A poster PM me some interesting questions and I think that she is not the only one with those questions.
You know who you are.
I could not respond, your inbox is full, need to do some stall cleaning in there!
Anyway, my not very good response I will post here, so she and any others that may be thinking the same will have more to think and discuss:
—"To answer that is as hard as when my western riding friends ask what is wrong with those dressage horses, why do they always seem to stiff and upright and scared, why do they move so funny, why are they never let go and really relax while doing what they do and such questions.
There are reasons to much reining horses do, that is a stylized way to show a horse doing what you may do while working cattle.
Yes, it is odd if you don’t know what is scored, some of it like the head down fad is one more way to show the judges your horse is really submissive, but doesn’t get you any more points than one that rides upright.
At the top shows, horses and riders are going for broke, asking the utmost, so there is more pressure than any other time.
Still, none of those horses were cranky, they were straining and trying their best, concentrating and working their hearts out.
In reining, when you have a horse that has a cranky look to it, they wash out early, because judges just won’t know it is the horse, they assume he is not happy and so won’t place that horse.
When you see a horse really not wanting to work, you don’t just think so, the horse is telling everyone without question and their pinched nose, hooded eyes and really pinned back ears and humped look makes it plenty obvious something is wrong.
In case you don’t know, there is also working cowhorse is similar to three day eventing, where you do “dry work”, that is a reining pattern, “cow work”, that is cutting and “fence work”, to control a cow on the fence and all three scores are combined.
The reining and cutting in working cowhorse is not scored quite like the real thing and not as competitive, just as the dressage scored on three day event won’t be at the level of a dressage class.
Some horses that like their job around cattle don’t like reining and there I have seen horses being shown that were unhappy during reining, some were washout reiners, but the riders took those bad scores in stride because they knew their horses would shine in the other two phases.
Not so in reining, a cranky horse just won’t be winning consistently to get to that level as those there are.
The blue eyed bald faced horse is from lines known to be partially to completely deaf.
Deaf horses some times don’t use their ears quite like other horses, but that one seems to.
There is plenty I don’t like about reining, just as I don’t about dressage, but in general, most people are trying hard with and for their horses in what they are doing in both.
Both at the top are exaggerations of what we can do with horses and that demands long, exacting training and much effort and at times, horses do reflect that and get sour about it.
I didn’t see that there."—
