We recently bought a medium pony, she is 8 years old and pretty green. She is not lame to the eye and has a wonderful big horse floaty trot and smooth balanced canter…to the right. However she refuses to pick up her left lead canter. When we got her she would pick it up but not consistently, we would really have to exaggerate with the rein aids to achieve the left lead. She also would pick up the correct lead (tracking left) upon landing from a jump even if she approached the jump on the wrong lead. Which made me believe it was a rider issue (my daughter is 9 and an advanced beginner herself.) However, now 3 months later, the pony will not get the left lead at all. We literally tried 15x in one lesson to the point where both the horse and rider were so tired of each other from all the asking, stopping, asking again, over and over. We tried it on the lunge line with no rider and she will pick it up maybe 50% of the time but she fights it horribly. She also stops and refuses to move forward and will back up instead when she’s hot tired and just cranky, this oddly enough happens mostly when tracking left. We just can’t determine if it’s a training issue and she is just very weak to the left so its easier for her to canter on the right lead and going to the right in general or if it’s a pain issue. She is perfectly happy and content to trot, to the right, all day long. Getting info from the previous owner isn’t an option. We have had older advanced riders try to pick up the left lead and one couldn’t get it at all and the other rider could get it but only when starting her in a small canter circle and never on the rail at all. Any advice, do you think its pony attitude, training issue, just weaker to that side, or physical pain issue?
If she struggles on the lunge too then I’d lean towards a physical issue. Whether fitness or more serious is hard to say. Do you have video?
You say she will trot to the right all day long. What about to the left?
she trots beautifully and very willingly to the left as well. but she will stop and back up or try to trot out of the gate, only going left though and always at the end of the lesson or when its really hot. she jumps xrails willingly as well. its frustrating because i dont want to pay for a full vet workup to be told she is fine and is just being difficult or she is just weak to the left and too lazy so she canters on the wrong lead because its easier for her. but on the other hand, i hate to continue to push the issue if she is in pain. she btw never has even taken a wrong step, nothing. i find it hard to believe it is a pain thing, but maybe so. we did see video of her under saddle from her previous owner and she cantered on the wrong lead (tracking left) for them but they made no attempt to correct it, so i dont know if its just habit now from being allowed to do it wrong for so long. i also found a video from two owners ago, the person who broke and trained her and she had both leads 100% back then. i can try to up load a video this evening.
Better to pay for a simple lameness exam to be told she’s fine than keep pushing around a pony in pain until you have a lame pony with a serious vet bill. It might be as simple as needing to get a chiropractor out. Even if it is a strength/mental issue she’s quite lopsided now and would definitely benefit from chiro. Then you can start to correct her strength to the left. Forget about the canter for a while. Work her trot to the left. Hills. Circles. Lateral work. Then introduce the canter back in slowly. If she picks up the left lead canter for a few strides and be done. Your forcing a pony who is either very weak or in pain or both to do something that is HARD for too long. Your going to end up with a pony that gets naughty to get out of doing work that is too physically demanding for her to handle right now. Which could result in a soft tissue injury if she doesn’t have one already.
Very likely stifle issue.
Did you do a prepurchase vet exam, and if so how thorough?
It sounds to me more like a training issue (with a dose of pony 'tude); likely she naturally favors the right and her old owner didn’t balance her.
Since your daughter isn’t very experienced, I’d have her stick to the trot for now. Are you sure your lunging correctly? Can you have someone help you to make sure you are doing it correctly, because I think that would help the pony a lot.
Does the trainer have the same issue with the pony? It was a little unclear from the post whether the marathon session you described was your daughter trying to get the pony to pick up the lead or the trainer.
You also say the horse is pretty green. How green? In other words, was the pony reliably picking up the left lead canter before you bought her? Had she been trained by a pro? Or basically just ridden by her owner? There’s nothing wrong with the pony being just ridden by a non-pro, but it may be the case that she never really learned canter cues, nor is she muscled and balanced enough to canter on her “off” lead.
