Why Your Horse Wont Canter

The canter is considered by a number of horse riders as one of the most fun strides to ride. Yet many other riders find it very hard to get their horse into a canter. So let’s have a review on why the canter might not be working for you.

Your horse isn’t fit enough to hold you in a canter

Like any athlete, horses require training to develop and hold riders in their chosen sport. It involves them coordinating 4 legs, balancing a human on their back, engaging their core, and trying to listen to what you are telling them. Imagine trying to hold 3 plates, walk in high heels, suck in your belly and smiling at the same time – then up that walk to a run! While it doesn’t look pretty, and probably isn’t feasible, with practice it becomes easier.

Same for our horse. We can help them build it up by ensuring they have their core engaged, a working pace and balance in the lower paces before introducing it in the canter. We can also help them by working on their canter transitions on the lunge.

You are getting in the way of your horse’s canter

If you lack balance, or lack confidence, you may be clenching down on your horse with your knees, and/or gripping the mouth to tight, and essentially providing a set of mixed signals for your horse.

If your canter isn’t established, you can’t help your horse coordinate theirs under saddle. Hop off, work on some canter on the lunge, and look for a riding school horse with a balanced canter to help you learn.

The working area is too small for the horse to canter

If you are trying to canter in 15 meter circles and your horse is unable to do so, the area is too small. The horse lacks the capability of maintaining that amount of bend at the canter pace, regardless if it can while at the lower paces.

The advice here is to go big! Bigger circles, bigger arena! Allow your horse to build up their ability to bend in the canter before trying to work in smaller circles or corners.

The horse just goes into a faster trot, and doesn’t pop into a canter

This may happen for several reasons:

• Your horse can physically hold you in the canter

• Your horse doesn’t understand the aids

• You are giving your horse the wrong instructions

• Your horse is trying but isn’t quite there yet

• Your horse is purposely avoiding the canter

Firstly, make sure you are providing the correct cues to pop them into canter. You may need to hire an instructor to get you through this phase. I would also suggest reading the 4 reasons why a horse evades to establish what to do in the case of the other reasons.

Do you have a riding question? Pop it in the comments below and we will respond!

How Do You Choose Your Instructor?

This may be a little controversial but I’m going to say it:

I don’t care how reputable your instructor/trainer is, their name does not excuse the way they treat your horse. Or the way they expect you to treat your horse.

I’m putting the call out that we start holding trainers and instructors to a higher standard of how we handle our horses.

It’s not your fault if they don’t know how to get the results from the horse with kindness. And it’s also not your horses fault. If we put enough pressure on our instructors and trainers and make a stand of how we are willing to handle our horses than they will just have to learn and adapt their techniques.

 Learn better, do better.

I’m not exempt to this. There are definitely times that I have been disappointed in myself for getting heavy handed with an aid.

I’m also not saying we don’t maintain expectations of safe behaviour from our horses and discipline.

I am saying the way that we get there doesn’t have to be through fear and bully tactics. In fact I am saying that this is the worst way to get lasting results from our horse.

It does mean that we have to be flexible in the results that we get within a certain time frame. We don’t have to be flexible in the results just how quickly we expect our horse to get there. It is important that our horse understand how to learn and work with relaxed focus. Ideally we can get to the point where our horse enjoys working with us and learning.

Your horse doesn’t have a voice. They can’t tell you if you have offended them, if they are sore, if they don’t understand, if their body or brain is tired, if their saddle is uncomfortable, if you are sitting uncomfortably on their back (the list of things they can’t tell us can go on forever). But you know your horse better than anyone else - your instructor or trainer included.

You have to be brave enough to be their voice.

So before you book in for that clinic, workshop, lesson or training, make sure the person you are booking in with has the same philosophy on how to train as you do. And even if you do get in to the lesson or training session, I give you permission to say “no, I’m not doing that,” if you are uncomfortable with how they are telling you to treat your horse. And worst case scenario you can just play dumb and pretend to not understand what they want you to do.

Not sure what your philosophy in training is? At Equestrian Movement we start with the place of “first do no harm”. If you want to read more about our training, click here.

What you horse needs from you to learn

A horse needs a lot from its trainer to be able to learn – and we want our horses to learn, not just submit.

They need to respect you!

• If they don’t think you are competent,

• if they think they are more capable of keeping themselves safe without you,

• if they think you are going to put them in situations that they aren’t ready for or will get hurt in,

• if they think you aren’t putting the effort in with them ...

...then why should they do what you ask?

Think of a situation at work where someone of authority that wasn’t particularly good at their job kept asking you to do something. Do you do it with enthusiasm eager to prove yourself? Or do you dig your heels in becoming more and more begrudging of them? What if you were doing work for someone you respected but they didn’t reward you for your efforts and just asked more from you? Do you keep giving them a 100% or do you start to become resentful of them?

To prove yourself as a leader they need you to create clear, consistent discipline, where you follow through on your ask. You need to provide a safe learning environment and not put them in situations that they can be hurt.

How can you provide your horse a better working and learning environment?

