Hertha James

Teach Your Horse Long-Reining with Positive Reinforcement Hertha James

Teaching long-reining has a variety of purposes. We may want to: - Keep small ponies and donkeys active and interested. - Develop a young horse's education about voice and rein signals for walk on, halt, back up, turn left and turn right before he is old enough to ride. - Prepare our horse, pony, donkey, mule for work in harness. - Have another horse activity we can do without riding. - Build a timid horse's confidence about moving out in front, as he must do when ridden. - Keep an older or retired horse supple with low-key activities. - Be able to send the horse out ahead of us over, between and through obstacles for non-ridden Horse Agility competitions. This book isolates the foundation skills needed for long-reining and arranges them into a Training Program. On completion of the program, long-reining falls into place smoothly as all the elements are brought together. If you do not yet use positive reinforcement in the form of equine clicker training, the book includes a full chapter on how to get started safely. The final chapter includes nineteen patterns to generalize and consolidate the long-reining skills of the handler and the horse. Over a hundred illustrations plus free links to more than twenty short YouTube video clips support the written text.