Q. I need some help cantering my horse. When I first ask him to canter, he leaps into it and onto his forehand. He also goes extremely fast – so fast it begins to scare me. On circles, the more I ask him to move in with my leg, the farther he moves out. He also sometimes scrapes my leg against the wall from moving out so far. I was riding him western, but he is so big, it is hard for him to really go slow like he needs to go in a lope. So, I was going to take him English. I don’t expect his canter to be super slow, but I would like him to go at a nicely-paced, smooth, controlled canter. I am only an intermediate rider, so this is hard for me. Any help would be appreciated.
A. You’re facing a fairly common problem, and it’s generally the result of a horse and/or rider who is not properly balanced at the faster speed of a canter. Such problems aren’t nearly as prevalent or noticeable at the slow pace of walk or the inherently balanced pace of trot. The canter, however, is neither slow nor inherently balanced, and so problems of this sort do occur.
I suspect that your horse has never been trained to carry himself in a properly balanced frame. Being a large horse, maintaining an upright balance around corners and circles will only be that much more difficult for him. Add to this the probability that you are not holding yourself in perfect balance over his spine at the canter (an *extremely common* rider error), and the cantering experience becomes even more unsettling for you both.
Let’s first address your own balance. It’s very common for a rider’s balance to follow his/her eyes. For instance, if you are circling to the left and your eyes are looking around the circle, you will be very likely to drop your left shoulder and more heavily weigh your left seat bone and stirrup in anticipation of the left turn. This is a BIG mistake! Many, many, many riders pull their horses off-balance by throwing their weight to the inside of every turn. Most horses are very sensitive and reactive to the balance of their riders. This becomes even more apparent in the case of a larger rider on an average or small-sized horse. If the horse is well-balanced and the rider is only leaning slightly to the inside, the horse may follow the lean by moving to the inside to try to “catch up” with the rider’s weight. More commonly, however, the horse will be made uncomfortable by the rider’s lean to the inside and will move to the outside to try to escape the uncomfortable imbalance imposed by the leaning rider. That is what I suspect your horse is doing. The harder you press with your outside leg to push him in on his circles, and the more you lean to the inside to try to get him to move in that direction, the more he moves to the outside to get away from you.
Here are a couple of techniques I teach my students to counteract the natural tendency to lean to the inside at every turn. First, practice the following exercise at walk and trot until you become very comfortable with it. I will assume you are riding in a rectangular arena. Instead of riding around this ring as a curved-corner rectangle, ride it as four straight lines with a halt in each corner facing the wall (preferably with the horse’s nose barely touching the wall). Do NOT ride through any corners. Ride down the rail, keeping your eyes focused on a point on the wall directly ahead of you (if you’re in an indoor arena – or perhaps a fence post or tree if you’re outdoors), and halt in the corner facing the wall. Turn to ride down the next rail to a halt in the next corner facing the wall. Continue around the ring in this manner at both walk and trot, halting in each corner facing the wall. By eliminating the act of riding through corners, your eyes will stop anticipating turns, and your balance will learn to remain straight over your horse’s spine.
The second exercise builds on the first and helps you maintain an upright balance when you ride through corners. Actually, this isn’t as much an exercise as it is an awareness and deliberate corrective action every time you ride a bending line (corner, circle, etc.). Just before and throughout the bending line, make a concentrated effort to raise your inside shoulder 2″, lengthen your outside leg 2″, and add 2 pounds of weight to your outside seatbone in the saddle. DO NOT under any circumstances lean to the outside of the circle!!! You simply want to counteract the natural urge to lean to the inside by straightening your balance in the saddle, and the 2-2-2 technique will help you do just that. Once you start riding corners in proper balance, I think you will be amazed how much easier it will be for your horse to do the same.
To help you with your horse’s balance, please read the following page. Pay particular attention to my explanation of the use of the inside leg to help a horse maintain balance around corners at the canter:
Balancing a Green Horse at the Canter
There is no reason why your big boy can’t be a perfectly wonderful Western pleasure horse simply by virtue of his size. If he has the proper attitude and can learn the balance necessary to slow and relax his canter, he may very well become a fine western horse. I’ve known a number of very large, very good western horses. Of course, his attitude and style of movement may be more suitable for hunting seat riding. You’ll be able to more accurately assess his proper “niche” once you get his balance problems solved.