Crazy canter!

[flintyboy]

Hey its Chloe
My 16hh iron grey irish draft( and a lot of other breeds mixed in!) is the most perfect horse ever, obidiant, brave, and gentle but when a while ago when i 1st got him out on loan his owner told me one day he wouldnt canter and her instucter coul;d nto work out what the problem was so ever sinse she had just avoided canter! That even meant trotting ova large jumps which cant be to great, or comfy! Sinse i have had him i have got him to canter tho and now he has perfect canter out on hacks. BUT recently in the school he seems to b full of energy. He is looking really good at the moment so a few people say it could just be that he is feeling fresh. woteva it is i need some advice on how to keep his canter going but to stop him from rushing. as he gets over excited and when i slow my seat and and him to slow down he just breaks into trot leaving a very messy canter!

any advice? I would love to hear from you all thank u very much!! :)

[galadriel]

Okay, how do you ask for the canter in the first place?

If you make sure that he has a quiet, balanced trot going into the canter, then the canter should also be quiet and balanced. Don't let him lurch into canter or run into canter. If you don't get a canter transition when you ask, and he just speeds up his trot, then bring him back, get his trot balanced, and ask again.

A balanced canter in an arena is much harder than a canter out on hacks, so don't ask for too much at once. If you can get a few strides of nice canter, go ahead and ask for a trot again and praise muchly. If you ask for more canter, he may lose his balance and go "crazy" again, so just ask for a few trides at a time.

Getting a good transition and only asking for a little at a time sound like easy/short duration solutions, but these are actually quite difficult. You could spend days, maybe weeks, on getting this right :) So try it for a while, and hopefully you'll start to see someprogress from him.

[flintyboy]

Thank you very much for that advice a lady at my yard has said it could be due to a poorly fitted sadle or back problems. im not sure about his past as the girl i am loaning him from has dissapeared and i cant get hold of her and havent been able 2 4 a while! So what do you think?
thank you, chloe Xxx

[Painting Horses]

I don't know how much this would help but wiht my mare my trainer would ahve me take her in half circles around the arena and that would slow her down to a more sain pase. Sometimes she would speed up again but the circles seem to work?