Western Horse Training
When it comes to Western riding, most people get an instant image of cowboys and riders in traditional Western costumes. However, Western style riding actually includes a number of events such as trail riding, barrel racing, pole bending and rodeo as well as the classes for reining show and pleasure riding. Trail riding is both a recreational option and a show class. Trail riding can be a very formal style and highly detailed form of riding. There is a lot of work that goes into western horse training.
What Is Involved in Western Horse Training
The moves learned through western horse training are only slightly different from the moves learned in English style training. Often western horse training requires teaching a horse to do a rollback and a long-slide reining. Western horses are also trained to neck-rein, which means that horse will move to the left or right depending on the side of the neck that the rider applies pressure with the reins.
A central part of western horse training is the quality of the pace. The two main paces involved in western horse training are the jog and lope. Basically these are shorter stride versions of the trot and canter. A specialized move is the western spin in which the horse will pivot smoothly on the inner hind leg while going full-speed. All of the moves used in western horse training were designed for the purpose of working with cattle. The best example of western show horse competitors is the Quarter horse.
How to Train the Western Horse
The first step in western horse training is to teach the horse proper gait. A western horse should have their feet touch the ground in a four-beat sequence of near hind foot, near forefoot, off hind foot, off forefoot. The second gait a western horse should learn is the two-beat gait which is between a walk and canter speed with a diagonal pair of legs that move forward together. Lastly, a western horse needs to learn the smooth three-beat gait, which is slower than a gallop and faster than a trot, but a little bit slower than a canter.
If you have a young horse that doesn’t know how to change leads yet in response to your signals then you first need to get the horse accustomed to changing leads with the weight of the rider. It is often natural for a horse to change leads so teaching them to do this shouldn’t be a problem. Start by teaching the horse to lope balanced and natural by going in a straight line and big circles with a loose rein. Never make things more complicated than necessary, don’t try to teach anything extra, just make sure you keep it simple when starting out with a young horse.
Once you have trained the young horse well enough to lope and comfortably change leads you can start to prepare the horse to move like a good western riding horse. For western horse training you want to teach the correct pattern which consists of eight lead changes, four of these come every three to five strides and between these changes you need to lope exactly between the markers. This is a lot more difficult than a simple lead change. Western horse training requires teaching the horse to jog and lope slow enough in a collected manner similar to that of a western pleasure horse. Achieving the right mix of jog and lope is a matter of properly engaging the hindquarters and elevating the shoulders. While this is easy when holding your horse in position with the reins, you get more points in western riding if the reins are relatively loose. This is why it is important to practice continually with western horse training.
Related Blogs