Do it yourself reining

I take reining lessons on my instructors mare but I can't ride her for a few months because she just had a foal. Since I don't want buy a reining horse just yet I want to train one of my own to do some reining. I have a horse that I think could be a reining horse prospect. He has all the good basics but I want to take it to the next level. Can anyone help me in taking a pivot to a spin, a stop to a sliding stop and so on?

I would say talk to your instructor about what you can work on with your own horse. Maybe see if you can take a few lessons on him and see what happens. Although it can be hard if both the horse and the rider are trying to learn at the same time. I would be hesitant of trying to train the maneuvers on your own without know what you doing, just in case you ever decide to get him professionally trained they won't have to spend a lot of time fixing problems you might have inadvertently created.

I agree. Take lessons on your horse and have your trainer help you with working on these things with your horse. It is not as simple as do this and this and you get this. There are so many things that go into each thing and there is a feel that you need to learn. Also reining is one sprot that is very hard for someone to just step up and start training a horse to do these things and if you mess it up it is the horse that pays.

Do-it-yourself reining training is kind of like do-it-yourself pilot / airplane flying lessons: It can lead to big 'crash and burn'.

What if it's the other way around and the horse knows what he's doing and you're new to reining? Is it possible to learn from your horse how to do it without necessarily having an instructor every step of the way?
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In reality the best way is to take lessons on a finished horse. Trying to learn even on a finished horse with out help is still hard. It is next to imposible to just on a finished reiner and make them work properly. You see people try all the time and it just does not work well.

If you really want to give reining a try I would say your best bet would be to find someone who knows reining has a finsihed horse and can give you some lessons on that horse and teach you what you need to do to get the horse to work properly.

I took reining lessons from this instructor for a while and I've been riding for 7 years so I feel like I could possibly train this horse, but if I can't it wouldn't be a problem. I thought about taking lessons on him with my instructor, so I might try that too.

Been riding for about 20 years breeding riding and showing reiners for 15 of that and I still would not think I could train a reiner with out some help. I can keep them working correctly once trained very well but to actually train one is a whole new ball game. After all these years I am just now finially working on finishing up a horse who was well started by my trainer. Again it just depends on what you want as an end product.

Training and riding are two very different skills. You cannot train what you cannot correctly ride. You must learn to ride a finished horse first and then develop the skills to add to the 'finish' of a horse so that the horse is doing more and better things with less pressure every time you get off of him than he could do the last time you got off of him.

Self-evaluation of how a horse is responding to less and less pressure is how you figure out if you are adding to the horse's training or taking something off of it. There are about 100 people that will take something 'off' of a horse they ride for every one that can have a horse doing something better and lighter when they ride one.

If you are going to try to train one, you have to be absolutely honest with yourself and very self-critical.

Regardless of me not being a professional trainer I would like to try training this horse. Can anyone help me with my original question?