A Rude Awakening After Tying One On
Last Spring I had a holistic veterinarian come out to do some bodywork on my horse; that experience ended up having a profound impact on both she and I in more ways than one. Unfortunately, it took some time for her thoughts on rope halters to really get tied into my thinking and horse handling.
The morning of that first bodywork session, as I was standing next to my horse and tying on her rope halter, I might have been thinking that this vet with a natural focus would be impressed that I knew my "natural" stuff. I secured the halter to Sage's head while this vet quietly looked on, in admiration I supposed.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Imagine my utter shock when just a few minutes later she proceeded to remove that rope halter and replace it with a regular, thin, nylon halter with little weight to it before she would begin working on my horse. She made the casual comment at the time that she really was not a big fan of rope halters because the horse's face is very sensitive and full of nerves.
What? To put it mildly, I was stunned. My newly discovered holistic vet was not into natural horsemanship? Up until that moment, I had used the rope halter on my horse almost exclusively while my normal heavy nylon halter hung in the tack room collecting dust. I had never read, nor heard, one disparaging word about rope halters.
What Ever Became of Whispering?
The veterinarian from that day, Dr. Suzan Seeyle, D.V.M., of Quantum Vet based in Yelm, WA, has this to say:
"Rope halters are very lightweight, which is nice, but the knots that are positioned in various places and number are very harsh and severe on the sensitive face of the horse. Rope halters can certainly demand a horse's immediate attention, but is communication through pain really what we are after? When was screaming more effective than whispering?"
The dictionary definition of natural is "being in accordance with or determined by nature; having or constituting a classification based on features existing in nature". Thus, there is nothing "natural" about putting a halter of any kind on a horse because NO halter exists for the horse in nature. But, domesticated they have been, and so we do need a way of controlling that head and its attached large body for safety, handling, and training purposes.
Dr. Seeyle explains that "rope halters came along with the commercialization of natural horsemanship. The term and its many commercialized offshoots have lost the true meaning of what it started out as. People buy rope halters marketed as "natural" when there is nothing natural about them. Last year I removed a rope halter from a horse that had been left on for a little over 24 hours and had already worn holes through his skin and soft tissues [see picture of lesions]. My own personal preference is a halter I found after actively searching out a lightweight, comfortable halter for everyday use and to use in my groundwork. These are lightweight, comfortable for the horse, and easy to get on and off with a break away fitting." [Note: rope halters were never designed (or marketed) to be left on a horse unattended! If you simply must leave a halter on a horse for some reason, make sure it is one designed for that purpose!]
The halter that Dr. Seeyle is referring to is one made by a friend of mine, Jeaniene Jones, from Safe Horse Halters. Her halters have no knots, can be custom sized, have lightweight hardware, and come in both breakaway and non-breakaway models. This is what I, too, have now switched to and use exclusively. Sometimes now I may have to "whisper" for longer than the quick "scream" of a rope halter, but I do believe my horse ultimately respects me just as much, if not more, for the lack of pain in our conversations, and the lessons probably stay with her longer.
A Hard Habit to Break
I wish I could say that I tossed my rope halter in the barn trash that day of first meeting Dr. Seeyle, but nope; I did not give up my rope halter that easily. I admit that I liked the responses I got from my horse. I wonder how many trainers and horse owners, however well-meaning, get results from their horses while wearing a rope halter but cannot get those same results with a regular halter. I certainly didn't think I would or could, and so I didn't even try for the longest time.
I made sure that the rope halter was loose enough not to have the knots pressing on her face, but that was because of what I read about not "dulling" a response; I didn't think they actually caused pain or could do damage. How naive and unflatteringly brainwashed I was.
Continued:
Why was it so difficult to give up this rope halter after someone pointed out the obvious that it could be a conduit of pain? Because for years I had learned and heard how wonderful and natural these rope halters were. Now, though, someone had come along who was making me question all of that, and it was difficult to go against the grain of what I had known about haltering for several years. I had to take some time to purge my brain of all the videos I had watched, the clinics I had listened to, and the voices of all the trainers out there much more experienced than myself.
I was ever so slowly weaning myself off of my rope halter when one day it became overtly apparent that I needed to just go cold-turkey. I was doing some groundwork with Sage, and she must have felt particularly frisky on this cool morning as she dipped her head then flung it with abandon and a buck. She must not have remembered that her person was attached to the other end of the lead rope; looking directly in her eyes as the halter dug into her face, I saw the pain-based emotion rippling in those big brown pools. This was not self-disciplining, or self-teaching, or learning to give to pressure; I was holding the end of the lead rope, I had tied it on her face. I was the cause of her pain, even without intentionally pulling the rope taught.
Extreme example? Maybe. But how rare and unusual is it, really, for a horse to spook or want to buck and frolic with glee, restrained or not? A bit of exuberance or spooking means the horse is automatically reprimanded on its own with varying degrees of severity, most of which you at the end of the line will have little control over. Do you really want your horse to associate pain with working with you?
No Safety Mechanism and No Warning
I cannot remember the last time I had been so surprised at my own ignorance and how I had succumbed so easily to marketing because of the word "natural". Had I really thought all along that she was so unintelligent as to not equate my holding the lead rope with the knots pressing into the side of her head? Unfortunately, the answer was yes. I had bought into the messages and promotion of these halters as communication tools because if the horse behaved, the release of pressure from the knots taught them what was expected. The more I started examining the whole idea of communicating with a device that could inflict pain and damage, even unwittingly, I felt misled as well as disheartened by having been so easily sucked into the marketing of something called "natural".
Just as its not the gun but the person pulling the trigger that makes a gun dangerous, so it is with the tools we use on our horses. Remember, though, that there is no "safety" on a rope halter. You may not pull or exert any force or pressure at all - but your horse will. No warning, though, came with my fancy $100 big-name-clinician rope halter and lead rope.
Perhaps in experienced and very gentle hands, and tied correctly, the rope halter is a communication device and not a control device, but how many people out there have actually taken the time to make sure that their rope halter is fitted and tied correctly and are gentle with it to the extreme?
Respecting The Lightness of a Fly
In my research to write this article, what I kept finding as I scanned and Googled the internet was simply that the rope halter was an effective means of communication (except for a few horror stories in forums of horses tied up in rope halters or the halters left on them for extended periods of time). But are you simply communicating that you can inflict pain and discomfort on this animal with minimal effort? I had been convinced by natural horsemanship books and videos before buying my halter that the horse is teaching himself with these halters because of the release from pressure. The word pain was never actually used the words used were "discomfort" and "pressure".
A horse is so sensitive as to be able to feel the landing of a fly that weighs less than the weight of a few average sized raindrops. I have made many mistakes with my horse over the years, but perhaps not respecting the lightness of a fly has been one of the biggest mistakes of all.
I am a big believer now that there is something inherently wrong with putting something on that sensitive face that can inflict pain for the sake of control and all the while calling it "natural".
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About Eleanor
Eleanor Van Natta is a wife, a mother of two little girls, and a caretaker to one dog, one cat, and one horse. She has a Zoology degree from the University of CA, Davis, and prior to becoming a stay at home mom she had a career in environmental and pharmaceutical sales. You can find more of her writing on her blog Sage By Nature.
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