In today's episode I want to pay tribute to some very influential men and mentors.

Allen Gammill my grandfather. He taught me several lessons in loyalty.

Boley Crawford assistant football coach at East Texas State University(now Texas A&M Commerce) who gave me an option between class or practice

Dick Atwood owner of Atwood Hats

Randy Snodgrass owner of ArenaWerks

These men left a lasting impression on me!

In the most recent previous episodes we discussed The Path of Least Resistance, Forward Motion, The Control of Forward Motion and now it's time to discuss The Stopping Forward Motion.

Let's face it. There are tons of ways to stop a horse. Heck, there are even different kinds of stops. The thing I focus on first is a true understanding between horse and rider as to WHY your horse is moving.

Today we will focus on what I refer to as The 3 Steps To Stopping.

First         Quit making him go. Remove your movement/rhythm

Second    WHOA

Third        Support with your reins

As my horse develops, I may actually train them to stop by also using The 3 Steps to Stopping individually. I'll explain.

Bottom line is that we must ask ourselves why our horse is going. Our horse must learn from all previous steps of The Basics that they are moving because we've established a working relationship and we are creating rhythm to get the horse to move. When this working relationship is established and practiced first then The 3 Steps to Stopping will be a success.

Last episode we continued a new series titled Nothing Beyond the Basics and spoke about forward motion and the control of forward motion as we talked about establishing aworking relationship by working on speed control.

Today we will focus on the control of forward movement by focusing on directional control.

Directional Control- left and right and turns. Turns or change of directions using turns. Inside turns and outside turns. I personally prefer outside turns initially. Why? Preparing for what comes next and having faith that what in my opinion too many focus on; hooking on or joining up or whatever term you want to put on it. Not that it’s not important it’s just not on my priority list in front of preparing for where I’m going to be, in the saddle. Eye to eye transitions better prepare a horse for a rider to be behind them. As I work on these things and the other important priorities the horse soon craves the hooking on... it just happens anyway. It’s not something I have to work on. I have faith it will come. I know it will come.

Next episode we will discuss more about speed control and preparing the horse for further success