JANUARY 2006 • VOLUME 5 • HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

Rider's Question: "My horse is always putting all this weight in the reins. I'm trying to be lighter, but it is not working. What can I do? How can I get my horse to be lighter?"

Answer:

Of course the most difficult job is retraining. Horses mentally will stay with what they know. This has been even shown in studies on their intelligence. How horses prefer to stay with what they know and have already learned. Making what they learn first, often more powerful then what they learn afterwards.

So when you have started out with working with your horses with weight in the reins and then try to start working with no weight in your reins, riders are often confounded by how the horse reacts.

Riders will talk about how now the horses are no longer listening to their leg aids and begin rushing, OR how no matter how long they give the reins or how low they allow the horses head to go, the horses continue to put weight on their end of the reins.

The solution that these riders often have is to USE the reins to get the horse to release on the bit, or to stop rushing off the leg.

Because this is the solution the rider understands.

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