Horses should be soft in the tail

A couple months back I was lifting the tail of my horse Hays,   and a clinic participant asked me why I was doing it. I replied I was just getting him soft in the tail and it was helpful for several reasons. The participant asked what getting a horse soft in the  tail would be good for. Not exactly my reply, but I told him and the group that you should be able to touch a horse all over including lifting his tail without troubling the horse. As far as practicality, you may have to take the horse's temperature with a thermometer (use one with a string!) without the horse clamping his tail down and not letting you have access to insert or remove the thermometer. 

And being able to brush out the horse's tail without having to fight for control is another good reason as well as holding the tail out of the way when a horseshoer is trimming the back feet. Few things aggravate a farrier more than to get slapped in the face by a horse's tail.

You should strive to be able to lift the horse's tail without resistance. Whether it is lifting the tail up or letting it down.     

Getting my horses sorted out with flag work, where the flag doesn't mean anything to them without directing them, I'll slide the end of the flag up underneath the tail as the horse is walking then trotting around me on a lead rope.

If you have thrown enough loops with a lariat, especially in the early days of roping off horseback, you have invariably rim fired a horse. That is where the rope gets up underneath the horse's tail and he claps down his tail, like Scrooge with his wallet, and gets the horse troubled. Sometimes goes off bucking. Once I get a horse decent about lifting his tail, and moving it from side to side, I'll start on the ground using the lead rope to rub around the tail and underneath it. Don't be in a hurry to get a rope up underneath the tail, as standing back where you can handle the tail, it is easy to get kicked. So, I wouldn't even start this until the horse is good at combing out his tail and letting you lift the tail.  

Once I am pretty sure this doesn't mean anything to them, then I can start dragging logs and such, as I need to be sure that when I turn away from the lariat that if it gets up underneath his tail, he won't be troubled. The photo above, while stagged, shows what that may look like if you turn the horse's hip into the rope. 

What's odd about Hays, the Dun horse in the photographs above, is that he has been the most difficult horse I've had when getting him soft in the tail, but the quickest and least troubled about having a rope or flag shaft clamped underneath his tail, whether it's standing or trotting out dragging anything. That's kind of underscores that horses have different personalities. The horse's I still have with me that I have sorted out on getting soft in their tails, are still soft even after years of not having their tails routinely handled. And while I was reflecting on writing this, I remember Craig Cameron saying words to the effect that 'he works to get a horse soft from the whiskers on his muzzle to the very end of their tail.'  Why wouldn't we all want to do this for our horses?