Hollowing in trot for canter transition.

[missallym]

Hi I bought a very green horse about 16 months ago, and have been schooling him and coming along great in walk/trot and he was rounding very nicely and taking self carriage. so this year I decided it was time to move up to canter. now I feel like all my hard work with trot has gone right out the window.
As the canter is new, he has started anticipating it, and as soon as I ask for trot regardless of whether I want to canter or not, his head goes right up in the air, he hollows, stiffens and trots choppily blocking with his shoulders. if I bend him he will sometimes come back down round in the bend, but as soon as we have done the full circle, regardless of size of the circle, his head is back up in the air, he even does it in walk sometimes too. He will block with his shoulders on a circle and set his neck and poll and ignore my leg aids.
I have tried pushing him forward in trot to try make him come down and round, but this doesn't work and he just trots faster choppily. its awful to ride.
I do walk, trot, walk, trot, transitions which works for a little while but then the head is back up, same with leg yeilds
once I do get him into canter, he's ok and we are still on big circles while he works it out. though getting into canter is more of a leap into it the majority of the time. There has only been a handful of times he's done a smooth transition. canter back to trot is sudden too, even though I try to slow down as much as possible in canter before asking for trot.
obviously the canter transitions are very new so I cant expect him to get it right straight away and it will take time, its more the head in the air and how to stop him doing it.
I didn't really want to go back to just walk and trot if I can help it, as I don't want to bore him with it as its been over 12 months that we have been doing that. Though if I do just do walk and trot and he realises we are not going to canter, he goes lovely again.
teeth, back, saddle all ok.
any advice will be appreciated

 

[be positive]

I think your mistake was to leave canter for so long, not that you can change things now but to spend over a year without doing any cantering will mean for him it is new and exciting so the trot work gets forgotten in his enthusiasm, without seeing you it is difficult to know what will work best but I will make a few suggestions based on my experiences with different horses.

Can you canter properly out hacking? if so I would work on it somewhere that he can just get used to going forward and straight not worrying too much about which leg or really being round just getting him used to balancing himself, you can still do transitions without the fence getting in the way.
Do some canter work in forward seat in the school, again don't worry about how he is going just think about him being forward, getting himself balanced and confident, the transitions will be a bit rough initially accept that is all he is capable of at this stage, once the canter becomes more established the transitions will become easier.
Do more canter some days, just warm up and get on with it without trying to perfect the trot first, let him get a little bored with cantering then finish with some nice trot work.
Some days don't canter at all, spend those days really getting the trot improved.
Introduce some polework to keep him interested, use in all paces, a small x pole can really help the trot canter transition and again will keep him thinking about something other than going off cantering.

Just a few different ideas that I have used in the past, walk to canter is also useful, it doesn't have to be perfect but can help miss out the running in trot that you get with an unbalanced horse, they all go through difficult stages when they are learning, thinking outside the box can help you get out of the rut and remember that he will not forget what he has already learnt it just gets lost for a while and you have to keep going back to basics until they have become more established.

 

[Pinkvboots]

Agree with bp about leaving the canter too long, he is also not going to have the strength and muscle to keep rounded it can take ages to get them to be able to maintain it in the school, having a similar problem myself my instructor had me doing a few strides of trot then a few of canter and so on, my horse in an arab so they find it easier to do head in the air but once we did a few circuits of loads of transitions he was finding it easier and when we went back to doing a longer stretch of canter he was dropping into an outline, doing loads of transitions gets them sharper off your leg and gets there back end underneath them and more forward so it helps them soften in the canter. I would forget about where his head is for now concentrate on what the back end is doing, and you will find once the back end is working correctly the front end sorts its self out.

 

[missallym]

Thank you for your replies, I feel better about it all now, and totally agree with what you are saying.
yes I think I left it too long for canter too, but iv just been doing what my instructor was telling me. I always felt we should have been further forward than what we are.
canter out hacking is absolutely fine, we get some nice transitions then too, and no head in the air, and hes pretty good at going off whichever leg I ask, both in the school and out.
once we get going in the school, hes fine.
I will try your suggestions, and agree with the making canter boring in the school too by just cantering.

thank you both
x