Horse Training & Riding by Christian Moon
Topic: Legs and weight.
Reins should be held lightly and never used with intent to do harm. The effectiveness of the rein aids is dependent upon how the rider uses his legs and weight, so rein aids on their own are not complete in facilitating anything more then head placement. For example a horse that is good across the neck and when you buy it changes leads with just a flick from one neck rein to the other will soon stop changing all four legs in favor of just changing the front legs for balance until the turn is over when it will cease to cross fire and change its front legs again. Eventually it will seek the path of least resistance and cease to change at all. Now this unfeeling player is turning left on the right lead. This is unbalanced and will lead to a fall. A well trained horse just needs the rider to know that when turning the inside leg stays on the girth and the outside leg goes behind the girth. If at the same time as flicking the neck rein across the neck the rider switches his leg position this should change the hind legs too. Your weight should be in the outside stirrup.
So it’s easy to see from this example how the legs and reins should be usedin conjunction to complete the command to change a leads on a well trained horse.
In my next blog I will go into leg pressure for other moves.