Steve and Dori Schwartzenberger Professional Reining Horse Trainers Longmont, CO
We arrived during breeding season at Schwartzenberger Equine. The barn was busy with foals being born and breeding for next year. While we were there a filly was born and we were able to see her just hours after her first steps. That same day we watched a 7-week-old embryo be transferred into a surrogate mare and another mare be artificially inseminated. All this while the everyday business of horse training went on.
Lead Changes
We started the lead change exercise by counter cantering the circle. The advantage to the counter canter is that it helps the horse to frame up and stay in shape themselves. Once in the counter canter circle you want to have the horse’s head and body following the circle as if they are in the correct lead. By doing this it helps keep the horse’s shoulder picked up before you ask for the lead change. Having the horse following the circle as if they are the correct lead keeps the lead change simple for the horse. Their body is already following the circle so all they have to do is change their feet and they are in the correct lead.
What to do if your horse is looking out of the circle.
If a horse is looking out of the circle you want to use your inside rein and bend the horse at the pole by bring your inside rein back and up to your hip. Keep your forward motion as you ask for this bend and continue to ride half way around the circle and release the rein so the horse is following the arch of the circle. Continue to do this until the horse understand that they are to follow the circle without looking out.
Turn Around
For this exercise, we trotted a small circle with the horse’s front end squared up. Once the horse is collected up and lock into the circle ask for one or two turns and trot out into the small circle again. Continue to do this exercise and ask for more turns each time. Soon the horse will be hunting the turn around and crossing over correctly in the front and planting the pivot foot behind.
The interesting thing about the turn around that I learned was that the inside front leg needs to step laterally to allow the outside front leg to cross over. To help teach the horse to step laterally with their inside leg you want to bring your inside rein over your inside knee and lay the outside rein on the horse’s neck. This will cause the horse’s inside leg to follow the inside rein. The result will be a clean cross over with the outside front leg. Click on this link to watch the youtube video.https://youtu.be/Y-qKbgLqn-s
While in Longmont, CO I logged 7.5 hours of riding time toward the AQHA riding program. https://www.aqha.com/trail-riding/programs/aqha-horseback-riding-program