"hands free" rein positions

[Andy Carson]

I have been doing alot of slip scooping, which means I need to have my hands free while scooping. I have experimented with different ways of positioning the reins while I am doing this with varying degrees of success. I thought I would see what others use. I started using a rein position that I have seen people use alot while plowing (over the one shoulder and under the other armpit). This seems to work pretty well on straight aways but when I have to manhandle the scoop my body twists and i often give false signals. I have also seen some people use the reins under both armpits, but for me that just means the reins fall down… I have actually had the best luck with the reins on the back of my neck. It’s easy to get the reins on and off and it leaves my body free to twist and turn without giving false signals. I have not actually seen this very often though, and I wonder if this is extremely unsafe. I think to myself that I can just duck my head if she runs away, but if I am doing something noone else does it makes me nervous… What positions do you all use? Maybe I just have to spend a little more time getting used to the over the shoulder position…

[Marshall]

I don’t have an answer for your question but I am curious about some of the responses. This summer I will be using a walking cultivator in the produce patch.

[grey]

Could you maybe use line carriers on your horse(s) rump(s) to help keep the lines up under your armpits? Works for me on a single horse; haven’t tried it with a team.

Are you doing any steering at all with the lines or are you mostly maintaining speed and keeping the lines safe?

I can’t imagine holding the lines with my neck, but if it’s working for you…

[Andy Carson]

I am mostly maintaining speed and stopping, but I use them for turning too. I just lean my head to the right or left, rub my neck and cheek against the rein, and lean back gently to turn. It’s not a lot of force, but she’s really light in the mouth and it seems to work. I am sure I could not navigate cones with this approach, but when I’m slip scooping, it pretty repetative work. She pretty much knows the path after a couple rounds and doesn’t need tons of direction from me. I would guess that she’s 50% on autopilot as long as she can feel something on the other end of the lines… So really, when I turn her to turn left (for example) I am telling her WHEN to turn left rather than THAT she should turn left, if you know what I mean. I am also there to correct her if she does something wrong, but I can’t guide every step with the lines over my neck. Perhaps this is a downside of the reins over the neck approach? Maybe if I got more practice with the reins under the pits approach I would eventually learn to have “quieter armpits” and have a better ability to direct? How much manuverability is it reasonable to expect without your hands on the reins?

[Carl Russell]

Countymouse;16607 wrote:

… How much manuverability is it reasonable to expect without your hands on the reins?

I know that when I’m plowing with lines over one and under the other shoulder, I can get pretty subtle directions to the horses. While plowing is more exact perhaps than slip-scooping, I don’t really see how you could be getting so much action out of you body moving. It sounds like your method requires a lot of controlled movement to get the message though the lines, but what ever works for you is important.

I don’t think it is necessarily any more dangerous the use your neck than your shoulders. I just have become more comfortable with the shoulders.

Carl

[grey]

Personally, I think I’m too clumsy to get a lot of finesse out of steering without hands. I reach a certain level of refinement and then start leaning more and more heavily on verbal commands…. sometimes resulting in an almost constant stream of verbal commands, in lieu of saying anything with the lines. It depends on what exactly I’m doing.

[Andy Carson]

Just an update if anyone is curious… As spring has hit and I’ve got the chance to do some other work, I have pretty much abandoned the “reins of the neck” approach. After some practice, I have found that I can give a lot more accurate directions with one rein over the shoulder and one under the opposite armpit. I can see why this is a more popular position. I may still use the “reins over the neck” approach if I am doing very repeative tasks that do not require alot of direction and require me to move my body around alot, but most tasks seem to not require this… I still can’t get the “reins under both armpits” position to work for me, as the reins still tend to fall down over time (the slack side in turns drops a little every time), but not big deal as long as I have something that works.

[wvhorsedoc]

😮 As a very green teenager in the mid 40’s my summer job was to ride the mules dragging shocks of hay to the pole. One day the owner was a man short so they talked me into raking hay with a dump rake (wasn’t hard to convince me as I thought that made me equal to the older men). On the outside round of the meadow the rake pulled a large bumble bee nest out of the ground. When those bumble bees settled in on those mules things went crazy! The mules went to bucking and racing which caused the rake to hook a wheel on a fence post, which in turn snapped the tongue off at the attachment to the rake. Since my only other job with the mules was to plow up potatoes, the only way I knew how to hold the reins was over one shoulder and under the other arm. You can imagine what happened when the tongue broke off the rake. First thing I remember was my nose plowing a furrow across that meadow. When I finally got untangled all I remember was seeing several farm hands laughing so hard they couldn’t even talk. Took days to get over the bruised ego!

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