Training a Reining Horse

Reining Horse Training

Tuesday 16 March 2010

Reining is an exciting equestrian sport where you will see horses performing sliding stops, spins, rollbacks, flying changes and circles at many different sizes and speeds. Each horse performs individually and the movements are scored. Training a horse to do the simplest of things can be difficult and requires an immense amount of dedication and patience so if you want to train a reining horse it is best to have professional training assistance. You can practice and improve on your movements on your own however; and this is essential if you want to gain top scores and win the class. This article will give you a few ideas on how to improve and train a horse on reins.

Horse Training: Training a Horse for Reining

Train a Reining Horse to Circle:

• Teach your horse to circle by placing cones or buckets at points in the paddock in a circular shape. Ride around the obstacles so your horse gets a feel of riding in a circle.

• The circles in competition are loped so your horse will need to know his leads.

• Working on your leads is important and you do this by picking up the rein in the direction of the circle and use the leg opposite to move your horse’s hip over. When you want the lope simply make a kissing sound.

Teach a Reining Horse Flying Changes:

• To do this you ask for a simple change every time you change direction between circles.

• Tell your horse to trot and after a short distance set up for the new lead and ask for the lope.

• As you progress with your horse then you can gradually decrease the amount of trot steps until your horse can simply switch leads when you ask.

Train a Reining Horse to Spin:

• Begin spinning by starting your horse walking and trotting small circles.

• Apply the outside rein against your horse’s neck and lift up the inside rein as you make the tiny circle.

• Once your horse achieves crossing his legs then you should allow him to walk forward out of the turn to reward him.

• As you progress you can ask your horse for more and more steps and move the speed up to a trot.

• Look carefully and see which legs the horse is crossing. If he crosses the outside leg underneath the inside leg stop straight away so it doesn’t develop into a habit.

• To make sure the leg crossing is correct you might need to get a friend to watch and help you make sure it looks correct.

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