I work with a lot of horses who's background is unknown. Maybe they are broke to ride, maybe not. Maybe they have great training, or maybe there are big gaping holes in that training. Who knows. So it is quite the guessing game for me to figure out what they know, what they don't, and what I can do about it. I am currently working with a fabulous little quarter horse mare who knows A LOT. I don't know much about her past, but I know she had some western training. She stops on a dime, leg yields like a champ, and is one of the least spooky horses I ride. She bathes, clips, ties and can be safely ridden by a novice rider. So imagine my confusion when I realized that she does not know how to canter, or seem to have any idea whatsoever that she had a third gear. Somehow, in her fifteen years of life she was never taught this skill. It kind of baffles me, to be honest. It seems so basic.
I decided to go back to the beginning and started off lunging this mare in a round pen. At first, she would only give me a stride or two of canter before she would lose her balance and fall back to trot, but that was OK. Even just those two strides were a big step for her. Eventually she was balanced enough to make it around a full circle, then two circles, then three. It was slow going. As she got stronger and started to understand more, we progressed outside the round pen and onto a lunge line, then to under saddle. I have been very careful to take is slow as she needs, she gets upset when she makes a mistake and I don't want to blow her mind. It has been about six weeks and just the other day she finally offered me a relaxed canter that I barely had to ask for. We still can only make it about halfway around the arena, but we are making progress.
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