By Dell Hendricks as told to E-Reiner.com

If you ever watch a fencing session at a horse show, chances are you'll see some pretty crazy things.  And after doing many clinics through the years, and asking the question “Does anybody know why we are fencing?”, it's become apparent to me that there's a lot of confusion about the purpose of fencing. In fact, when I ask that question, probably 85% of the time, people will respond with some variation of “…because we see other people doing it.”

In reality, you need to understand the purpose behind fencing to do it well.  And when it comes to fencing, the purpose is simple-it's all about perfecting the rundown.

The Basics

First of all, fencing has very little to do with stopping. Most people think just the opposite. But actually, fencing is about getting your horse to run down to the stop correct. A perfect stop is setup by a perfect rundown.

So what makes the perfect rundown? Two key factors: the horse needs to be running straight, and the horse needs to be building speed.  That perfect stop is precluded by a rundown in which the horse is running in a straight line from head to tail; and each stride is successively faster.  That doesn’t mean that your horse has to be at top speed; it just means that he has to be building speed, with the fastest stride right before the stop.

Fencing is about working on those two factors, running straight and building speed.   I've found that it works best to concentrate on going straight first, and then add speed. So in my fencing routine, I start out by going from fence to fence at a slow lope.  Before I add any speed, I get my horse loping straight on a slack rein. If they lean one way or the other, I steer them the opposite way they are leaning. So if they are leaning to the left, I will pick up their shoulders and redirect them to the opposite right corner.  I want them to learn that they need to keep their shoulders up, and lope in a straight line on their own accord.

If a horse is running pretty much straight, but their hips are crooked and almost on another track, it can be a little harder to fix. I have found that problem to be more of a confidence thing.  So I slow things down, keep going back and forth, and just really focus on getting the shoulders straight. Those hips will line out as the horse gets more confident loping down the pen.  Adding a little bit of forward momentum can help, but you have to be careful because a lot of horses will carry their hips off to the side because they are worried about the fence. But I have found if you keep going back and forth, maybe a million times, eventually they will relax and their hips will align with the rest of their body.

When I am fencing at home, I will stay at that slow speed until I get them to lope back and forth without holding them and they go straight.  At a show, this is a little bit harder to do because it is usually crowded and there can be a lot of traffic.  If my horse is leaning, I will still steer him across the pen to fix the problem. Just be careful of your fellow competitors fencing around you. You have to fix that leaning before you work on anything further. Then once my horse is loping confidently back and forth in a straight line, then I will start adding speed.

Adding Speed

When your horse is lined out, and you start adding speed to the fence, it is important to build speed in a gradual way. That speed should be like a ball rolling down a hill; it starts slow and gradually builds speed until it is rolling down the hill as fast as it possibly can.

I am borrowing this metaphor from a friend of mine, Craig Schmersal, because it's a great way to think of the ideal speed buildup in your rundown. Fencing is a tool to practice and perfect that speed buildup without stopping every time. The goal is to lope off in a slow speed, build speed smoothly in a straight line, and reach your fastest speed that last stride before your horse folds into a stop the fence. It takes a lot of confidence on the part of your horse to run and build speed all the way through the pen and stop at their fastest stride.  That's where building confidence at the slower speed becomes so important, because you will build upon that base to get to the higher speeds.

When you start adding speed running to the fence, two problems can typically occur. Either your horse shuts down and scotches, or he bursts too fast too soon, and gets a case of the ‘dartasses.’ I am borrowing that expression from another friend of mine, Todd Crawford.

If I run across the first problem, and my horse shuts down before I get to the end of the arena, I don’t overreact and drive him to the fence in an aggressive manner. Instead, I just keep loping that horse back and forth to the fence until he frees up.  One of the mistakes you can make is kicking at them too much going to the fence.  If you do, they will actually start getting shorter and shorter, which is the opposite of what you are after.  Most horses get short because they are starting to think they need to stop.  So I might encourage them to go on, but I don’t just keep kicking at them. 

If on the other hand, my horse is running too free, or blasting into that higher speed, I will just pick up on the reins, draw them in the ground, and stop them.  I make sure I'm not jerking on their face. I just want to get their attention and say “Hey, come here…wait for me.”  I do that by taking the slack out of the reins, and then applying pressure until they fold into the ground. I make a point of never jerking the slack out of the reins and ripping them in the ground.

On those horses that are bursting into that rundown, it can sometimes take a lot of times of pulling them in the ground, walking to the fence and doing it all over. But I will just keep doing that until they get relaxed. I want them to have a lot of confidence in that run down, and it just takes longer for some horses.

Fencing Refinements

 While you're working on straightness and building speed, how you start and finish each trip to the end of the arena is equally important.  You want to instill an overall sense of deliberateness, and make sure your horse is waiting on you. So when I cue my horse for the lope departure, I often walk a few steps before asking for the departure. On some of the horses that get a little bit tense and want to blast off into that departure, I will even trot them a couple steps into the departure. They need to wait for me to tell them when to step up into the lope.

Remeber not to guard your horse. Put your horse out there, and just dare him to make a mistake. If you don’t let him make a mistake, you can’t fix those problems.  In the same sense, you never want to hold your horse back, make him wait, wait, wait; and then turn him loose, let him go three strides, and then stop him. I see a lot of people making that mistake, which only creates that blasting problem we are trying to avoid.

