Im still waiting for all my western books to arrvie from Amazon! Menawhile can you sugest some training routines so I can give strucutre to my schooling. Horse is 17 years old and has done long distance and dressage. He can already neck rein from when we did long distance.

he has picked up the aids for rein back very quickly (amazingly as he wouldnt rein back with the conventional English aids) and for moving the hip. I am trying to keep thinkgs interesting for him as he is too bright for his own good!

Im amaing for pleasure, and trail and pleasure rides. id love to rein but at his age Ima warry of hard stops and spins.

Our horse does English and Western and is ridden by both OH and myself so we have a range of exercises that translate to both.
We like: to warm up, ride up into the bridle at walk and then halt, moving on to ride up into the bridle, halt and back up; move on to jog and if the horse is fresh you might want to jog or long trot (posting) for a few minutes.
Try not to work on the rail too much, use large circles where possible.
If the horse is a bit stiff or lazy like ours, have an easy lope early on; don't ask for too much shape yet.
Then we'd work on flexing and moving the hip about, try working from circle to circle in a snakey shape, changing the flexion smoothly.
e also like lots of jog/lope and walk/lope transitons to help soften her frame.
Another tip in the winter, particularly if you're planning to do some trail is to work over single poles in different parts of the arena at walk and jog, and then at lope. Horses easily get stale in the winter months, but we find ours cheers up instantly when she sees a pole!