Revisiting the importance of hobble training your horse

I tied Chief up and moved all of the loose wire away from the trail after our close encounter with it.

I mentioned earlier this week encountering a roll of barbed wire on the trail during the Grand Canyon ride.

The wire was obviously not there (IN the trail) when the trail was marked, but somehow it ended up right on the trail – maybe some cows or deer drug it over.  The reason we were going on this new trail was so that we couldn’t disturb the cattle in Lookout Canyon.

About four riders ahead of me was Cheryl Johnson.  Her horse was the first one to get tangled in the wire.  She was also right on the trail.  We had just come up a narrow, steep climb under heavy pine tree cover so the light was not good.  I didn’t yet know that is why Cheryl was off of her horse — who had just sustained a puncture in the lower leg from the wire….anyway, as soon as Chief got tangled up in the wire and began dragging one of the rolls of it he instantly stopped and stood still.  I told him to “HO”, hopped off dropping the reins and ran around to his back legs.  He was standing bearing weight on all four feet and until I picked up a hind leg to remove the wire, he didn’t budge.

Other riders commented about what a good boy he was.  He really did handle the situation very well.  The reason he handled it well is because he’s been hobble trained, rope trained, sacked out – you name it.  I do all of those basic training things with all of my endurance horses prior to taking them anywhere in public.  This of course, is no guarantee that a horse won’t panic and freak out but it definitely reduces the chances of it happening.

I really feel that hobble training is super important.  Not just for an endurance horse, but for any horse.  It really can save their life.  Yours too.  Just think, had Chief panicked and ran the wire would have chased him and we may have run through the barbed wire fence that the trail was paralleling to the right side of us, or he may have crashed into a tree, branches or other horses in a panic.  Or just gotten horribly wrapped up and gotten ripped up and shredded from the wire.

Hobbling teaches a horse to not panic when they become caught in something and to wait to be rescued.

I have done a post on this topic previously but thought this would be a good time to go over it again.  As soon as ride season settles down a bit this fall or early winter I’ll spend some time with all of my horses doing a little bit of reinforcement work with the horses – including hobbling them.  Chief may have gotten a good reinforcement lesson at the ride last week (ha) – it never hurts to reinforce these things on a regular basis though.

Here is a link to the previous post I did about hobble training.