Les Vogt CowHorse U Arrives: Christmas in September!
My independent study program has arrived in the mail! Because I don’t have access to a reining instructor, I ordered Les Vogt’s CowHorse U DVDs. Along with the four DVDs, it comes with a workbook, and a training schedule, which are exactly what I need. I get all these tips and tricks from riders here and there, but no one seems to ever really know HOW LONG I should practice each maneuver and HOW LONG it should take the horse to learn it. And, I never know what to teach first (or what to teach) and when to move on. It looks like this is just the thing. It has a week-by-week training schedule, so cool.
Since I’m learning reining on my own, I plan to read as many books and to watch as many training DVDs as I can get my hands on. I have Sandy Collier’s DVD, Bag of Magic Tricks, on the way. After reading through part of Les’ foundation workbook though, I can see that I’m not ready for “the magic” just now. Hopefully by spring time though. The foundation course is supposed to take about six months. If I start tomorrow, we’ll have completed the program by mid-March.
What I know so far about this foundation course is:
Les has broken it down into “five easy pieces”. The idea is that Leo and I master number one before we move on to number two and so on. The first piece is Lateral Flexion. I’m going to try it out tomorrow. Thankfully it doesn’t involve anything but walking because I’m riding a lopsided horse until Sunday. He threw both shoes on the right (right front, right rear). Leo is just that fast. My theory is that while he was doing his daily full-tilt rip around the field, he took a hard left and the right shoes just launched right off.
A note about equipment: I need split reins. Jim (Leo’s owner) found some in the old barn and cleaned them up for me tonight (very nice of him).
I also need to switch to a snaffle. I’m not sure how well Leo will do with that because he’s pretty chargey. We’ll see though. I’ll probably end up experimenting with a few.
