Canter Help

[oscarwild]

Looking for a little advice on how to get my mare to canter round corners. I'm bringing her on as previous owner wasnt very confident with her and she got off with quite a lot. Occassionally in trot she wont bend round the corner but its a nightmare in canter. When you ask for the bend and to send her round a corner or to do circles etc she can bend with her head but cant follow through with her hind quarters. She seems unbalanced when cornering and nothing I'm doing with her helps. She just does the same.

Does anyone have any suggestions to things we can try get her to go round a corner lovely.

 

[LouS]

I would start doing a lot of lateral work in walk, she needs to be more flexible and loose through her shoulders so she can bend properly. She's probably finding it really hard. When I have one I'm schooling, I'll do some simple lateral exercises in walk for 3 weeks before I start schooling them properly. Makes a big difference. How does she canter on the lunge? You're looking for her to carry her head low and look slightly to the inside. I imagine if she's finding it hard to bend you'll find she'll look to the outside on the lunge to balance herself. So you need to correct this before you can expect her to do it with a rider on board.

 

[Samantha008]

Sounds to me like her balance isnt all that great, which is normal for a horse that has been out of work for a while. Id do lots of hacking on a long rein and lots of lunging on big circles, mainly in trot to start with, Bring her in onto smaller circles every now and again and then send her out agin. good luck

 

[ThePony]

I would start doing a lot of lateral work in walk, she needs to be more flexible and loose through her shoulders so she can bend properly. She's probably finding it really hard. When I have one I'm schooling, I'll do some simple lateral exercises in walk for 3 weeks before I start schooling them properly. Makes a big difference. How does she canter on the lunge? You're looking for her to carry her head low and look slightly to the inside. I imagine if she's finding it hard to bend you'll find she'll look to the outside on the lunge to balance herself. So you need to correct this before you can expect her to do it with a rider on board.

this^^. Get your forwardness/suppleness and balance sorted in walk, then sort it in trot, then canter. If the walk and trot work isn't right, then you don't have a hope with canter. - I can vouch for this as I'm currently working through the same with my mare currently! From stiff as a board, no forwardness, no bend or balance (a dream ride eh!?) we have worked on just moving forwards, then some circles and serpentines (still with forwardness) then a little shoulder fore, then shoulder in, and leg yield. Then same in trot, and we are now cantering a niceish 20m circle (which is a lovely change to the fall into trot or swing round the end of the school wall of death stylee!).
Every couple of weeks I also loose school her in the lunge pen (I want her to learn to balance herself without anything else to bother about or use to evade), just building up to a steady forwards rhythum in all paces has been really useful for her.

 

[Kenzo]

You need take things right back to scratch and get her learning to bend in walk first, certainly won’t happen in a matter of weeks, as you have to work on stretching those muscles without over stretching and causing any discomfort, so it will take at least a month to see an decent improvement.

Carrot stretches, make sure you horse is loose and pretty warm to begin with, don’t try stretching cold muscles basically, but start of will little loose stretches daily, this will help with your school work and is something you can do either in the school with doing ground work, in the stable or in the field.

A good warm up, it’s more productive to warm up slowly and spend less time schooling (once warmed up) than the other way round, neck stretches (again once a little warm) ask your horse to bend gently round to kiss your stirrup, this is good for the neck and top of the shoulders and you’ll also notice that your horse may be able to bend better one way than the other or may have to tilt the head slightly to achieve the same amount of bend, again if you do the carrot stretches this will help when you do this, remember not to pull the head round, little asks with your fingers so the horse ‘gives’ in little stages, and reward with a give from your hand, your horse will soon learn what you are asking and start doing it themselves when you ask.

Practice on riding straight (seems strange but it will help your bends (see whip exercise below)

Lateral work.

Riding squares.


Good inside leg so your horse has something to bend around and prevents them from falling think about your outside leg, needs to be slightly further back so it stops the hind quarters swinging out, think of it like snake that needs to gently slither around your legs. Don’t look down (we all have a habit of doing it I know) but soon as you do this, you drop and tilt your shoulders and give away that outside rein without realising it, make sure you don’t drop that that inside rein neither.

A good old fashioned exercise is using a short whip across your hands, will feel a bit strange at first but it will give clearer aids and will stop you doing any strange habits with your hands/elbows.

Sorry rattled on there.