Training my Western horse to ride English

Question
Hello,
I recently bought a 11 year old AQHA mare; she has great manners, but she was trained Western and I ride English. What techniques can I use to train her to understand my English reining? Right now, when I try to turn in one direction, she just turns her head and looks at me like, "huh?" She is very willing to learn, she's just confused. Also, her previous owner used spurs on her for the last six years. How do I wean her off of the spurs?  Often, if I am not wearing spurs or using a crop, there is no amount of kicking, voice commands or anything else that will get her to move. She will simply stand in place. She is well-behaved and good with lungeing, I simply think that she is just so used to her previous owner's riding styles. Please help me get her to move and get her to understand my English reining!!!

Answer
Hi Jessica - sorry for the delay in answering.....

When you say trained Western - I take it she neck reins? What I would do is start working on her slowly - when you want to turn, neck rein and use a LITTLE pressure on the inside rein also - this is the opposite of what I would do when teaching to neckrein.....she should start to correspond the pressure on the rein to turning - don't forget to use body language and leg also - look in the direction you want to go, shift your boody accordingly.

This is not going to happen overnight, and you do NOT want to start pulling or yanking on her face. All that would do is to hurt her and make her hard in the mouth.  Start slow and small and work up form there.

As for the spur issue - do you know ~why~ spurs were used on the horse? This sounds like retraining may be needed- she could have 'dead' sides and the spurs were used as extra 'oomph' to get her to move, instead of fixing the reason why she didn't move out.  Again - when you try to get her to move out, try teh least amount of force or pressure and build from there.  She should learn that you are not trying to hurt her, or make her do bad things......also, if you work on her trust, and spend time just going places with her, this should help....make riding a pleasurable experience for her - not always work work work.....hopefully she will look forward to being ridden and with time will become more responsive.  

Unfortuantely there is no quick fix to either of your problems, it will take time and patience- please email back with any further questions or updates on progress!  Lisa