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In a reined Cowhorse contest or a cutting, the cattle are the most important single factor. In the cutting at least you get to choose, so you only have yourself to blame if you pick poorly. In the reined Cowhorse contest, you don’t know what you’ve got until it walks...

Riders who are not accustomed to using a romal are sometimes not aware of the penalties awaiting them if they don’t hold it properly.   The romal should go across the palm and around the thumb or with the thumb on top The hand should be closed into a fist over both...

Here are 2 of my favorite ways to tune up a spin other than the fence drill that I’ve posted before. The first is to build cadence and increase speed. Start with a bridled up trot in a small circle. Drive your horses hindquarters up underneath them as far as you can....

Sometimes the feelings of being scared and excited can elicit the same physical response in our bodies. When new challenges and opportunities show up in our riding lives, we may think we are feeling scared when what we really feel is excited. We might not have been...

In this exercise, you stop your horse, ask him to further soften to your hands, then back him up several times in succession in response to “whoa.” In this way, the idea that “whoa” means no forward motion is reinforced, plus he learns to get off the bit the moment...

The most common mistakes people make with this exercise are failing to continue driving the horse all the way up to the fence, and pulling on the reins instead of letting the fence do the work. Troubleshooting Common problems in “fencing,” and how to fix them.  If the...

Common problems in the run-around, and how to fix them. If the horse:  Races: If he starts speeding up on his own instead of responding to your cues for speed, break him down to a stop then back up. Then just sit for a minute. If that’s not helpful, make him collect...

The quality of a horse’s stop is directly related to the quality of his rundown. This exercise, in which you build to rundown speed, slow and collect instead of stopping, then go around the end of your arena and build to rundown speed again, is perfect for working on...

We used to think “fencing” (using the fence as a barrier to help get a horse sliding in his stop) made a horse bracy in the front end. But I think we just weren’t doing it correctly. Done properly, fencing can help teach your horse to run straight and true. This is...

Troubleshooting. Common problems in the pivot, and how to fix them:  • Too much bend. This is caused by trying to pull your horse around with the direct (inside) rein, so overbending his neck. We resort to this when we can’t make his shoulders move. This will actually...