Learning to canter properly

Starting the sessions always with lot of walking. 

All horses know how to move their feet just hours after they have been born. They know how to walk, trot, canter and gallop for sure. Our boy knows these gaits as well. However, he has always had difficulties in cantering when we ask him to do it. When I test-rode him, he surely could canter. He did have to run for it though, and then it was rushed and felt really fast and kind of ‘out of control’, although I’m sure it actually did not look like it per se. After all, he had a much bigger stride than what I was used to!

When we started working bringing him on from the basics of riding he had just learned (walk, trot, canter and jump), we found that it was canter that always seemed to fall by the wayside, if anything went wrong or he was not ridden for a while. He could canter though, if he had enough oats in his manger… But that kind of cantering did not really do any good to him or us.

Since he has a pedigree for harness racing (both his sire and dam’s sire were top notch high earning coldblood harness racers), I’m inclined to think that he may well have the newly discovered ‘trotting allele’ in his DNA. This makes it easier for the horse to keep trotting, but more difficult to coordinate his limbs in canter. This would make sense both considering his pedigree as well as the fact that it is always been the canter than suffers immediately when training is slacked.

In any case, ridden canter has always been a problem area. When we started working on him according to the classical foundation training we stopped cantering and concentrated only on building up his topline muscles. Will maintains that cantering does not improve with a lot of cantering, it improves with building up the topline muscles first in walk and trot. Thus when the right muscle groups are strong enough, the canter should start to become easier and canter exercises can be started. When the horse can canter over his topline, only then cantering is a more useful exercise.

We left cantering be for a couple months altogether in the autumn and started to really concentrate on it only in January.

Our canter training sessions were mostly on the lunge. We started as per normal with walking and trotting. When the trot was good; he was stretching nicely long and low with good forward rhythm and pace, we asked for canter. Cantered for a round or two, then back to trot and established it well again. Rhythm, pace and good stretch. Then again a transition to canter and keep it up for a round or two. This we repeated several times, observing his energy levels and any improvement in the canter. In the end again nice trot and then to walk.

In fact it started to work very nicely just within a week. I even tried some canter under saddle. That did not work well at all yet, so left it out again. He still needed far more muscle and coordination. Will's comments on our progress. 

And then there was the set-back… :( 

Making sure that the trot was good before asking for canter, and always between canter transitions returning to this beautiful form. Notice the beautifully built back (in comparison to what it was just last summer)! :) And tummy muscles seem to be working as well. 

One of the early canters that day. Not looking good here yet at all.

One of the last canter transitions that day. Notice the use of his topline and nice relaxed underside of the neck. 

Next frame from the previous. Still to be improved, but a lot better than before. 

And this is how horrible it still looks like under saddle. Just two days after the above lunging session. Notice the thick underside of the neck, when he is not using his topline to canter. What a difference to the photos above. This means more work on the lunge to build more topline, and practice more canter on the lunge.