Why I Quit Reining.....The Rant

OK, for some of you who don't know me all too well, I'll give you a little bit of my riding background before I go onto my rant. *Please be advised that this is my own opinions about this. Everyone is entitled to their own*

I had started riding when I was 8 years old (when I got Dollar back in 1994), I started Western because that was the only thing that I knew and that was around. Around 10, I ventured into the world of Reining and got hooked. I was hoping to go to high levels, but alas, I haven't. Too many horses switches always leaving me down at the bottom and (as I grew up and older) realizing the world of Dressage, Jumping and Eventing. But I stayed in Reining to please my Dad and that we could do something as a family. Now that I'm 25, I would really like to do something that I WANT TO DO. So, onto my rant and why I'm quitting Reining and Western.

It's not really that I don't like riding Western, but it's more for a change of pace. Dressage seems to be right up my alley in a couple different ways.

One being that every time you move up a level or two, there are new things to learn. This doesn't happen in Reining. You may move up levels, but there are no added maneuvers to learn, nor does the difficulty get higher, just the competition. Every single Reining pattern has the same maneuvers, just in a different way. No matter how high you go in Reining, there will always be: 4 spins in either direction, 1 big fast circle, 1 small slow circle, 2 lead changes, 3 sliding stops and 2 roll backs. In Dressage, it's always getting changed up and I like that. I've been getting tired of running the same patterns time after time and my horse always anticipating everything.

Two: The jerking of the horses mouth in Reining and the exessive spurring. This turns me off in a couple of ways. I've seen way too many Reining horses start rearing because of the constant jerking on their faces in order to get them to get thier heads down on the ground. I'm sorry, but there is no real need for that. All your doing is just hurting the horse and making them pissed off at you. And the exessive spurring. How many horses have I seen that have had their sides all bloodied up because of someone using Rockrinder spurs on them because they didn't want to do something. This is something over the years that I disapprove of very greatly. Is it that serious that you have to jerk your horses mouth and make him bleed in order to get him to do something? There must be a different way.

Three: The fact that Reining horses are not conditioned or in shape properly. How many Reining horses have I seen that are not even properly conditioned?? These horses are basically loping/running for almost an hour during practise and that's it. A little bit of warm up and cool down. There are no such things as taking them out for hacks or trail rides to get them doing something different. I have actually talked to some people about taking their horses out for hacks as a change of scenery and they looked at me as if I was on crack. And a Reining horses best runs (if they've been Reining since 2 years old as most do) are done by the time that they're 6. And then their on the down turn being used as lesson horses. It's not fair to them being bound in a stall all day, loping/running for almost an hour and then back in the stall. They need a change of pace, otherwise they go sour. This is where I like the Dressage stuff. They actually encourage you to go out for hacks and work different stuff so that your horse doesn't go sour and to get them conditioned properly. My Dad actually gave me shit because I wasn't working Dollar in the ring all the time and was going out for hacks instead. You can't really condition a horse in a ring, they need other stuff as well.

So we (me and Dollar) have made the move over to Dressage. After 15 years of doing Reining, I need a change of pace and something more challenging (and that makes more sense for the horses well being).

Enough said.