07/11/2025
Roping feet.
One of the most useful skills to get really good at. There’s a lot of nuance to it and I have found it challenging to get better and better at it. Less is more. There is so much that a horse has to do to get itself prepared to pick up a foot. We take it all for granted, we’ve learned to believe that it is easy because we spend so much time around horses who have filled it in for us. To ask a horse to sacrifice a foot, is to ask them to turn over their right to freedom of movement, and therefore, to sacrifice their safety.
It’s a big ask.
You can teach a horse to start to prepare by releasing a signal as they start to prepare to move the other three feet and get square. In order for a horse to pick up the right hind, they need to balance their load on the three remaining feet. Therefore, reward them for preparing to shift balance and take the load. It’s not really about the foot you want to pick up Teaching a horse to get prepared by getting square is useful for everything you’ll ever do with them, so you can start that right here.
That’s probably the most important step. Getting one to start thinking about preparing. You could spend all your time doing that and still be gaining ground. Just show them a little at a time and before you know it, they start looking like society horses.
You don’t have to work at it with a lariat. You can do it with just a cotton rope looped around a leg.. that’s how I like to start it, and then on the real worried types, I like to spend time getting them gentle with a rope.
It’s worth working on and it’s interesting to see what changes in the horse along the way.
