Riding with Equal Pressure

On this interview, the late Howard Hale had Ron Knodle, the unknown horseman, talking about his training methods. Let's check in on that conversation. Nebraska horseman Ron Knodle is our guest today.   Ron, give us some of your thoughts about how you ought to use your hands and your legs, particularly on that young horse that you're starting. The two-handed stuff, whether you're in a hackamore or a snaffle, the more that you keep pulling on one rein, the more that they fall to the outside, and you're not going to be able to, for example, make a reining horse when you need to push him through the turns. So one of the things that I've been doing really strong with most of my people that I've been working with in the later years is using almost equal pressure with your inside and outside rein and do more trying to push the horse through the turns than to pull him through the turns so that he was not as apt to fall out to the outside.   And what are your legs doing in that situation? I ride my horse as one-legged. For example, when I start a young horse, I open and close doors as a pre-signal. So if I'm riding a young horse along and I want to go to the ride, the first thing I do is my right leg comes off, the left leg comes on.   The right hand and the right leg work in unison. They come off of the horse and the left leg would come on if I was going to the right and vice versa. Trainer and clinician Ron Knodle with the late Howard Hale.