# Patience Pole vs. Arena Wall?



## Drifting (Oct 26, 2011)

Personally I'd rather the pole. I've had a horse that did not have the patience to stand tied, and reared at the wall. He wasn't pulling back, he was just rearing forward - mad that he was there. Then hung himself because of it. I couldn't get to him because the wall was in the way, had to wait for him to figure out how to get back up on his own.


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## Chevaux (Jun 27, 2012)

My thought is that if the primary reason you're doing this exercise is in preparation for the shows then what you do now mimics what your guy will expect to experience at the shows. So, if you are tying on the long side of the trailer then the wall exercise is more useful; if you are tying on the corner of the trailer then the pole is more useful; if there is a possibility he will be tied on the corner or the long side on different occasions then both wall and pole exercises should be used.

P.S. Kudos for being proactive in your training and anticipating what your guy will need as part of his education.


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## greenhaven (Jun 7, 2014)

A rearing horse could get caught in either situation, so close monitoring will be a must for the first few sessions.

A patience "pole" is sort of a catchall term for somewhere safe to tie and leave your horse. Frankly, I would get him used to both situations, including the sheep scrambling about. If he can get "sacked out" by sheep, just about anything else will be a piece of cake, lol!

In either situation just be sure he is tied higher than his withers.


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## sonib82 (Jul 24, 2015)

Yes, the sheep provide for a great sacking out opportunity - lol. I regularly walk him back there so he has a chance to see them and we do in-hand work. I will say though - they have startled me before when I've walked by since they were hidden in the trees and I didn't even realize they were there!

Maybe we will build up to the poles. I think the experience would be good but after I'm more comfortable with him tied up in the indoor. We've only done that a couple times. Either way, he'll be tied up higher than the withers on a quick release.

Thanks!


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## Smilie (Oct 4, 2010)

Tie him first, where there is less of a chance of him getting in trouble, esp when left by himself
Area wall, with a safe tie ring, works great, allowing him to see activities. 
THat does not mean arena walls made of some paneling, etc. but a solid wall, with no place to hang up a foot, pull loose, ect
A horse that rears when tied, is not ready to be tied solid, as he is not 100% on giving to pressure, and any horse can hang himself, tied incorrectly
I always start by tying a horse up in a stall, as mine have rubber matts and commercial stall fronts. This is part of their program, when any training starts.
Once ahorse is good on patiently standing there, alone, for extended periods, I have no trouble tying them over night on trail rides, to my horse trailer at one day shows, or in a stall, at a show with stabling, inbetween classes, so I don't have to un saddle, yet the horse can relax, eat and drink
Before expecting him to stand, with sheep etc, and other distractions, get him solid on tying first, JMO. Just like getting basics on a horse, in his comfort zone, before going off down the trail or taking that horse to a show


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## Cherie (Dec 16, 2010)

A horse should tie anywhere. He should eventually tie quietly at either place.

I would prefer the patience pole with some important qualifiers. I am pretty picky about where I tie any green horse. My broke horse -- shoot, they tie anywhere to about anything that is solid. They have all been through the tying routine until I know they are 100% OK with being tied anywhere.

Green horses? Well, I won't even tie one to my pipe arena fence. It is over 5 feet high welded pipe with 6 cables below the top pipe. Green horses will paw and sometimes hang their front feet through the cables. The cable is rough enough to really knock the skin off a horse. It will not injure one seriously, but I have better places to tie one, so green horses do not get tied there for a good while.

So, I will just tell you where I WON'T tie a green horse.

1) I will not tie one to anything that could be moved or torn up by a horse setting back. So gates, portable panel pens, anything like that. If I could drag it off with my pickup truck, I won't tie a horse to it.

2) I won't tie to any fence that a horse can get it front legs through. That eliminates a lot of well-made fences like my welded pipe arena. Trailers are not a safe place until a horse is well trained to tie. I bought a really nice spoiled horse at the sale one night that I spent a month doctoring because it had set back, fallen over and got its front legs caught under a trailer. 

3) I won't tie to a post, pole or tree that a green horse can walk around and wind itself up on. A good friend tied a yearling to a post, went into the house for a few minutes and came back to find her laying there with a broken neck. She wound herself up, ran out of rope, pulled back with her nose around the post and broke her neck right there. I'm not sure she could have done anything had she been standing right there. 

4) I won't tie to anything smooth (like a wall) if there are not two tie rings about 6-10 feet apart. Then, I can run the lead-rope through one ring and tie it off to the second ring. Without this arrangement, you could be standing right there and could not release a horse that was hung up and thrashing around until it killed or badly injured itself. 

So, at my barn, there are only 2 places I tie a green horse. We have 3 big 'retired' oilfield tanks. Two have been made into tack rooms and one is still a big grain bin. The 400 barrel tanks are 20 feet tall and 12 feet in diameter. They weigh several tons each. These are big, honkin' tanks that used to hold over a semi load of grain each. 

They have horseshoes welded to them about 7 feet off of the ground. There are at least 3 horseshoes welded to each tank -- about 8 feet apart. I run a long lead rope through one horseshoe and tie it off to another one. No matter what kind of trouble a horse can get into, a person can easily release it. 