And remember, it’s not a horse race to the fence. You want to build speed, not race, to the end of the arena. Those really nice horses can stop at a speed that is as fast as they can run. But I have only ridden a couple horses like that.  In reality, most horses need to stop at a speed that is a little bit slower than all out, because they lack the confidence or strength to stop at that highest gear.  Too fast is faster than your horse is comfortable stopping.  And fencing will help develop and increase that optimal speed throughout a horse’s career.

Make sure that you're sitting straight in the saddle. If you find yourself sitting off to the side, chances are that you are trying to balance your horse to compensate for his leaning. Just sit in the middle of the saddle, and your horse should stay straight underneath you on a loose rein.

At the end of the rundown to the fence, I like to just let the fence stop the horse.  I don’t pull on them or say whoa.  My thought is that after repeated trips at slower speeds, the horse knows where and when to go to the ground better than I do. So I am in position to stop at any point, and when I run them to the fence, they stop when they need to. Occasionally, I have had a horse that will run into the fence.  If that's the case, I will slow down again until they figure out when they need to stop on their own. And that goes back to that confidence thing. The horse has to have confidence to go from one end of the arena to the other. You don’t ever want to scare them.

 

Stopping

When it gets to actually asking my horse to stop away from the fence, I might do that 3 or 4 times in a normal training routine.  I am looking for some consistency, and the more I do it, the more consistent they get. If I ask a horse to stop and they aren’t as committed as they should be, I will bump them back, and punish their face lightly. And when I say that, what I mean is that I will let them know that I am coming to their face, and bump a couple times light.  If they still don’t get off the bridle I will bump them a couple times harder.

I don’t necessarily back my horses up after every stop, but I want them thinking back. They at least need to be off the bridle, and I want them to think that when I sit in that stopping position and stay in that position, they should start backing up. But I don’t always back them up after every stop.

I want to reinforce my voice and that the cue “whoa” means stop. After running back and forth to the fence a couple times, what can happen is that you get them too free and they're just thinking about going to the fence all the time. What I will do in that case, is not say whoa. I will just lope down through there, and as they are building speed really nice, I will just pick up, take the slack out and ease them into the ground. Then they start thinking that they have to listen to my voice, and that they have to start listening to my hands.  At any stride through that arena, I can ask them to stop, and they should go to the ground. I like to be able to stop my horse by either a hand or a voice cue, because when I show them I might have to do both. Ideally they will stop on my voice, but I want an emergency brake in case they don’t hear me the first time.

Discipline
We've all seen people do a lot of crazy things fencing.  You see people run down there, stop their horse at the fence, jerk them backwards, spin them around, and then take off and go the other way in a wild manner. When they do that, they get their horses dreading going to the fence, which just causes more problems.  Being disciplined and consistent is so important in fencing.

I like to lope or run to that fence, let them stop at the fence, and then just stand there. I get in a hurry sometimes, and one thing that helps me is to make myself count to 20 after I turn around.  That gives me enough time to calm down, relax, tell myself not to worry about what just happened. It also gives my horse a chance to think about what they're doing. Usually what I find is that by the time I hit 20, my horse is either standing there relaxed, or he is up tight.  If he's uptight, I need to stand there even longer. It just makes me slow things down a little, and think about what I am doing.

Patience and discipline are very important factors in fencing. You also need to have faith in your training program.  Sometimes problems can arise at the shows because you only have so much time, and your horse may be having trouble with the ground, or be freaked out by all the traffic. If I am at one of those big shows, and I'm running out of time, I just wait until the next session instead of trying to fix everything all at once.

Once my horses are fencing pretty well at the big shows, I don’t keep fencing them. What I am looking for is a stop in each lead.  Usually I will stop them once on one side of the arena in each lead, and then I will move to the other side and stop in each lead over there as well. Then I'm done.

For example, at the big futurity in OKC, once my horses are fencing well, and they know what the ground feels like, I leave them alone. I probably won’t even fence them between go-rounds. You can overdo fencing, and wear out your stop and your run down. Let them feel the ground, let them get comfortable in the arena, but have some faith in your training program and don’t over do it.  In an overall sense, if you keep fencing simple and consistent, you can stay out of a lot of trouble. 

Perfecting that rundown will go a long way in setting up the ultimate tail dragging, point earning stop we are all after.

About Dell Hendricks
Dell Hendricks has been involved with horses his whole life, but it wasn’t until he went to watch a reining with his dad that he got interested in reining. “I saw my first reining horse when I was 20, and said to myself ‘I can do it better than those guys.’”  Well, time has indeed proven that to be the case. With over $1 Million in NRHA earnings, Dell has been winning major awards since first since venturing into reining competition in 1991. 

Along the way he has worked for hall of famer Bob Loomis and Utah trainer Kim Wagoner.  But it was when he started working for owner Pat Warren that he connected with his biggest mentor, Tim McQuay.  “I rode with Tim a lot, after I left Bob’s and went to work for Pat. He has been my biggest influence,” says Hendricks. And when it comes to fencing, there are few better than Tim McQuay to learn from. “I would like to say I invented fencing,” laughs Dell, “but I learned about all I know from Tim.”

Hendricks has a multitude of top tier titles to his credit including AQHA World Champion, NRHA Open Futurity Champion, NRBC Open Champion, and NRHA Open Derby Champion. 

Photo credit: www.Waltenberry.com 
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To learn more about Dell Hendricks: www.hendricksreininghorses.com
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