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Permalink Reply by Geoffrey Pannell on May 27, 2009 at 3:54am

Hi Lindsay, The outside hind is the first leg to strike of in canter, so we have our leg on that side a little further back to help the horse understand which lead we want. Also ,in a turn the inside leg( active leg) must be used firmly just behind the girth to maintain and develop forward impulsion. The outside leg (passive leg) is placed slightly further behind the girth to prevent the 1/4's from moving sideways. When we talk about placing the legs at or behind the girth, we are not referring to the girth on the saddle but the girth of the horse. If you were to place your leg on the saddle girth, you would find yourself behind the movement and out of balance losing that all important line from ear through hip to ankle. Correct placement of the legs is , in my humble opinion, the most important aspect of riding. Hope this helps , Cheers Geoffrey

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Permalink Reply by Lallanslover on May 27, 2009 at 11:54am

Janr Savoie has written some fantastic blogs, including one which may clarify the canter aids for you:
http://www.barnmice.com/profiles/blogs/pick-up-the-correct-canter

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Permalink Reply by Bernd on May 30, 2009 at 2:37pm

Psychologically speaking, we are talking about classical conditioning. We condition cues to unconditioned behaviour and see the animal learning to show the behaviour just by recognizing the cue.

Actually you train a horse to start canter by any cues you want. Philippe Karl suggested to pinch the horse in the right ear (as joke). Many of us have experienced that school horses, used to daily routine will start canter once the intructor shouts the command, no matter what the (probably surprised) student will do.

However no all cues are equal. The challenge is to make the horse understand the cues. Hence the riding theories of all times have spent a lot of effort to find the "right" aides.

The hores will understand cues best if those are similar to the unconditioned physical circumstancesof the behaviour. That's why the riding explanaitions that Geoffrey has given works. He has described why those cues are easier to understand for the horse than pinching the ear or shouting.

However horses will learn and when you ride a horse at top training level those aids will in fact be so small cues that they are mostly invisible and certainly not understandable for less well educated horses.

In the end the trick is to make the horse udnerstand what we want and learn with what signals we can talk to it.

ciao
bernd

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