Conquering the Canter

Last fall I took my horse Sonny to a three day clinic given by the 5 Star Parelli Instructor Carol Coppinger. It was a great clinic and Sonny and I did pretty well until it came time to canter. We were a mess. I was a bit freaked out by the fact that there were a dozen other students on horseback standing in the indoor arena while I was trying to get Sonny to canter. Sonny was unorganized and a bit unmotivated to canter so all he offered was a faster trot. Together we managed to almost plow into one of the other horses. It was embarrassing and I made a silent pledge to improve.
To tell the truth, Sonny doesn’t have the smoothest gaits in the world. His left front foot is a bit crooked and his trot can be big and bouncy. His canter is not the rocking chair gait shown by many quarter horses and he has trouble taking his right lead. In the four years I’ve had Sonny; I have never been able to get him to canter directly from a walk. When asked to canter, he usually speeds up his trot until it is impossibly fast prior to finally kicking it into gear. The faster he trots, the more unbalanced and unorganized I become so by the time we finally get to the canter, I am usually not even close to my balance point. It’s not pretty. Impulsion can also be a problem for Sonny and he can be a bit lazy. He doesn’t always want to go forward and if there is grass anywhere in the vicinity, he would much rather eat than move.
To make matters worse, I am probably not giving him the clearest of signals. My last horse, Max, was a school master. He had been professionally trained and shown before I bought him and he would canter from a dead stop with just the slightest application of an outside heel. He never missed a lead, ever and it didn’t matter if my weight was forward or back, he would compensate and pop into a beautiful smooth canter.
Realizing that Sonny and I had our work cut out for us, I dipped into the Parelli vault and found video clips of Pat demonstrating canter leads and Linda explaining how the rider’s body weight affected the horse’s ability to lift his front end into the canter. Then I watched the level 2 and 3 Freestyle DVDs where Pat demonstrates the canter on a loose rein. Holding his inside rein forward and reaching with his other hand to touch the horse behind the saddle automatically shifts his weight in a way that helps the horse move off on the correct lead. This made sense to me and I was anxious to see if it would help Sonny and I get off on the right foot.
The first day of our “conquer the canter” program, Sonny and I warmed up at the trot. I had decided to start by working on his left lead, which is the one he takes more easily. Once he had settled down into a nice relaxed trot, I asked him to downshift into a nice active walk and walked down the long line of the arena. When we reached the corner, I held the reins forward with my inside hand, reached around with my outside hand to touch Sonny on his butt, pressed my outside heal into his side and made a kissing sound. Sonny took a few steps at the trot and popped into a canter. I was amazed. I cantered down the long line of the arena and a then asked for a trot. Four times we repeated this pattern. Each time Sonny trotted a few strides and then stepped into a canter. By the fourth time I was so happy I was laughing out loud and rather than pushing the issue to see if I could actually get a canter from the walk, I stopped, fed Sonny a cookie and took him out for a trail ride.
On the second day, after warming up, when I asked Sonny to canter from the walk and he popped right into it. He didn’t even try to trot; he just rocked back and stepped off into the canter. He gave me several good transitions. . On the third day, I worked on building impulsion by using a yo-yo game. I trotted him down a long line then ask him to stop, back up and trot off directly from the back up. After repeating this a few time, I could tell by looking at Sonny’s ears that he was really paying attention to me. When I finally asked him to canter, he stepped off into a lovely loping canter that would be the envy of most western pleasure riders.
By the fourth day, Sonny was actually starting to anticipate what I wanted and offering the canter before I asked. He even offered me a right lead canter, something I hadn’t started to work on yet. Impulsion was no longer an issue and Sonny had so much energy that I found myself actually trotting and cantering 10 meter circles, something we had rarely done in the past. I was just amazed at how far we had come in such a short time.
For me, one of the best things about Parelli Natural Horsemanship™ is the feeling of accomplishment that comes from working through a problem. Both Sonny and I had issues with the canter but I think the main issue we were having was that I was getting in Sonny’s way. Whenever he would speed up into his big bouncy trot, I was tipping forward putting my weight on his forehand. This was preventing him from lifting his front end easily into the canter. Once I got my body into the correct position and got out of his way, it because much easier for him to move into the canter.
So now that we seem to have the left lead canter departures working consistently, our next task is to get the right lead canter departures. Then it is on to simple lead changes and I am hopeful our goal of achieving level 3 in Freestyle during 2010 is something we can actually achieve.