(“Long reigning—Prince Charles reflecting despairingly on his mother,”)

Long raining—Seattlites reflecting despairingly on their winter,

Long reining—Once you know how to do it, a very cool thing!

Okay, this is not a “how to article.” I’ll get to that someplace else. This is more of a suggestion to you.

Long reining can be both productive and an entertaining way to escape your day to day rut (assuming that once in a while you feel like you’re in one).

As I post this, there’s a smidgen of long reining up on page 1 of the website. Shortly, I will add a piece to the video page outlining the progressive steps that lead you from lunging to double lunging to symmetrically long reining your horse.

From the days 30 years ago when Maj. Lindgren insisted that we all learn the techniques, I’ve found long reining to be a great way to step outside yourself and watch your horse’s movement from the ground. How engaged? How swinging? How much is he tracking up? These are things you can see with your own eyes. The feel of the contact and connection generalize entirely and even the way you use your back from the ground affects the horse much the way it does when you are mounted.

And interestingly, sometimes a part of the training relationship that your horse has trouble with may be revealed to him in an entirely new, simpatico light when you reintroduce it from the ground.

Give it a try. If you don’t know much about it, it’s worth getting help and looking into it.