The Art of Wrangling: Keeping Your Horses Close

Wrangling means working with horses on the trail or in camp including when they are not ridden or packed. It involves bringing them in at morning turning them out at night and managing their movement and use. If you ride out from your yard or trailer to the trailhead and back each day it is possible you may never get to know wrangling well. For those of us who overnight it or travel long distances and need to turn horses out overnight in unfenced areas wrangling becomes a necessary chore. And it can be much more than a chore you would rather have nothing to do with it but youre stuck with it. Horses get tangled in ropes hobblerubbed make you get up in the wee hours and work overtime get lost and need to be dug out of hidey holes you didnt know existed.

Like most things in life the decisions you make will greatly affect the outcome and good decisions using strategy and wrangling gear can at least make wrangling bearable. Calling wrangling an art might be a stretch but as the years go by the little tricks and techniques certainly make it feel artful. First well look at wrangling gear for handling your horses in the bush and then tips for packing in.
Hobbles
Hobbles are really the primary tool for temporary or overnight feeding. Relatively speaking a horse prefers being hobbled in an open field feeding and lounging about rather than being tied or confined to a stall or a small corral. How do I know? Just watch their mannerisms when turned out with hobbles in a grassy meadow. They roll shake themselves head out munching and forget they even have hobbles on.
Only hobble a horse that has established a trusting relationship with you through appropriate groundwork. Basic hobble training should take place at home and begin slowly. The horse should be accustomed to having ropes around his pasterns and cannon bones. Use extreme caution when introducing your horse to hobbles for the first time. The first few times you use hobbles place them for short periods say an hour or so until your horse gets used to them.
Between the collars hobbles can be narrower than six inches or as wide as 14 inches. Narrow hobbles are sometimes used to train a horse to groundtie but if they are feeding hobbles then they should be wider than six inches.