The first is that the horse is not balanced and strong enough for a smooth and controlled transition into canter. Often, this is exacerbated by the rider leaning forward and holding onto the reins, forcing the horse onto the forehand and making it hard for them to lift the shoulder and engage the hind leg.
When you're cantering, you'll want to hold your body in a neutral position. This allows you to best follow your horse's lead. The same neutral position you would hold during the halt should be maintained during the canter. You should be sitting up straight enough that your ear, shoulder, hip, and heel align.
Leaning forward or backward works against the horse and unplugs the seat bones. Leaning forward causes you to bounce. Leaning backward will cause you to be left behind and off balance.
If the horse moves the haunches (“Traverses himself”) in, ask for the canter with your inside leg at the girth. This way, you will control the inside hind and stop the horse from coming inside the arena. Use the outside leg slightly behind the girth with straight horses. Do not put your outside leg too far back.
Bucking into canter isn't uncommon in young horses. This is mostly because they lose their balance when making the transition. They feel unbalanced and insecure, and may buck out of nervousness or self-preservation – after all, bucking is better than falling over.
If you're worried about hard ground and the effect this could have on your horse, try to limit or avoid cantering on it where possible, we recommend maintaining a slower-paced gait - walk or trot, so the force going through your horse's joints isn't as strong.
According to results of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, horses do seem to read some signals to indicate whether a nearby person is stressed or afraid, at least in certain circumstances.
Researchers confirmed that horses can smell specific odors in human sweat that reflect emotions like fear and happiness, which could open doors to a whole new way of understanding emotion transfer from human to horse, they say.
How long it takes for you to get to this step depends entirely upon your particular circumstances, but generally you should be cantering in under two months or so. The canter will feel fast at first, and you may bounce because you are tense. Try to relax your hips and sit as deep into your saddle as you can.
You should ask the horse to canter from sitting rather than rising trot, and squeeze gently with your legs. As he moves off into canter, sit tall — think of an imaginary line pulling you up through your head — and try to engage your core to provide some stability to your middle.
When a horse always resists cantering on a particular lead, it's usually because it's physically difficult or painful to do so. Lead problems may result from discomfort or stiffness anywhere in the legs, body or back.
Some horses find it easier to trot. These horses tend to have long, swinging strides with hind legs that step well underneath the body. Some horses prefer the canter. These horses tend to be more short-coupled and enjoy the bouncy jump associated with this gait.
But with four legs, horses can move in even more different ways, called gaits. They naturally walk, trot, canter, and gallop, depending on how fast they need to move.
Often, horses who stumble or trip need slight alterations to their trimming or shoeing – they might have toes that are too long, the angles in the hooves could be too shallow or too steep, one foot might be shaped differently to the other, or there could even be instances where a disease of the hoof causes stumbling.
In a good canter the haunches flex enough so that the rider's torso stays quiet and straight and is merely lifted up by the horse's back. If the canter motion sends the rider's shoulders rocking forward and backward, the haunches are stiff and unflexed, so that the rider is tossed forward with every stride.
It is the rider's responsibility to stay in balance over his/her own center of balance and the horse's center of balance. Standing at the canter becomes a habit that often times results in a rider ahead of the horse's center of balance.
So, in canter, there is always an inside and an outside. That inside hind leg naturally carries more weight because it steps farther under the horse's body, toward the center of gravity.
Asking your horse to canter in the corner of the arena will help him because it encourages him to bend in the direction of travel, making it easier for him to pick up the correct lead. Choose a corner and think about doing your preparations on the long side before it.
The canter is the horse's gait one speed faster than a trot. It's a three-beat gait that usually starts with the outside back leg – the leg closest to the arena rail – followed by the inside hind leg and outside front leg in a diagonal pair, finishing with the front inside leg sweeping forward.