To canter or not?

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SALLYT

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Need some advice please.

I have a green 5 year old and just starting his education, at the moment he struggles to balance himself in trot on a 20 m circle he falls in and out and with my trianer we are slowly improving this.

The problem I had last night was that during trot on the circle and to some degree on the straight he was anticipating canter and really started to get tense and increase his stride. I kept half halting and talking to him to steady and wouldn't let him canter. gradually he started to relax and we did for us some nice calm trot work.

Now am I right in not letting him canter for a while maybe just on the lunge until he is more settled, or do I think blow it we'll do some canter work, which in itself presents another issue, he has a huge stride and finds collection difficult at the moment and often breaks into trot on the circle, when I do intro duce canter in my lessons we ask for canter do a couple of circles, well as near to the shape of a circle as we can manage, then bring him down to trot once collected in trot we'll ask again for a bit of canter.

So am I doing things correctly or is there anything else I can do to relax him and stop the rushing.

Thanks in advance.
 
Sounds like you are doing everything the right way. I wouldn't change it if I were you. A horse should canter when asked, stay in canter until asked to go down to trot, by letting him decide when to canter coudl cause problems when out and about.
 
Personally if the horse is still unbalanced in a trot then I wouldn't canter just yet. I prefer to have the horse well established in the trot before I ask them to canter instead of blowing their mind with trying to work on trot and canter at once. Hope this helps?
Izzi xx
 
Izzi - I understand what you are saying that's why I am reluctant to let him canter at the moment, its only when I feel we have a nice relaxed trot will I think about a canter transistion.

MariaToo- thank you
 
Just to be a bit different.

I agree, I wouldn't ask for collected canter of any kind at this stage if he is falling in and out in trot and neither would I let a horse choose when to canter and dcanter on if they find the trot falling apart... but... I made a mistake with one of mine by not cantering her until her trot was more established and found that she really struggled to balance herself then in canter. I was working with a trainer who suggested this.

I changed trainers after a while as we were just not making the progress I had expected and my new trainer (event rider trained by Bartle's so not inexperienced) suggested working on the trot but including bursts of canter work with my using a neck strap, staying off her back initially and forgetting about head carriage.

Now I'm not saying yours is anything like mine but once we worked on this for a while I found her trot and canter work improved hugely.


just my experience...

ETA

forgot to say that my mare was dreadful for rushing when we first started this and really tense and allowing her to find a balance and settle into a canter was what helped I think. She can still get tense but lots of long and low work reduces that.
 
i agree with elsielouise. i think if he is rushing in the trot it wont help with his balance so you should canter him large(not on circle) for a few circuits then bring him back to trot and hopefully he will settle more in the trot which will help his balance. n besides if he is excited to canter it will keep him interested.
 
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