To catch up the week: Monday – Day off. Trimmed Leo & Maia’s feet on Tuesday. Wednesday was a late day at work and open stage with David. Tuesday & Today Emma had some work. Both day’s similar, with today progressing to finish a little better than Tuesday (yay!). We worked up to canter on the longe line (still no cavesson, hopefully I can pick it up tomorrow). I had noted in “About Emma” that she seems perfectly comfortable cross cantering either direction. Upon further observation this isn’t quite true. Turns out she prefers the right lead in front either direction. While going to the right (tending to carry the hind quarters to the left/outside) she wants to cross canter – I think because she has a hard time carrying the hindquarters toward the right/inside). Going to the left, she still prefers the right lead in front (stronger RF leg), but also the right lead behind – so full wrong lead.
I feel like I need to draw a diagram. Steven D. Price says “One man’s wrong lead is another man’s counter canter,” but I’m sticking with “wrong lead” on this one. I wound up working a little more to the right (the cross canter side). We practiced moving the hindquarters to the right (same old difficulty stepping the LH over the RH, but getting better), then went out on the longe. Instead of trying to “cue” the canter, my preference with an unbalanced horse is to push the trot to the point Buck Brannaman calls the “teeter”. This is the place where they are still technically trotting, but it’s a trot where at any moment they may decide on their own that cantering might be more comfortable. It’s not so much that quick, running trot, but the point where the gait begins to get uneven enough that you can tell which lead they are about to pick up. So you push them to the teeter, then let them back off it a couple times and then you push them there and hold at that point until it becomes their idea to canter. I think this worked nicely with Emma. Tuesday she could only canter about half the circle before she dropped the back lead. Today she went all the way around comfortably.
I should also note that I prefer to take a horse out of a movement before they “fail” at it. A few beautiful canter steps are better than a bunch of bad ones, and 2 or 3 nice shoulder in steps are better than the whole long side of “adequate” ones. So my goal is to stop the canter before she loses the back lead. Emma was pretty funny about this. I brought her down out of the canter and let her stand still for a minute to think about things… and the licking… and chewing… Then, as Ed would say (with a heavy German accent): “Make a new one!” We tried a few different times until she had a particularly relaxed gait, moving past the teeter more quickly (eventually it will be gone). In the downward transition, she still drops the hind lead the last step before she comes back to trot, but I’m calling it improved, and calling it a night.
Thinking of the teeter tickles my memory with something Buck said about backing circles to prepare for the canter. Tomorrow’s project: review my notes from the last time I saw him to see if I can find that reference.
Note: David has been providing me with some fabulous music to write by. Time to go dedicate a little more attention to his guitar…