Following on From the Gallop Speed Post

[Chavhorse]

My horse can't or won't gallop!

He is a Dutch Warmblood Cross born and brought up in Holland dressage trained and he really is clueless, you can go to an open space say off you go and you get......a beautiful collected canter, when you ask for more you get......a beautiful extended canter lol even in the field the most he does is an extended canter.

If he is being led by another horse he stands still and bounces on the spot then sets off in collected and then extended canter.

Now I know he is a bit Speshal but one of my friends on the yard who is also an instructor said her Dutch bred and trained warmblood was exactly the same.

So is it just us with our slightly unusual horses )

 

[crabbymare]

they can gallop but sometimes you almost need to give a pony club kick to get there and then you realise that there really were thoroughbreds in their ancestry

 

[CobsGalore]

I never thought my cob could gallop either! Even in a big open space he wouldn't do much more than a fast canter and even then I had to push him on, even in company!

I then took him to a sponsored ride last month with 3 other horses and he finally worked it out and had a whale of a time!! He now goes a lot faster when I let him go. It's like he didn't realise his feet could move that quickly, but now he can!

He is only just 6 so he is still finding out where his feet are, but I would suggest taking your horse to something like a sponsored ride or xc, he may just find a new gear like mine did!

 

[Chavhorse]

My old boy was an ex racer and had two speeds flaming fast and warp speed )

My only mild concern is that once he goes! he is a big boy with a huge stride so I will need to make sure that once he is going we have enough room to let him go and pull him up.....I think an early morning beach visit may be in order....looks up tide timetables

 

[Darremi]

Warmbloods often take a while to learn how to gallop. Because they have a more rounded knee action in canter they tend to cover less ground than a TB in gallop. What you need to do is train him to think he is in a race. This worked with my Hanoverian x Danish WB. First of all pick a fast horse to take as lead horse, a TB preferably. Make sure you have a really long stretch of field, and set off in canter upsides another horse. Get the other horse to gradually increase the tempo and keep your lad with his head at the other horses girth. Never let him drop behind. Keep encouraging him to open up and hopefully he'll naturally figure out that he wants to either keep up with the other horse or race it. Racehorse trainers do a lot of work teaching their horses to actually race, and one can learn a lot from this.

 

[CobsGalore]

Take a fast horse along for company so they can have a good race. The only thing that got my horse really galloping was trying to keep up with a 17hh hunter!

 

[sandi_84]

The first time I took Loki for a gallop hack we were riding back up, started the first gallop and we were left for dust! ha ha! I thought "nope no gallop gear... oh well" then it suddenly clicked for him that he could actually go faster There was no stopping us after that, we just had to work out that now we had gallop gear we also needed brakes!
It all worked out well though, for a bog standard cob he's pretty quick on the uptake so the next gallop hack went much better!

 

[Suzie G]

The beach is always a good place. Something seems to go "click" in their heads that there's no boundary walks, fences or hedges!

 

[Elf On A Shelf]

Yeah after 9 years my dartmoor still can't gallop and we have tried the works! Beaches, hunting, stubble fields, I even had him out on the gallops with the race horses but nope! still just a collected canter! The more you try to send him on the more he comes back underneath you. He would be the perfect kids first ridden pony if he wasnt a cold backed rodeo pony!

 

[Equilibrium Ireland]

Upsides, head to head. Get into a canter rythym together, increase spead like you do for any other part of riding, from behind thus coming into the bridle. This should help them to lengthen their stride. Galloping is not kick and go. It has pace and consistency. It's not flying as fast as you can go. You know how people say, racehorses are backwards? Pull means go faster? Not really true. When a horse is in a nice comfy gallop you give to them. Yup, this is where we want to stay, cruising at this speed. All racehorses have different cruising speeds in which they're comfortable.

Breezing, different in America, is the art of getting them from their cruising speed to faster while lengthening the stride and dropping down. You want to finish faster than starting. If I was told to do a half in 48 then I'd have a feel of where I needed to be at each furlong marker. Maybe an easy first 1/8 in 13 and slightly increase until I hit an 11.3 or.2 in the last furlong. Here the breezing is different and it was more difficult for me to gage where a horse was in his training. I didn't have apps either. All in my head. Mind you I'm calling BS on that app if horses are hitting 45 mph.

Anyway, if you want to teach to gallop you must first teach canter in company, even extended. At the end of each session as with your legs to lengthen by coming up into your hands. Your position is based more on leverage. I can go into that in more detail if you want but you should be out of the saddle and still. Anyway over a few sessions your horse should learn to lengthen which will quicken his pace. His cruising speed will not be that of a TB.

I'm sure this is confusing but hard to explain something that at this stage of my life is instinct.

Terri