Should A Neck Rope Break Away?

Here is a question I have turned over more than once at the bench, usually with a half-made neck rope in front of me: what happens to this if things go wrong? It is not a cheerful thought, and it is not one that comes up much in the lovely photographs. But it is the sort of thing you end up sitting with when you make a thing rather than just use it.

So I have finally done something about it. Every Bridleless Liberty Neck Rope can now be ordered with an optional breakaway snap.

The Thing I Kept Coming Back To

A neck rope is a closed loop. That is rather the point of it. It sits low at the base of the neck, it stays where you put it, and it gives you something honest to feel for when the reins have gone. A continuous loop is the simplest and strongest way to do that, and it is how ours have always been made.

But a closed loop is also a closed loop. If you and your horse part company and the rope catches on something — a gate latch, a branch, a fence post — there is nothing built into it that says let go.

I want to be careful here, because I am not about to tell you that is likely, or quote you a figure, or suggest that anyone riding in a fixed loop is doing it wrong. A great many riders with far more miles than me use them and always will, and they have good reasons. It is simply a thing that can happen, and until now our neck ropes had no answer to it.

What We've Added

The optional breakaway snap is a solid 15mm brass S-spring press stud, fitted in place of the closed section of the loop. It is designed to release under pressure, so that if the neck rope catches on something after you and your horse have come apart, it pops open rather than holding fast.

It is £6 on top of the standard price and available across all five sizes, from Small Pony to Extra Full. Everything else is unchanged: the same 19mm BioThane rider grip resting at the withers, the same 10mm braided rope, the same Endless Colour choices.

There is a second and much more ordinary benefit that I did not expect to like as much as I do. It is quick. You can pop it on and off without lifting the whole thing over your horse's head, which — if you have ever attempted that with a pony who has decided the grass is significantly more interesting than you are — is worth something all on its own.

Why It's A Choice, Not The Standard

I did think about simply making every neck rope a breakaway one, and decided against it.

The fixed loop has real advantages. It is one clean, continuous piece with nothing to fasten, nothing to check and nothing that can come undone on its own. For liberty work in an enclosed space with nothing much to catch on, plenty of riders would rather have that simplicity, and I understand it completely.

Different horses, different fields, different stages of the journey.

It did not feel like my call to make on everybody's behalf, so it sits as a choice when you build yours instead.

Belt and braces — the neck rope introduced alongside the bridle rather than instead of it, in an enclosed space, with the reins still there as back-up.

The Part That Matters More Than The Hardware

I would rather not finish on a press stud, because a press stud is not what keeps anyone safe.

What does — as far as I can tell from my own journey, and from riders a good deal further along theirs than I am — is the groundwork done long before anything comes off. Keeping the rope low on the neck, near the shoulders, where it is not sitting on the windpipe. Starting somewhere enclosed. Leaving the bridle on as back-up for longer than you think you need it. A helmet. And going at the pace of the horse in front of you rather than the one in the video.

It is how you use it, far more than what you use. That has always been true of every piece of kit I make, and a breakaway snap does not change it.

If you would like the longer version of where a neck rope actually sits in all this — and it is a great deal more gradual than it looks from the outside — there is a starter guide here, and a wider piece on the journey toward bridleless here.

And if you have thoughts on this, I would genuinely like to hear them. This one came out of turning it over at the bench. The next improvement will almost certainly come from one of you.

It will probably never happen. That is rather the point.