Mike Davis
V2 Reining Horses Davenport Iowa
Mike Davis is a professional reining horse trainer located in Davenport, Iowa. Together with his partner Tami Schiltz they founded V2 Reining Horses in 2007. Prior to that Mike worked for fifteen years in Texas and Italy training horses. Today he focuses on training young horses and non-pro riders. He encourages his clients to be better horsemen by teaching them how to connect to their horse so they can feel and fix what the horse is doing. As a trainer, he tries to expose horses to everything that can go wrong at home so they become a quiet and confidant horse. While at Mike’s barn we worked on steering, turnarounds, rollbacks and lead changes.
Riding is Steering
In order for a horse to be ridden they have to be able to take direction through steering. Everyday Mike starts by trotting a circle leaving his hand down on the horse’s neck. He waits to see if the horse will leave the prescribed circle. If the horse does leave the circle he picks up his reins and stops the horse and turns them around and then goes back to the circle. He will continue to do this until the horse maintains the circle with his hand down. Mike does not like to redirect the horse across the circle because he feels it take the horses’ mind off the circle onto a straight line. Click this link to see video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLGG01jbNZA
Turnaround
Irish tends to tip his nose to the outside during his turnaround which makes it harder for him to cross over in the front. Mike feels that the reason he does that is because he is trying to move off the pressure from the outside leg and the more pressure the more he tips his nose out. To fix this he works on lifting the horses front end up as they are trotting around in a small circle by picking up with the reins. At first you will need to exert a good deal of pressure to get the horse to lift their front end but as you lift and release over time the amount of pressure needed will decrease until the horse is lifted enough in the front end to be able to cross over smoothly. Click this link to see video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCm4ens9B1M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDAk5fZ72JQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wshSMpp7exc
Rollback
We worked on two exercises to improve the rollback. The first was done on the circle. Start by loping off in a circle and then stop, wait, backup, look in the direction you want to go, bring your hand to your outside hip, open your outside leg, and follow through with the lead departure with your new outside leg. If you want to work on the rollback in one direction, stop in the middle then you can rollback in the same direction over and over as you circle around the pen. This exercise also helps with speed control in the middle of the pen and teaches the horse to relax in the middle as well. Click this link to see video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6rqRQn1G5Q
The second exercise is a combination of rundown, stop, back up, turnaround and lead departure. Start at one end of the arena and lope to the opposite wall and stop. Back the horse up and then ask them to turnaround at least one and a half time and then lead depart on a straight line and repeat the exercise. Doing this exercise improve the rollback by teaching the horse to stay in motion instead of always stopping and backing up. Click this link to see video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t5No0OyRV4
Lead Change
Before loping off pick up on the reins to let the horse know that they are about to do something. Than lope a few circles picking up on the horse through center to get them to straighten up. Once the horse is picking up well than move on to the main exercise. The exercise is started by loping a straight line down the length of the arena. At the top make a counter canter circle and cross the arena picking up as you cross the middle. Continue around on the counter canter to the top of the arena and turn to go on a straight line to the opposite end of the arena. Repeat this pattern a few times picking up on the horse when on the straight lines down the center and across the middle of the arena. Once the horse is picking up and moving smoothly change legs and ask for the lead change. This exercise works well because the horse does not anticipate the lead change and all the time spent picking them up allow them to change leads smoothly. Click this link to see video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKWK7YOA_E4
