Got the need for speed? To win in barrel racing, you’ve also got to have the need for refinement. AQHA Professional Horseman Doug Leasor explains:

By Holly Clanahan for The American Quarter Horse Journal

AQHA Professional Horseman Doug Leasor coaches Mike Thomas of Core, West Virginia, on leg position. Mike is aboard Floyds Showdown.

Watching the barrel racing at the Region Four Championship in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday, AQHA Professional Horseman Doug Leasor of Wales, Massachusetts, saw a lot of things he liked. But he also saw some common mistakes. In a clinic after the speed events had concluded for the day, he offered up some tips.

Horses That Drop Their Shoulders Into the Turns
Usually, on a horse that drops his shoulders, the first thing people do is pull the outside rein to pull the horse up straight. But these horses will tend to pull back against that pressure, so when the rein is released, the horse falls into the turn even more. Doug recommends lifting the inside rein up and squeezing with the inside leg, underneath the horse’s rib cage, which helps him lift his back. If you’re using inside leg and inside rein, you’ll be tipping the horse’s nose toward the barrel – which provides another benefit. “He’s not going to hit the barrel with his nose. He doesn’t mind his shoulders or hip hitting it, but he doesn’t want to hit it with his face. So you won’t hit a barrel if you stand his shoulder up and run his nose around it.”

Common Rider Error – Not Starting the Turn Soon Enough
“If you’re driving down the road going 45 mph, and you’re going to turn in your driveway, aren’t you going to slow down first?” Doug asks. But he sees a lot of people doing the opposite with their barrel horses. They’ll run hard until they’re at the spot where the horse should make a sharp turn around the barrel. When the rider pulls on the horse’s face, the horse can’t shut down that fast, so he makes a wide turn, scooting out toward the wall. So before you actually get to the turn, “cue your horse to turn the barrel. Bump him, just get him collected and say ‘Ho!’ People say, ‘Well, if I bump him, I’m slowing him down.’ You are slowing him down, but you’re smoothing him out. He’s going to cover less ground. If two horses can run the same speed, I’m putting my money on the smoothest one because he’s not covering as much ground.” Where you make this cue depends on your horse and how much time and room he needs for his turns.

Figuring Out the Pocket
Some horses need more room than others on their turns. Doug says the ideal is to have your horse’s hip next to the barrel as he’s leaving it. So calculate backward from there to decide where you need to enter the turn. If your horse leaves the barrel at the correct spot, it lines him up with the next barrel and saves ground. “Two horses that run the same speed, the one that comes the closest off (the barrel) is the one that’s going to win,” Doug says.

Manners Matter
“I go to shows all the time, and the judges will come up to me at lunch break or something and say, ‘You’re the guy with the roan horses, right?’ I say ‘Yeah.’ They say, ‘Those horses are the most well-behaved horses we’ve seen, because they walk in the gate, and they walk back out of the gate once they’re done.’ A lot of the horses that go to the horse shows are lunging and rearing up and running off. And that’s not fun to ride. You’re supposed to be doing this for fun. Otherwise, you’d have a boat and be out on the lake,” Doug says. “So I take my horse in the arena, I let it see what’s going on, I circle it, and I let it go. When I get done, I stop my horse in the arena, I take it out and I let it get back down to normal breathing. It’s like a pleasure horse when it’s going around the rail, and the rider reverses him. Most of those pleasure horses speed up because they think, ‘OK, we’re going the second way, we’re almost done.’ They’re wanting to hurry up so they can line up and be done. But if you take that pleasure horse right out of the pen and walk into the practice pen and ride him for 10 more minutes, he doesn’t know when he’s done. Same way with a barrel horse. If you take him out after he has run and walk him around, trot him around, get his breathing back down to normal, he doesn’t realize that ‘As soon as I cross that timer line, I’m done.’ The reason the horse gets all up in the air is because he thinks, ‘The quicker I get in, the quicker I get out. And then I’m done, because he’s going to jump off me, he’s going to loosen my saddle up, and he’s going to tie me to the trailer for two hours until I go again.’ If you keep him working, then he doesn’t know that he’s actually done when he comes out of the pen.”

The Region Four Championship continues through Sunday at the Ohio Expo Center in Columbus, Ohio. Region Four encompasses Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan and Ontario. Learn more about AQHA’s Regional Championships and see what region you’re in.

Read up on all the Region Four Championship reports.

And don’t forget to click on our slide show photos to read the captions.

Holly Clanahan
Editor, America's Horse magazine