Riders: Kind of western event you ride in, and how you use your spurs?

[Chickerdoodle13]

My dad strapped a pair of spurs on me once in a reining event at a 4-H show. I was just doing the reining for fun on my horse, but those spurs scared the crud outta me. My horse was much too responsive with them and it made both of us jumpy.

My dad uses spurs, but I prefer not to. The only horse we've really needed them on was our older gelding because he's just not as responsive as our other horses. Unless he was walking nose to butt on a trail, he needed that little but of extra to get him going where you wanted. Always a good horse, just a bit thick at times.

I'm a bit ungraceful with spurs on too. I love the sounds they make while walking, but forget it while trying to get on and off a horse! I just tend to get tangled up LOL

 

[rilly10]

Spurs are often misused. For english and most typed of western riding a spur (IMHO) should be an extension of your aids. If you can't get a show horse to move, you need to get back to the basics, not add spurs. I used spurs for training lateral movements a lot, NEVER for speed, just percision.

There is also a "spur broke horse" which is what I think is causeing the confusion here. This was the old way of training a western pleasure horse and is still used in some breeds. Mainly Apps I believe. These horses were trained to be on such a loose rein that they had NO contact with the mouth. There for you had to use your feet for all of your aids along with voice. "cluck" was jog. If you needed your horse to jog faster or extend the jog you would bump bump bump with the spurs. Lope was a smooch, to speed up or extend the lope bump bump bump with the spurs again. Whoa was stop along with spurs in the sides- not a kick but seady squeeze for the halt. To slow down or go down a gait was done with the seat. Walk on was bump with the spurs. The spurs along with voice were all you needed so that the spur broke horse would always travel on a drooped rein. These were also the days when the lope was so slow it had an extra beat and was again JMHO looked like teh horse was dead lame ( this is no longer allowed to be rewared in a show).