SAFELY GET A HORSE IN A PASTURE 🐴

Going out to get your horse out of the herd in the pasture and felt like it was a really challenging experience. All the horses seem to be rushing the gate right when you're trying to get your horse out and you're feeling like it's difficult to catch him and it's difficult to get him out of that gate safely. If that's you then this video is going to help you out with that. I'm going to be breaking down four tips to help you catch your horse safely and effectively. So I'm going to be approaching and catching Scarlet who's this mare right here and as I go to approach her there's a couple things I want to be aware of. First off I want to watch the herd's body language for that particular day. So today all the horses are grazing, they're nice and relaxed and comfortable so I can approach nice and confidently knowing that everybody's calmed down. If you come out on a cool fall day or maybe your horses have spooked from something for instance and they're running around and they're excited then I want to make sure that I keep an upright posture and I protect my personal space and I'm just really aware so I stay safe or maybe I need to even wait outside the gate for a minute till the herd calms down. The next thing that I want to be aware of as I go to approach is the body language of the horses that are next to the horse I'm going to catch. So just things to be aware of as you go up. So I'm going to walk up to Scarlet and put her halter on here. Now that we've approached our horse our second tip is we want to halter him. When we go to halter our horse we want to start off by putting the lead line over our horse's neck and holding close to the pole. This is going to give us more control when we put the halter on. What a lot of us do instead of doing this is we try to put the halter on by scooping our horse's nose in and your horse may be relaxed and may be okay with that but they also may not. They may be down trying to get grass here eating the grass and you're trying to get their head up you're trying to get this halter on and you're just not in a very safe position and you're off I'm going to take my lead put it over my horse's neck slide it down so it's nice and close to her pole here and then I'm going to apply a little pressure and lift her head up. Now I'm going to put my hand on the bridge of her nose to give me a little bit more control turn her head towards me and then I'm going to scoop her nose into the halter and secure my halter. Before I go to lead my horse off I want to make sure that my line is organized and folded in half like this. What I don't want to do is have my lead line in a coil like that if I have it in a coil my horse goes to spook that lead line can tighten down on my hand and I can end up in a dangerous position where I can get injured or dragged by my horse. So instead I want to fold it in half like this make sure I'm in a position where if my horse goes to pull the lead line slides out. So now I'm going to go ahead and lead her up and as I go to lead up this is our third tip as we go to lead our horse to the gate we want to be aware of the other horses that are around us be ready to correct a horse if they go to bite our horse. Remember that we're our horse's leader and also our horse's protector so when we go out of the pasture if we have a horse that goes to bite our horse we're going to drive them away and we're also going to stay aware of our surroundings so if we have any tractors or equipment coming up in the barn we want to make sure that we are aware of where they're going so that we are in a better position and safer with our horse. My fourth and final tip is leading your horse out of the gate. So we can see there's a few horses next to the gate here and I'm going to go up there and send them away so that I'm in a safe position to take Scarlett out of the gate. So I'm going to walk ahead of Scarlett once I'm at my gate I'm going to take my lead line here and put it over my arm so my hands are free and this way if Scarlett goes to leave I can still catch my lead like this and I'm going to unclip my gate catch my lead line and then I'm going to send her around me so I'm going to point out here with my right arm open my gate with my left hand watch where the other horses are send her through have her turn around and then I would close the gate and again I put my lead line over my arm here while I fasten the gate back up and then I can take her in. I hope these four tips were help to you as you go to get your horse out of the pasture. If you're a beginner I know this can be a little bit of an overwhelming process but the more that you do it the more that you have this kind of system in place the more you're going to develop positive habits for you and your horse in the future and this type of work will become easier and easier for you to do. I'd love to hear what your experience has been bringing your horses in from the pasture if you've struggled with anything or just if you have anything else to add to this video you can leave me a comment below. Keep enjoying your horsemanship journey, keep growing and learning and I'll see you in the next video.