Teaching Your Horse to Neck Rein

Q    Although I ride my gelding with one hand in Western Pleasure, when I try to ride off the rail in patterns and circles, he doesn’t have much of a “handle,” often turning his head in the opposite direction of where I’m trying to steer him.

A    Moving from direct reining in a snaffle bit to neck reining in a curb is like teaching your horse a new language and it takes time. Like every child graduates from elementary to high school, neck reining is the next step in a Western horse’s education. By the time your horse is six, he must be ridden with one hand and a curb bit at the breed shows. I usually introduce horses to the curb in their three-year-old year, when they’re ready to begin the pattern classes such as horsemanship and trail. The leverage action of the curb affords the subtle power steering needed for these precise classes.

Theory
If you compare your horse to a train, the neck rein controls the front two train cars only   the head and neck. The rest of the train is controlled by your leg. Think about riding with 80 percent leg and 20 percent hand. You should be able to point the head and neck of your horse in one direction while moving the ribs and hips independently to conform to the arc of a circle.

In neck reining, your horse learns to move those first train cars in the opposite direction of the push he feels on his neck from the rein. He moves away from each light rein touch on his neck as if it was hot.

Many people try to take a short cut by slipping their index finger down between the reins to direct rein, pulling the horse’s nose rather than pushing his neck. This is not true neck reining.

Technique
When slowing or collecting, I move my rein hand up toward my chest and, when steering, toward one shoulder or the other. My hand comes up above the level of my elbow and my upper arm stays close to my body for stability. When the horse responds, I lower my hand to the area of the saddle horn as a reward.