy to confuse what part of your rope halter is what.
I remember when I use a rope halter for the first time and I was so confused on what exactly was happening.
Just like I said, the rope halter can be really easy to get disorganized and tangled.
So before you go get your horse, you’re just gonna want to make sure it’s untangled and it’s ready to put on the horse as soon as you get out in the field.
What I always recommend is find the noseband first.
And the way you find this is it just kind of looks like where nose would go.

And it is connected to the rest of the lead rope and the halter.

So once you find the nose band you can pretty much figure out everything else with the rope halter.
This long strap here is what’s gonna go over the horse’s ears.

And you’re gonna put this strap through this little hoop.

And this hoop will always be on the left side unless your rope halter was made wrong.
So this will be on the left side, you tie this through and so basically there’ s your rope halter.

Then you can go to catch your horse in the field.

Approach horses properly

You’d better approach them at their shoulder instead approach them walking directly behind them or directly in front of them.
Because you should give them the opportunity to see you.

If you were to walk directly behind them or in front of them, they actually have blind spots and they can’t see you.
So you may actually freak them out a little bit.

What’s more, you should let them know that you’re there, your intentions of catching them and then you can put the lead rope around their neck.

So you can capture them and make sure they’re not gonna walk away or run away from you.

Stand and relation to your horse

Since you’ve got your rope around the horse’s neck so they can’t walk off.
Now we’ll talk about where you’re supposed to stand and relation to your horse.

You never stand directly in front of them when you’re putting the halter on.
Because they can throw their head up and hit you in the face.
That’s happened to me. It’s painful.

They could rear and you could be in the way they could even jump for it and run into you.

So ideally you want to be standing next to them on the left side because that’s where you’re gonna tie the horse halter.

I would say stand away from the front leg because if they’re at a paw or kick out. Then, you’re gonna get kicked.
So if you stand to the side more so if they were to move that front leg you’re not gonna get stepped on our kick.

Put the rope halter on the horse

Now let’s talk about how to put the rope halter on the horse.
So once you’ve caught your horse and you have your lead rope around horse’s neck.

Then you can start by putting on the nose band around their nose like this.

You should make sure all your straps that they’re gonna stretch behind not the other way.
Because if it’s the other way your rope halter is twisted and you need to fix it.
Then you bring the strap over their ears and take that strap and slip it through the loop like this.

Before you tie it you’d better look at the halter and make sure that it’s all where it needs to be.
You should set just a few inches above the horse’s nostrils if you had a bridle on your horse.

If It’ s too low, the pressure is being applied in the wrong direction and the horse could slip over their nose and you could have trouble with that.

If it’s too high, once again the pressure is just not being applied in the right place so you may get a different response.

All in one, you make sure it’s in the right place.

Don’t forget to check the strap underneath.
Check that if you can fit four fingers in between the strap and the horse’s head.
Just to make sure it’s not gonna choke them.

Once you’ve checked your halter, it’s time to tie the knot.
And this probably the most difficult and intimidating thing about the rope halter.
But once you know how to do it it’s pretty simple.

So just stick your strap through the loop like this.

Then you take the end of it and bring it around behind the halter between the halter and the horse.

Bring the strap beneath the loop like this.

And bring it through.

If your horse is having an accident or you’re in an emergency and you need to get the rope halter off fast.
This kind of tie will be easy to get off your horse.

All you have to do is push up on the loop up here to loosen this knot and you can quickly untie it.

Now you can see with the knot tied like this, the rope is pointing towards the horse s neck rather towards their eye.

If you tie it the opposite way the rope will be sticking up the horse’s face.
When the horse run it’ll be hitting it in the face or eye.
It’s really unpleasant.

By now we still have such a long piece of rope something.

What you need to do is just tuck it behind the stripe, one more a tie.
So it’s not going to be smacking the horse in the face and that way they’re able to concentrate better.

Finally, you put a horse halter on your horse!

Now I wanna hear from you.
Do you agree with that we should approach our horses from side?
Or do you have a better way put a rope halter on a horse?
Leave a message below.