Nightlatches
The training article this month spoke to the issue of restarting a horse who may be “fresh” in the Spring. Often times those first rides are pretty active, especially if your horse hasn’t been ridden much in the past few months. I would like to remind you of a product that will help you through some of those early rides -- in fact, this will help you get safely through all of your rides.
This product alone gets more comments than perhaps any other, and the most common one is, “I love your nightlatch! It saved me when my horse…” This is usually followed by statements such as, “bucked with me,” “ran away with me,” “reared with me,” and most common “spooked with me.”
A nightlatch, or a grab strap, is a device that’s attached to the pommel of your saddle and is designed to help keep you safely IN the saddle. The nightlatch has been around a long time and has been used by cowboys during the process of breaking colts. The Indians used to tie a loop in their horses mane to which they could secure their hand and in effect created a “mane latch.”
The main purpose for having a nightlatch or grab strap is to help you stay aboard if your spooks or tries to do something that would typically unseat you or put your body off balance. This includes bucks, spins, rears, drop and whirls, runaways, and any other antic that your horse comes up with for which you’re unprepared.
One of the reasons that they work so well is that they allow you to get a closed grip on them. When you grab hold of your saddle horn or the front of your English saddle, you do so with what is known as an open grip. This means that you could not close your hand tight enough so that your thumb could wrap over your fingers. This grip is much like the way you would grip a door knob. Your fingers get all around it but your thumb can not close over them – it’s a weak grip. A closed grip is one in which you can wrap your thumb over your fingers. Think of this as how you would grasp a suitcase handle. When you grab the handle of a suitcase and your fingers wrap around it, then your thumb closes over your fingers. This provides a very tight, strong grip. Try taking a piece of candy away from a child who has managed to make a fist, i.e., closed grip, around it. It’s a very tight and powerful grip.
When you’re riding and you feel your horse getting nervous, if you take hold of the nightlatch, you will in effect be setting yourself up for success to stay on. The reason that it works so well is that it gives you something to get a closed grip on, and it also sets you back in the saddle and causes your weight to go deep. You see, unlike the saddle which is stationary, the nightlatch gives a little bit. When you grab hold of a stationary object like the saddle, you have a tendency to pull yourself to it since it doesn’t move or give, and this causes you to rock forward, bringing yourself out of balance and setting yourself up for being unseated. By grabbing the nightlatch, which will give just a little but, it will cause you to lean back slightly and drive your seat down into your saddle. From this position you will have a better chance of “riding it out.” Now I can’t promise you that you won’t come off if your horse bucks like he belongs in the National Finals Rodeo, but I can assure you that you will have a better chance with a nightlatch than without one.
You will also find confidence in holding onto a nightlatch while riding sections of the trail where you know there is trouble. For instance when going past the dogs that bark, past the llama’s in the field, around the scary rock, past the abandon car or refrigerator, and past the “boogey man” that only a horse can see… You will also find confidence in holding onto it when you’re trying to get past obstacles that your horse can’t decide to walk past, jump over, skirt around or simply whirl away from. Things like water crossings, logs on the trail, ditches, down hills, and going over bridges.
In almost any situation hanging onto your nightlatch with a closed grip is better than hanging onto your saddle with an open grip. As they say, grab tight, sit deep, and hang on for the ride.
Look at and order our custom-designed Western nightlatch here: http://www.horsethink.com/grab_strap_western.htm
And for your English saddle, the grab strap: http://www.horsethink.com/english_grab_strap.htm
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