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Joan Fry
 |  The Pueblo Chieftain

Wherever you decide to keep your new horse, at a boarding stable or in your backyard, you need to buy some “stuff” to keep both of you happy.

Your horse probably arrived wearing an old halter and a fraying lead rope. Owners of pleasure horses — as opposed to show and performance horse — usually do not send a horse they just sold to you wearing a brand new halter and lead rope. They’re not interested in repeat customers.

So, time to visit your local feed and tack store. Halters come in three basic types. Traditional halters are either leather or nylon or some similar synthetic material, and they both lie flat against the horse’s face.

The third and trendiest is a rope halter. You don’t need a breakaway halter. And steer clear of any halter that has a flat snap (as opposed to a spring snap) that attaches the throatlatch to the rest of the halter.

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One day when I went to feed Gunsmoke lunch, he wasn’t standing by the gate to greet me. Normally I remove halters when I’m not there, but for some reason I had left his on.

I could tell from looking at him that something was terribly wrong: he was standing motionless, his head and body parallel to the fence. Somehow he had managed to snag the flat snap of his halter on the wire fence inside his corral.

He stood quietly while I unsnapped him and removed the halter. I’ve never used one since. Rope halters aren’t a good choice either. Because they’re round and thin, if you tug on one, it exerts more pressure on the horse’s nose and poll than a flat halter will.

It can exert enough pressure — especially if the horse pulls back — to cause considerable pain, and the harder he pulls, the greater the pain. I’ve seen owners tie knots in the noseband to deliberately cause the horse enough discomfort to slow down. All they really do is show other horse owners that you can’t train your horse to stop walking so fast.

As for lead ropes, you only have one choice: skinny round ones made of some synthetic material, or fat cotton ones. Most clinicians use long cotton ropes because they’re lightweight.

Even if he tosses one on the horse’s back, usually to introduce the concept of desensitizing him, the rope may scare the horse, but it won’t hurt him — and the horse will figure that out very quickly.

With the skinny round kind, if your horse pulls away from you and you hang on, you’ll get friction burns. Buy gloves. If you don’t want to get rough callouses on your hands, buy gloves. If it’s cold outside but you have horse chores to do, buy lined gloves.

I currently own three pairs, all deerskin. They aren’t cheap, but they’re an excellent investment. The leather is soft, and the gloves run true to size. Deerskin is also one of the warmest leather gloves available.

The cold-weather version is lined with a light, waterproof fiber. Like all leathers — shoes, belts, the stirrup leathers on an English saddle — they will stretch.

Because you’ll want to groom your horse, you need stuff to do that. Start with a rubber currycomb. You’ll see metal curries in a variety of shapes, but do not use them on your horse. They have only one purpose: to knock off the dirt on your dandy brush every couple of swipes.

Some people prefer plastic curries, but most have sharp tines that will suggest to your horse — especially if he’s thin-skinned — that grooming hurts. Buy the rubber kind. Also buy a dandy brush, with stiff bristles.

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When you want to polish your horse to a shine, this is where it starts (Actually what you feed him is where it starts, but you can’t get a truly gleaming horse without a good dandy brush and a lot of elbow grease). Buy a second, softer brush for his face, a hoof pick to clean his feet, and a comb for his mane and tail. Then buy a grooming box. The newer ones resemble small suitcases, and will keep dust and dirt out of your grooming stuff.

Why don’t you see a saddle and bridle on this list? Because you need to be sure he’s a keeper before you buy either one. The saddle has to fit your horse, not the other way around.

You should have the same bit the previous owner used, and this is a good time to try out new saddles. Tack store employees can help you decide on what you’re looking for.

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