My old show barn in Colorado, had a solid wood wall next to the tack room. It had the same arrangement with two tie rings 10 feet apart. I could tie 2 broke horses or one green one the same way I do on my tanks. 

My preferred way to tie a horse is to have a long nylon rope hanging down from a tree limb. The snap should be a SWIVEL bull-snap about 4 feet above the ground. Green horses will go around and around until they learn to stand still, so it is very important to have a good swivel in a snap. With a rope hanging from a tree, the horse cannot paw and bang its legs on a solid wall and there is just nothing it can get in trouble with. I even have one of these tree ropes with a ring tied way up high and a really long rope run through the ring and tied off to the tree. I have never had to release a horse tied to it, but I could if I had to.

A patience pole would be OK if there was a way the horse could not wind itself up on the pole. I have seen them with a loose ring at the top that swiveled as a horse walked around the pole. I have seen them with an extension that a rope dropped down from. This makes them a lot like the ropes tied down from a tree limb.


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## sonib82 (Jul 24, 2015)

Cherie said:


> A horse should tie anywhere. He should eventually tie quietly at either place.
> 
> I would prefer the patience pole with some important qualifiers. I am pretty picky about where I tie any green horse. My broke horse -- shoot, they tie anywhere to about anything that is solid. They have all been through the tying routine until I know they are 100% OK with being tied anywhere.
> 
> ...


Thanks Cherie. The patience poles at my barn are actually the pole (8 feet tall maybe) and a cross bar on the top that rotates. You could actually tie up two horses on one pole as there are chains coming down from the cross bar at the top to tie off.

This makes it so a horse could not wrap themselves around the pole, but also acts as mini hot-walker, where it would give him some freedom to walk around (not so fond of that feature). 

Using a tree is not an option at my current barn, so it's the arena wall, a metal hitching post (I feel he could rear up onto that), a cement wall that's the backside of the manure dump pile, and the patience poles. I've used the cement wall before too, but the area around that is not completely clear, so I don't think it would be good for training. 

The arena wall is solid and not anything that he could get hung up on. I do have multiple rings to tie off on as well, but I'm sure you could pull one of them off the wall with your pick-up truck if you wanted to.

I think I might be able to a tie up on the patience pole where I could release him from a bit of a distance - similar to the setup you have on the tree you tie to. I'll have to try and figure that out.

Let me ask you a question though - if a horse pulls back and is really panicking, would you release them from that immediately? Or see if they would figure it out for themselves and give in? I've been fortunate enough with training my two other youngsters that I've had where I never had a situation like that come up. The colt I have now is pretty sensible, but it's always something I wonder about when tying up a green horse. 

Thanks!


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## greenhaven (Jun 7, 2014)

sonib82 said:


> Let me ask you a question though - if a horse pulls back and is really panicking, would you release them from that immediately? Or see if they would figure it out for themselves and give in?


I am not cherie, but I would give him some time to figure it out. I would only release if the horse is in real physical trouble, as in hung up or has fallen and cannot get up. This is why close monitoring is a MUST at first. Emotional trouble doesn't count. :wink: Tying is as much (probably moreso) a head game as it is a physical acceptance of restraint and separation, so if a panicky horse is fine physically he will not learn to accept it until he has had a chance to work through it. If he is released during his distress this compounds the idea that his panic gets him what he wants and thus reinforces his unacceptable behavior.


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## Woodhaven (Jan 21, 2014)

Some arena walls have a wooden partion/lining along the inside of the arena wall and it is about 4 to 5 ft high and there is a space at the top between it and the actual wall of the arena and if this space is open a horse can rear and get a front foot down inside this space which is about 4" wide. If this happens a horse can break a leg if they get the foot and leg down inside that space. I have heard of this happening but never seen it myself.
I would check the wall of the arena and make sure there is no places that a horse could get a leg caught in. Some arenas have a board on top of the wooden part so there is no space there to get hung up on.


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## Saddlebag (Jan 17, 2011)

My preference is to teach the horse to stand still while at liberty. When he stands without moving a foot as I take one step away, he's rewarded with a small treat. The goal is that he will wait patiently while I make a huge circle around him and then can walk out the gate and return with a treat. The gate can be the stickler as the horse then wants to follow but I just place him back to where he was and he soon figures it out. It's not about a horse being patient. It's instincts kicking in that it can't escape a predator when tied. The horse will become agitated or shut down. A horse at liberty knows it can rush off and therefore stays. Rarely do I have to tie them but it's a non issue.


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## COWCHICK77 (Jun 21, 2010)

I wouldn't be afraid to tie to the pole. Trainers have been using them well before Clinton Anderson started selling them.
We used to tie rowdy 2 year old colts to them. Yes, they can move around, rear up, and be fussy but I have never had a horse get hurt on one. Not saying it can't happen but I've never seen it.
Any how, in my opinion, if they move around and fuss they kind of wear themselves down and eventually figure out it doesn't get them anywhere. Sometimes tying to a wall with a fussy horse they get to pawing from the frustration of not being able to move much and they learn to paw IF you don't take care of that habit. Later when you tie to a trailer they will paw the hubcaps off your wheels 

If it was me, I'd use the pole first then tie to the wall.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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