I know, ugh is right. I didn’t want to be the one to say it!
Being in a similarly hony shaped situation, I feel your pain.
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Started in earnest getting ready to ground drive. Step 1 is accepting a rope around our bum. Many feelings about this, got the rope jammed up by her tail (like a crupper, go figure) and really tried hard to get it off. She’s consistent, canter is really her trigger to try bad life choices. She’s good walk, good trot, canter = boom. She did eventually settle and earn snacks for going around calmly. That’s all we did, since she’d worked herself pretty hard in the process.
She got a box to play with, it has treats and paper in it. She got it stuck on her face a few times and didn’t panic. Good girl.
And her creeping on me in the feed room… “hello mom I can haz food please?”
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Oh, and wither pics. She has a wither, I think it’s her lack of bulk in the shoulder that lets it move on up. Ah, who cares for now - like you all said I’ve got lots of stuff to work on before worrying about that.
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Thought experiment, or Pre-Caffeinated Thoughts -
When dealing with Grundy’s attempts at removing the butt rope, I was thinking - isn’t this flooding?
Frankly, her reactions are not fear. She is annoyed with it and is trying to remove it - you can see it in her facial expression.
I guess I don’t really know a better way to get a horse used to something like this, particularly when 1) it’s not fear and 2) they’re ok with it at a whoa, walk, and trot but not at a canter where it’s likely bouncing around on the legs more - other than just tying it in a way that won’t hurt them but they can’t remove it, and letting them work through trying to remove it and not succeeding (but not getting hurt) and then praising when they quit.
Similar to blanketing. You can do all the prep work, but there comes a time where you have to buckle it on and let them work out they can’t remove it, and then they learn they aren’t being hurt and the blanket is ok.
Thoughts/ideas?
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In the case of a horse that appears to be okay with something at the walk and trot but blows up at the canter, my assumption is that they’re really NOT 100% solid at the walk and trot, but stakes are lower, so the problem hasn’t hit the blow up threshold.
I continue to work on the lower stakes tasks and skip the higher stakes stuff until it’s more clear that they really do understand the question.
It’s not really any different than getting overwhelmed as a human. When things are moving slower, it’s easier to process and manage. Increase the speed, increase the input…it’s a lot harder to keep it all together. The answer isn’t just to spend more time going faster, it’s to slow things down & really work on competency and comfort where things are manageable.
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I’m sure you’ll get strong opinions on both sides, but as someone who’s only trained up one baby, who sounds like Grundy—smart, super-opinionated chestnut mare with no fear but plenty of feelings early on about having to do things that weren’t her idea of fun—I approached things the same way you are.
Go slow, make the right responses easy, be quick with rewards for the right answer and ignore the wrong ones unless they’re dangerous….
But at some point these smart girls, like toddlers, have to learn that temper tantrums don’t work.
Thankfully the hill Rosie had decided to die on was the spray bottle, so after several weeks of slow and steady with Miss Priss responding with ears back and other signs of displeasure, I stuck her on the end of a 10’ lead and spritzed her with water as she danced around for about 5 minutes. She got rewarded and put away when she decided to stand politely. We had a second and third session that were each very after very short time periods, but she decided at that to give in for good with ill grace. 
Yesterday, at age 24, she still gave me chestnut mare side eye when I put fly spray on her, but that lesson from 23 years ago stuck.
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I can do that. We’ve had the rope on our butt multiple times (3-4 times in the last couple weeks) with it just being walk and trot at this point. She started with tail clamping and all the signs of wtf, but that had subsided. She was relaxed, head down, stretching down, blinking, licking and chewing, loose tail, the whole thing at the walk and trot. Yesterday was the first day I had asked for the canter.
She didn’t catch me off-guard, as this is her MO to really show how she feels at the canter for everything - with or without tack, with or without any added pressure. I would prefer for it to be less emotional for her though, if I can make it that way.
ETA: This includes when she’s feeling good and wants to whoop it up. She keeps it together walk and trot, and canter is where the WOHOO!! shows up.
Cantering is also just hard. She’s a baby, not fit, and has been manhandled. She may be at or right up to the overwhelmed line just with maintaining a canter.
If she’s always blowing up in the canter, I just wouldn’t ask for the canter. I’d want to really foster as much positive experience as possible and pushing to the point of a blow up, regardless of why she’s getting there, isn’t doing that. Let her get stronger, let her develop some trust that you’re not going to ask for something overwhelming, and lay in as much positive interaction as possible.
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Maybe start working on canter ground poles/cavaletti exercises? Conservatively, of course, and appropriate to her age.
Then, once she understands how to navigate the poles/cavaletti, use those exercises with new things (after she’s solidly accepting the new thing at w/t, of course)? She might adjust to new things more quickly if she has to concentrate on where to put her feet rather than solely thinking about how to rid herself if the new thing.
Ground pole/cavaletti work might help build her muscling so that saddles fit better; too. Again, that’s as long as the work is appropriate to her age and fitness level.
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FWIW, it has improved tenfold since she got here. Most days we do maybe 10-15 seconds of canter each way, some days none depending on what we’re working on.
Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, regarding improvement. I was just mulling it over in my head, with her trying to remove the butt rope etc, on how to avoid it in the future. I don’t believe her to be scarred for life or anything, but “know better, do better” and all that. I pride myself in going as slow as needed for stuff, but at some point the rubber has to meet the road, I guess.
I’ll take it back a step again, see what’s there.
@chestnutmarebeware I hear you on the opinionated side of things though. I get nasty faces when I ask her to take a step back when there’s food involved, which if I ask for a second step without the sass has resulted in her trying to turn her butt to me. She’s got attitude, that’s for sure.
We do that stuff at a trot a bit (single pole, double pole, and single raised pole), but I haven’t started at the canter because she’s still really unbalanced.
But it should be easier to do a little here and there, with the round pen!
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Question though/theoretical scenario - if you never ask for the canter, knowing that it’s overwhelming - and then for whatever reason she offers the canter while working on ground driving which elicits a blow up , lines dragging, OMG reaction - then what?
I’d rather have had that reaction measured, tried, and failed before I have two ropes on and they’re attached to her face.
I’m not arguing, I’m trying to work through scenarios and understand pros/cons.
So it’s not never asking for a canter…it’s asking, seeing an undesired reaction, and assessing–is this fitness? is this understanding? is this yee-hawing? is this horse really ready to be cantering?
If they’re not physically strong enough to canter without complaining, that’s a very fair thing, and it’s going back and building more strength at the walk and trot so they’re physically capable of responding to the canter question in an appropriate manner.
If they’re not really understanding the question, and the increased speed of the canter pushes past that “overwhelmed” line, it’s going back and building better understanding and competency at the walk and trot so they’re mentally capable of responding to the canter question in an appropriate manner.
In either case, I’ll check in on the canter, but not very often. Not multiple times a week…it’s just unlikely that things are changing that much that fast. Once a week? Every other? Depends on where we are and what we’re doing etc etc etc.
If they just offer the canter, and blow…well, then you just get them back, calm them down, and approach again. I very honestly really don’t find young horses to just BOOM be in the canter without asking unless I’ve applied waaaay too much pressure and they’re upset and overwhelmed and that’s the offer. Or something external applies that sort of pressure like idk a deer popping out of the woods or a branch suddenly falling. If you’re seeing a lot of surprise canter, I’d take a hard look at how much pressure you’re applying? And pressure can come from you directly, or the question you’re asking, or tack, or whatever. I see it like a gauge on a boiler, and each piece moves the needle closer to the red line.
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Cantering is hard! I got one twice Grundy’s age that thinks cantering is the hardest thing there is 
They are usually growthy and unbalanced as young horses. If you aren’t already, try asking for half a lap of canter and stopping before any bells get rung. Sometimes they just need the confidence to know they can move with all that jangly stuff on them.
A low stakes desensitizing session with a tired polo wrapped around the bum might help with her reactivity under the tail.
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She doesn’t offer surprise canter often, just when she’s feeling really rowdy. It was more of a theory question - if you avoid it because she isn’t ready (for whatever reason - fitness, fear, what have you), but she offers it on her own and, in a way, “punishes” herself because the trainer hadn’t exposed her to that yet but moved on with the process.
Kind of like how it’s best to get WTC on a first or second ride - it’s generally not good to hold off on the canter like it’s some sort of special beast. Not over do it, but do it so that it doesn’t become a “thing”.
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That’s what this was - just a light lead rope tied around her butt to a surcingle, not tight but not loose enough to end up below her hocks.
That’s really all the cantering we do at this point (except yesterday, yeehaw Grundy - I was trying to talk her down but wasn’t going to jerk on her and she wasn’t interested in trotting at the time). We do 2 transitions to the right which is her tougher way, and one transition the easy way - all done.
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But that’s the thing: working on the walk and trot to build strength and or competency does track to the canter. You don’t have to be working at the canter to be working on the canter.
Ah yeah, that’s just not how I approach it. I want them strong enough to be balanced in the canter before I ask for it under saddle, because (in my direct experience, haha) if they’re unbalanced they’re so much more likely to do something unexpected and unload you, which sucks for me but is also a negative experience for them. Lots of roads to Rome!
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I totally get what you’re saying. I’m just balancing the tradeoffs between “horse does something unasked for they were not prepared for, had to deal with it unexpectedly” and “horse is shown how to deal with [unpleasant, scary, fill in blank] thing in a planned and methodical way, on the trainers terms”.
The former happens to everyone, like it or not - that’s horses and living.
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When Rosie was a long yearling I brought in a trainer to teach me/us a lot of ground work skills that I’d never really had to learn by only having already-under-saddle horses prior to her.
Although this was a skilled, sympathetic young horse trainer, she had Rosie’s number from Day One and Rosie did.not. like it. For easily the next year she would grind her teeth and make ugly faces as soon as she heard the trainer’s truck drive in. It was pretty funny—like watching Rumplestiltskin tear himself in half when his name was guessed.
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Right, totally. I’m just saying that this can be done at the walk & trot. And that will improve the canter. You don’t have to push her to a blow up to work on the problem. You don’t need to seek out and create a big evasion to address it.
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