On January 6 last I wrote about the role of the outside when asking a horse to make a turn or perform a circle. Coming from the world of dressage I was taught from an early age that the outside rein is always applied during a turn to ensure the shoulders of the horse do not drift to the outside of the turn and the horse does not overbend.

Despite years of brainwashing about the importance of the outside rein to keep a horse balanced in a turn, I don’t use it anymore. I don’t teach others to use it either.

I have recently been in discussion with somebody who asked me how to marry the concept of using the outside rein when neck reining a horse with my opposition to using the outside rein in two-handed riding. Why is it okay to apply an outside rein when neck reining, but not when riding with two hands?

It’s a good question. However, I don’t believe there is any conflict between the two principles.

The reason why riders apply the outside rein when riding with two hands is that there is a disconnection between the inside rein and the horse’s thoughts. In a perfect turn, when a rider picks up the inside rein it should signal the horse to think to the inside, flex laterally to the inside and his feet and bend should follow the arc of the turn. The correctness of the turn is dictated by the ability of the inside rein to direct the horse’s thought to follow the feel of the inside rein.

A horse will always try to follow its thought, so if the inside rein does not connect to the horse’s thought it will try to drift to the outside of a turn. This is where the outside rein comes into play. When using the outside rein, it blocks the feet from following the horse’s thought to the outside. However, if the horse follows the feel of the inside rein with its mind, the outside rein becomes superfluous and is not required to fix the problem of the horse drifting to the outside.

What about when riding single-handed or neck reining? Why is it okay to use the outside rein when neck reining?

When neck reining is done well the outside rein makes contact with the outside of the horse’s neck to indicate to the horse to think to the inside, laterally flex to the inside, and follow the arc of the turn with its feet. In other words, when turning left, touch the horse on the neck with the right rein. The horse will think and look to the left, bend left and turn to the left.

A pre-requisite of teaching a horse that the outside rein should direct a horse’s thoughts to the inside and follow that thought with both lateral flexion and balanced turn is that we have first taught a horse to be precise in following the feel of the inside turn. Lessons in directing a horse to follow the inside rein in a turn MUST come before teaching it to follow the outside rein when riding one-handed or neck reining. Teaching a horse to follow the feel of the outside rein begins with applying the outside rein and backing it up for clarity with a feel on the inside rein - see the video at the end.

Of course, not all neck reining is done well. It’s not uncommon to see riders use the outside rein to push a horse to turn to the inside. This inevitably causes crookedness and imbalance. There is where the outside rein is not connecting to the horse’s thoughts. However, with correct training, it is enough for the horse to feel the outside rein against the outside of its neck to direct the thought to the inside.

To me, there is a huge difference in the role of the outside rein when riding two-handed versus single-handed. With single-handed turns, the outside rein directs the horse’s thought and the feet to the inside. In contrast, with two-handed turns, the outside rein simply blocks the feet from leaking to the outside, without a consequent change in the horse’s thought.

In the case of neck reining, the outside rein is intended to direct a horse’s thought, but in two-handed riding, its purpose is to separate what a horse is thinking from what the feet are doing.

I think this video is a good example of neck reining done well. Bryan Neubert is demonstrating neck reining with an educated horse and then showing how he would start the training with a green horse.