A Recipe for Horse Rope-a-Dope Casserole

Once upon a time, somebody asked "How in the world would you train a horse to hobbles without breaking his legs?"

The answer lies below. Enjoy.

The Recipe

Well, a good way to start is to sack 'em out, using whatever is your personal preferred method. For me, that's a nice sweaty old wool saddle blanket. Other people prefer anything from short white buggy whips (the TTEAM approach) to blue plastic tarps.

Anyway, after the horse is sacked out, a good intermediary step is to get 'em rope broke.

Recipe follows.

Ingredients:

1 stout halter with fleece tubes on any part you can cover
20 ft. of 1/2-in. COTTON rope
1 sacked-out but not rope-savvy horse
1 good solid corral with nice deep sand
1 conscientious horse trainer
1 patio chair
1 nice leafy cottonwood tree
1 qt. jar of San Joaquin Summer Punch (1 part Martinelli's Apple Cider, 2 parts bubbly water, ~1 tablespoon lime juice), in cooler
1 good trashy beach book
OR
1 good buddy to gossip with & good supply of war stories

Directions

Apply rope to halter and affix halter to horse. Add horse/halter/rope mix to corral.

Gently apply small amounts of rope to random pieces of horse's body. Toss rope on ground and get out of corral.

Place patio chair in shade of cottonwood tree where conscientious trainer can observe how horse/rope/halter combination intermingles, tangles, races around & generally raises hell & dust. Plant butt of trainer in chair, crack out the Punch & beach book, or start swapping lies with good buddy, and sit there for several hours, keeping a weather eye out to determine if horse is getting too close to fence line. Haze horse away from fence line as needed. Continue until strange squealings, dust devils, and odd macrame combinations cease to issue from corral.

Lever butt out of chair, walk into corral, and unwrap rope from horse's off fore, near flank, tail, & crest. Toss rope straight up in air & allow it to land wherever on horse. If he doesn't blink an eye, exit corral, otherwise repeat until eye doesn't blink. Serves all breeds.

Couple days later, you take him out in the same corral, use about 6-ft. of the cotton rope to figure-eight around his forelegs above the knee & tie off with a square knot (yup, a square knot) and let him figure out that it's another case of hold still & the rope really won't kill you.

You'd Think I'd Have a Little Shame. . .

. . .but I'm going to tell you what happens to horse handlers who don't follow the recipe when it comes to hobbles.

(Somebody on rec.equestrian--Mary Lark?--said that "I once knew a horse that, while in hobbles could outrun his owner. ;-)" Whereupon I related what happened the first time I found myself in need of hobbling a Certain Arabian Who Shall Remain Nameless:

"<sigh> Dishface looked down, sniffed the hobbles, snorted, and took off hellbent for election across the corral in the best jackrabbit imitation I've ever seen. Whereupon I decided I really shouldn't have skipped fixing that Rope-A-Dope Casserole...

Last revision 8/6/97

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