Neck reining success

On Tuesday night after work, Lisa and I loaded up Ringo and Seal and headed down to Horseman's. My goal was to get Ringo to respond to neck and leg pressure without using the bit pressure. We had worked on this a bit about a week previous and he did well so I was planning on building on the progress we had made in the last session.

I got Ringo saddled up and we went into the big roping arena and boy was I surprised!! Where I thought we had a "start" on neck reining, ended up being about 80% response from him!! Pleasant surprises are always welcome. I did use a heavier rein on him this session and that may have been helpful in his response. I was working at all three gaits and there were only a couple of times that I had to apply a slight amount of pressure directly on the bit.

We were also working on stopping with just verbal commands and body position, (no reins), and he did great. I was getting solid stops as well as slide stops just sitting back in the saddle and telling him whoa.

We will see how it goes today.......