I have had trouble cantering Cole in the arena, and have only done it sporadically.  Usually when I make the request, he doesn’t trot faster, but bigger, deeper and more powerful.  He gets so locked into the trot, but I can’t get him out.  If I push too hard, I get bucking.  I pretty much had given up because I didn’t want to keep practicing the wrong thing.

 

I have cantered him quite a bit on the trail, but we haven’t transferred the skill to the arena.

 

And then I got the suggestion of using the whip on his outside shoulder right before asking for the transition to keep him from running away with that shoulder and wake him up.

 

I thought I would give it a try the next time I has the arena to myself.  That happened to be last night.  He was in an excitable mood, since he had had the day before off and I didn’t lounge him, first.  I thought that would help. 

 

After about 10 minutes of warm up, I brought him in a circle at a trot, tried the whip on the shoulder and then asked for the canter.  He stayed at a trot, but his head went up, and I could sense him saying, “She did something different.  She wants something different from me.”  Cole is a clicker trained horse, and they learn try to figure things out.  I think that is the neatest thing about clicker training.  That is one reason I thought this might work.  I didn’t plan to click the transition, though, because when you are riding and you click, your horse will stop instantly.  I did that once at a canter, and we went sliding…

 

So, we continued around the circle and I tried again, then I tried again.  I don’t know how long this went on—maybe 30 second—and I felt a slight change in his gait—like he took one step with his hind leg at the canter.  I told him how good he was and stopped him for a moment to give him a break.  We repeated the exercise with the same result.  The third time—success.  I burst out into “good boys.”  We made it 4 strides, and he stopped.  I praised and praised and rubbed his neck over and over.  Since my usual praise is a click and treat, I didn’t know if this would influence him or not.  I started back up on my circle, and when I got to the spot where he started to canter the first time, I asked him again—no whip this time.  He cantered!  We made it half the circle before he stopped. 

 

Now, I have a bad memory for numbers past 2, so I’m not sure how many trips I went that direction.  Maybe it was 4 times.  Once, he got excited, and I got a couple big bucks.  I forgot to monitor his head level, I was so excited myself. 

 

I switched to the other direction—his favorite.  I didn’t need the whip.  He was understanding the game.  I got the transition, but I forgot I wanted to keep him in a circle.  We did half a circle and he started to fly down the wall with glee.  I got nervous.  I have seen him whip around and around in the arena when I turn him free in it.  I blurted out, “Whoa.”  The little angel of a horse came right to a halt with only 2 walk steps.  No reins necessary.  Of course, I clicked and treated him for that. 

 

I asked for the canter in that direction, again, and he went into bucks and tried to run to our barn door at the corner of the arena.  Well, I decided maybe it was time to quit cantering for the night.  It was evident the excitement level was getting rather high.  We did some simple walking exercises to calm down and then went into trot transitions to remind him he still had to trot quietly.  Then we went back to our normal routine.

 

During the cool down phase, I decided to work more with chaining.  That is when you teach a horse that the cue for one behavior doesn’t get a click, but moves on to the next behavior that does.  It sounds complicated, and I was skeptical that it really worked like that in the horses mind.  The theory states that the cue for the first behavior becomes a reward because they anticipate the cue for the second behavior and will get clicked for that.  I have done a little with it, but I was going to be serious this time.

 

I decided to do walk-who-walk.  First I clicked him for the walk transition a few times.  Then I did walk-whoa-click a few times.  I switched to whoa-walk-click.  I kept switching up and the treats were going fast.  In the end, I was doing walk-whoa-walk-whoa-click and vice versa.

 

I think it worked because in just a few minutes, all of the transitions were getting very sharp and near instantaneous.  I will continue with the chaining and see how it goes.

 

It was a good night, and I was exhausted—but I still had to ride Cruiser.  He had an easier ride than normal, and after a half hour, we went outside and walked up and down the long drive—enjoying just being together.  With Cole, I enjoy the training.  With Cruiser, I enjoy just being with him.  He has been my buddy for 22 years, and we have a relationship that I can’t even put into words.

 

Judi

Author of "Trail Training for the Horse and Rider" and "Trail Horse Adventures and Advice"

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Comment by Jackie Cochran on February 23, 2012 at 1:53pm

Yeah, you succeeded!

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