0120 Canter

The topic of january 2020

The first topic we will work with this year is the canter. There are several reasons why. One reason is that the horses have had a lot of time off in December, and the canter is an amazing tool to build up fitness, strength and roundness for the horse, relatively fast. With an increased fitness and strength, you get a more forward thinking horse, and the work for better suppleness is more likely to succeed.

Bolcher is born in 2008, and we have struggled with the canter for a long time. The last few months I have focused on him keeping the responsibility of his own gait, thinking forward. He has a nice canter in the lunge, there he is quite easy to regulate, and collect,  due to the better balance… without me disturbing him. I started the training under rider, thinking balance first, then forward, so he could feel safe in the canter with me on. This little fellow is super polite, he prefer to stop if he feel that we are out of balance. Therefore I really need to build up some confidence in thinking forward also while riding. (We did some Working Equitation exercises to help with that). The video to the right shows where we are now… moving forward!

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Et innlegg delt av HorseClue| Horse trainer (@horseclue_) Jan. 11, 2020 kl. 5:22 PST

For me, a good canter has a nice rhythm, air, flow, roundness, shoulder freedom and hindleg engagement. To get this, we also have to add balance for both horse and rider. 

​That is what I will focus on with bolcher this month. To build a strong foundation of the basics in canter, but also challenge them now and then to see if we can bring him up a step more.

​Monique is a 5 years old Danish warmblood mare, staying with us for training. For her the goal is to get balanced and forward thinking under rider in canter, and to fully understand the transitions.

The growth of education

Its fascinating how everything is connected, and how it all depends on each other.

If you think of the education as a growing tree. You can grow one branch at the time, but to get a well balanced, and beautiful tree, all branches needs to grow to the same length, before the tree can grow any taller. If it grows too much on one branch, it will be to heavy and the tree starts to lean, the growth tries to equalize that unbalance, and grows a crooked trunk. Then the task gets a lot more difficult for us to complete. Therefore I believe its important to always have the great picture in mind, while allowing every little twig to grow equally towards a strong branch before letting the tree grow taller. 

keep it simple,
​but accurate

Step 1.
First we teach the horse the sound aid (voice command) for canter. 

Step 2.
Help the horse to gain and develop the ability to keep his own balance in canter on a circle.

Step 3.
Educate the canter on the lunge. The horse should be able to do a little shoulder in, quarter in, collection, lengthening and all the transitions.


These first 3 steps, or branches of  educating, needs a fertilizer to grow strong. -Play with your horse-

Playing with every movement that will build strength and confidence in the horse, will benefit your training a lot.

Step 4.
Introduce the rider gradually in all three steps. Be sure not to ask for much as a rider i the beginning.

You want the horse to regain his balance, with you as a disturbing element on his back. You want to install the new riding aids, that is slightly different from what he has learned from the ground. 

Use the the same voice aid as from the ground, but remember to carefully add the riding aid a second before, so he has the chance to actually learn the new aids.

Step 5
Play, educate and grow together with your horse. Use your imagination to give him new tasks and challenges, most horses love to use their body and mind. Then they grow strong, confident and proud. Remember that the stronger foundation (trunk) you have grown, the less likely it will break or bend if you do "something wrong".  
- only the sky is the limit.

Feel free to join us

I hope you feel a little inspired, and maybe even join us in the canter work, this month. That would be super cool!

Feel free to add a comment or share a picture/movie, at our Facebook site of what you are working with these days. 

Questions? -Shoot-
Lets inspire each other!