I think it might be hard for a vet to determine that there’s something wrong unless you can actually show the vet that something is wrong, if you know what I mean. Myy first call would be to have a trainer ride the pony a few times (without your daughter riding at all), and try to establish if the left lead is a possibility, before I would call in the vet (assuming that there’s no obvious lameness).
Sounds like a training issue also sounds like a bratty pony mare. Green horses and beginner riders don’t belong together. Could be pain related also but probably a mare/pony attitude problem.
Pony background…broke, trained and used as a western trail horse for the first years of her life (we have seen videos of this time in her life and she had both leads) sold because she was smaller than they wanted (her parents are both horse size and she’s only 13.2 but registered appendix lol) Then sold to a lesson barn where she wasn’t used a lot because of her size and the riders were older girls. In the student videos she was allowed to canter on the wrong lead and not corrected,at last not in the video we saw. During our trial period with her my daughter could get the left lead 50% of the time. We ride with a trainer 2x a week. Our trainer is the one who lunged her. First she lunged with my daughter on her and the pony got the lead the first try like it was no big deal. But second and third tries, wrong lead. Trainer lunged with no rider and pony got it first time, then couldn’t get it after that. Like I mentioned we have had older girls/advanced riders try and its 50/50 if they can get it. A few weekends ago at a horse show she picked it up first time with my daughter like it was no big deal she’d be doing it her whole life and even won grand champion in her division against large horses and then in the next class got it wrong. Ever since that show, she hasn’t picked it up once. Our plan is to let her stay with our trainer for a week coming up and let her ride her and work with her a little to see what we should do. I will say she is by far the laziest 8yr old pony i’ve ever seen, maybe thats the trail horse in her. She pretty much always does the bare minimum of what is asked of her.
Has nothing to do with being a trail horse. Have a trail horse who is far from lazy and pickups leads when asked. Whether on the trail or in a arena,their only lazy if you let them be lazy. Pony is able to pick up that lead, sounds like she does so when she feels like it…
I don’t know what the likelihood of a neck issue is in a pony (vs a larger horse), but that sounds a little bit neck-like, given the naughtiness at the trot to the left. And some of these super nice movers are actually slightly neurologically off. Ask @Peggy . It could also be a stifle issue, but I’d expect some issues at the trot to the right. Has she ever been in any kind of accident? Fallen down? Flipped over? Been assessed chiropractically? Are you in an area with EPM or Lyme?
It doesn’t really sound like a laziness problem to me, but that’s just influencing the ways in which she avoids doing the things she doesn’t want to do (easier to shut down than act up). If it were 100% attitude/training, then why doesn’t she do it going right? Why is it the same on the lunge as under young kid and older kid? What age was she in the videos where she had both leads?
She was 4 years old in the video with both leads, she turned 8 this may. I guess we will have the vet access and then snd her to our trainers for week and go from there. I totally agree a green horse and a child don’t mix usually, but this pony has given my daughter so much confidence and its really neither here nor there at this point, she is ours for life now and we will give her a great home regardless…I just want them to be as competitive as I know they can be in the show ring too. And yes, to the right she is a doll, absolutely perfect. It just boggles my mind that as soon as I send my daughter into the show ring and say, we know she won’t get the left lead so don’t get upset when you don’t pin in the class…then bam, horse picks up left lead beautifully kinda like, don’t doubt me.
Find a good lameness vet. Sounds like stifle to me too.
Agree with finding a good lameness vet. Might be physical. Might be behavioral. But generally horses don’t want to be jerks so it’s more often the former than the latter assuming you’re asking for something reasonable.
Get a thorough lameness eval from a good lameness vet. My horse struggled to canter from age 3-5 and we made every known excuse in the book. Ended up having kissing spine. Had the surgery and he is doing much better. He is a great horse - works really hard and is very willing. Never did anything awful either. I cringe when I think how painful he was.
As is often the case, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
And your wrong I do know what I’m talking about. I ride train buy and sell for a living. I ride more horses in a day then you ever have in the last two years.
Here’s a short video from Warwick Schiller about a horse that consistently won’t pick up a lead and what might have brought that about:
