REINING ESSENTIALS by Sandy Collier

Voted one of the “Top 30 Must Have Equine Books” by Horse and Rider Magazine

This book is currently out of print, but is available as a Kindle e-book from Amazon. Here’s the link!

$9.99

This book is currently available on Amazon as an ebook only

REINING ESSENTIALS by Sandy Collier
How to Excel in Western‛s Hottest Sport

With Jennifer Forsberg Meyer
Foreword by Al Dunning

This book is not just for reiners, but for anyone who wants a more soft, supple and willing horse! World Champion trainer and rider Sandy Collier provides an indispensable guide of progressive training exercises. Whether green, broke, or “push-button,” every horse will perform more willingly, cleanly, and quickly with work on what she calls the “Seven Essentials”—the foundational basics every riding horse needs. Like no other book out there, Collier also breaks down the maneuvers required in a reining pattern and the tricks and techniques for introducing them, perfecting them, and showing them off in competition.

Here are just some of the things I cover in Reining Essential:

  • Terms and concepts for a working vocabulary
  • Horse gear, bits and favorable conformation
  • The 7 Essentials or basic building blocks for successful riding
  • Collection and steering with some great exercises!
  • Checking up (pros and cons), asymmetry
  • Lead changes, circles, spins and speed control with my favorite exercises
  • Perfecting your stops and rollbacks
  • Teaching your horse to neckrein
  • Competition and schooling shows
  • The million things that can go wrong and how to fix them!

I love this book. I have been riding all my life and have tried numerous disciplines. Now trying reining and working cow horse. Her book is easy to read and understand. Explains exercises to practice and ways to fix problems in your horse or yourself. I also really enjoy her DVDs and watch them over and over. Lots of good points and excercises. A++++ Love her as an instructor.

I found the answers to a lot of issues I had with my horse. The “troubleshoot it” parts are excellent and so useful ! Sandy does not only explain clearly what to do and how to do it, but also tells how to solve the most common problems you are likely to be confronted to. I just love Sandy’s approach and philosophy. This book is a must have for anyone who wants to ride and/or train a reining horse.

This book has a great way to start you at a basic level and advance you through to more advanced training for the horse and YOU! There are a lot of large color photos showing you the how and why but they don’t come off as taking up space to make a book. There is just right balance of detailed photos and explanation. You will not come away thinking well that is great info now how exactly do I train this. She explains it very precisely. The book starts you at a basic level using pressure training and removing the pressure once the horse performs the desired result. If you can achieve all the topics she covers here you and your horse are well on your way to reining. It also covers equipment required and the topics build on top of each other so by the end of the book you have a solid understanding of where you should be going and how to do it.

Sandy Collier has distilled this book down to the best. I am a better communicator (and therefore rider) with my horses because of her being able to teach me how to train my horse….simply. When things seem to “head south” whilst training my colts I can simply aim for another one of Sandy’s exercises and with no fuss or bother we are back on course.

If my colts had opposeable digits they would be writing Sandy Collier a thank you note for her REINING ESSENTIALS book!!!!