Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and we are continuing with our discussion of long reining.

So the first thing is we have already lunged the horse so she is nice and quiet. We are going to leave the side reins on at first, we leave them on when we are working with a horse when it is their first time in long reins. It gives them a little stabilization and makes it a little less difficult to keep them in the reins and it keeps them from moving their head too much up and down. When you are putting on the long reins you are going to put it on over to the outside, then you are going to walk around to the other side and hook it through the outside lower ring for starters and then hook it to the bit above the hook for the side reins. The hardest thing is these long reins are very long and keeping them straightened out is the hardest thing you have to do, fortunately this horse is quite calm. You should have an assistant with you when you are trying to do this. The first thing we are going to do is on this side we are not going to go through the ring on this side, we are going to hook it to the bit just as if we were lunging the horse. We have it hooked straight to the bit and then we have the one coming over the top.

It is really not that much different, it is a step forward from lunging. Just like that, see how I have the line over the top of her back? Basically I am just keeping my contact on the inside rein. So depending how calm your horse is, you might spend a few days on each one of these steps. Don’t be in a hurry to get to the next step! As you can see she is a little confused by having two lines there, so I just have to wait till she feels calm about that. I just keep moving her out just as if she were lunging until she gets used to that other line. Now some horses can get quite reactive to seeing that line there while others will relax right away. This is a fairly calm horse. The main point that I am trying to make here is you must get the horse completely calm in each step before you go on to the next step. With the side reins still on you can see that I don’t have to be too active with my hand. Now I begin to raise the hands and take the reins with both hands and now I can begin to feel the outside rein a little bit. So I am going to keep this up until she is completely relaxed in this direction before I do anything else.This is step number two for the long rein.

Step number one is lunging and step number two is just hooking the line to the outside rein and then going over the top of the back as you see in the video. Then I can take up the contact with the outside rein so she can begin to feel that a little bit. Then I take up the contact with both reins to begin to give her a little more contact as if I were riding. So that is step number two, now you would repeat that same step on the opposite side. Just going over the top of the back in the other direction until the horse is nice and calm in both directions.

That was step two and thank you so much for joining me. This is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and in just a moment I will show you step number three.

calm classical foundation contact long reining lunging San Diego horse training side reins Will Faerber