BARRELHORSE USA - 2015-04-16 9:54 PM You are riding an experienced 16 year old horse and you need to save the arena drama without the constant nagging while learning to ride this horse. You need to think of him as a car with 190,000 miles on it and not burn rubber at every stop sign you take off from or over use him just because you can. If you limit the unnecessary expos, warmup pens and deicide who is going to get to make their run that day .. he may last another 2-4 years. Like old cars .. he is showing you he is in the process of falling apart!! Keeping an older experienced horse that is arena sour legged up should be done out in a pasture and never in an arena. You can take long straight lopes in the correct lead and change leads left to right and move horse over in both directions by lifting a rein and a leg cue without having a death grip on the saddle horn. Do this with split reins while riding two handed because your barrel rein in the video is too short and should be corrected. Your horse has already shown you that he knows his business when ran at speed without interference from a rider. I will give you things to look for that Cervi does consistently with all of her horses repetitively .. after you look at this video several times watching for my highlights .. go compare what is happening in your video at a lope. Cervi is sitting deep and quiet in the saddle while riding two handed and sets up the first barrel by NOT riding to the barrel .. she lines up 30 ft out while using the extra 1/4 turn to make a regular barrel turn because the first barrel has 1 1/4 turns in it. Watch Cervi's hands .. she lifts the inside rein to move Stingray off the barrel and then bumps her with the same inside rein to make her turn while leaving slack in the outside rein not to interfere with her head. Going to 2nd .. no using reins for balance by pulling on them ... she is all forward motion and focused where she is going at full speed, switches to riding two handed to square herself and horse up and gets ready to shorten up on the inside rein ... makes her inside rein lift to keep Stingray off the barrel while the other hand holds the saddle horn. Notice Cervi and Stingray know the same cue which is now a habit ... once Cervi takes the lift on the inside rein off she bumps her with the same rein to start the turn and help her complete the turn and be in the correct position to run to 3rd. Then the sequence starts all over again running to and around the 3rd, Notice the slack reins with Cervi's lean forward and a wave of the hands asking Stingray to run hellbent for leather to beat the clock ... At no time is Stingrays face turned the opposite way asking for the wrong lead due to short barrel reins and lazy hands and she does not have to fight to make a lead correction while rating the barrel late and never gaining her rear lead when turning the barrel in an act of desperation. Watch closely how Cervi and Stingray react to each other because they know what is coming ... this is the greatest example of using anticipation for the given cue to shave the paint off the barrels ... https://youtu.be/8OkG8tkMKtE You can also watch her NFR world record run in that tiny arena and see everything happens the same way in the same sequence .. Everyone picks up some bad habits they are totally unaware ... so make a few rider corrections to get in rhythm with the horse and enjoy this old horse that is giving you his heart!! Now go have some fun in the pasture ...