1. Don’t become emotionally engaged in their arguments.

When our horses do test us and push our boundaries, getting angry or frustrated and arguing with them rarely helps. We suggest that you avoid getting into a battle of the wills and work instead on staying centered, relaxed and balanced. Focusing on consistent expectations rather than winning the argument.

2. Consider lowering your expectations

If we want our horses to be enthusiastic and engage in their training, we need to focus on rewarding their effort and for trying rather than pushing for a certain thing we want to achieve. This keeps them interested in learning and keeps their mind open to being curious. We reward for effort, finish on a good note, feeling like we could’ve done more.

3. Know what we are trying to achieve and break it down for them

How many times have you done something because someone has told you you should be doing it with your horse but you don’t know why or how? Well if you don’t know, how can your horse know? Be very clear in your mind in what you are trying to achieve. Often there are multiple steps involved to get to this goal so it is important that we know how to break it down to the smaller steps that build up to that point as well. That also helps us to reward for effort, finishing on a good note, feeling like we could have done more. We know that the steps are just as important if not more important than the end result and can see the path.

4. Make sure you use clear communication

Our horse needs us to understand how they learn and how best to communicate with them, so they understand what is being asked of them. They also need a way to communicate if they need a break because they are overwhelmed, confused or tired. They need us to know when they are trying, to be compassionate if they can’t do it and not let the communication break down.

5. Be patient

They need us to remember that, at the end of the day, they are still a horse and they are letting us ride them and handle them. If they are having an off day, they are sore, fatigued physically or mentally, or having some other problems, we need to be patient and forgiving. It needs to be a 2 way street where we are not always demanding of them, but making the learning and riding process as comfortable and interesting as possible.

You need to teach your horse HOW to learn

Horses aren’t born into this world knowing how to be ridden.

They don’t know appropriate and safe ways to interact with humans.

They don’t know what’s expected of them.

In some cases, such as where they are weaned early, kept separate from other horses or go through poor living conditions such as dogger pens and feed lots, they don’t even know how to socialise with other horses – they only know how to do their best to protect themselves.

Our most common tool for training is negative reinforcement through pressure from halters, bits, spurs, and whips. Horses don’t automatically know what these pressures mean and what the appropriate response to those pressures are. Expecting them to know this is like a person starting a new job with a completely complex computer program, being shown their seat and left to figure it out – they are either going to try and fail, try and succeed, look for help or break down and quit.

Is it any wonder that horses become “naughty” if teaching them to learn isn’t done well?

Horses first need to learn how to process pressure and what it means. They need to know that pressure isn’t pain and isn’t there to hurt them, but is there to help them seek the answer.

Which means we need to know how to use pressure & release correctly to teach this.

The first and most important lesson you need to learn to communicate more effectively with horses:

“You can’t beat understanding into a horse”.

If a horse doesn’t understand what you want using the whip, spurs, halter or bit, using them harder and harder and harder doesn’t make them understand any better.

A lot of times, when a horse isn’t doing what its told, it’s classified as a naughty horse and you are told to be harder and stronger with them. However, in my experience if a horse isn’t doing as its “told”, it’s more commonly because it doesn’t understand, or can’t do what’s being asked. So they “act out” or are “naughty” because they resort to instinctive behaviour or past experiences to respond to the ask – and their instinctive behaviour when confused, intimidated or scared is to fight or run away.

There are definitely times when horses will challenge you and your authority but that’s not with the intent of being naughty – it is with the intent of testing if they can trust you. Are you strong enough and confident enough to lead them and keep them safe? If they decide you aren’t a good leader, they won’t feel safe doing as you ask and will react with the intent to protect themselves.

This is the one situation where being heavy handed can work. However, it’s not the best nor is it the most effective tool, especially if you’re already working with a bold, strong, confident horse. You need to be a really…. really… reaaaaally good rider to convince these horses with a heavy hand because their responses can escalate to big dangerous behaviours and it is hard to not get hurt in these situations until we get submission.

That is why we should teach discipline through consistency and following through with our ask, then rewarding for EFFORT, not necessarily the best most correct behaviour. We first condition how our horses mentally and emotionally process the ask before we get them understanding what the ask is. This may take a little longer in the outset, but sets us and our horses up to learn easily down the track.

When there is a clear pathway of consequence, our horses start looking for the right answer, interacting and engaging with us and enjoying the learning process.

Train your horse to be “trainable” with our Training Trainability course - an online training program designed to support the overall learning capabilities of your horse and based on simple exercises that reinforce affection, trust, respect and communication. Click here to learn more.

Sneak Peak! Behind the scenes of our Holistic Horse Handling Program!

Welcome to a quick view from behind the scenes of the development of Equestrian Movement’s Holistic Horse Handling Program!

Many amazing horses shared their time with us during the creation of the tutorials. Raf loves his time with Katie (and her quickly growing baby bump!)

Want to know more?

Click here to view the course

Blaze, learning to open up and communicate

Using video from our workshops helps to demonstrate the application of training trainability in REAL horses with REAL riders

Learning another computer program to provide the course online was not only a game of trial and error but also eventually an obsession!

Sarah even got involved by taking Custard through the program - making sure Katie's brain-dump translated to practical understanding and exercises.