My little Arabian’s conformation does not lend itself well to dressage. She is bum high and camped out. She is also extremely wide and naturally carries her neck/head quite low. Her trot work is decently average, but she has one canter (a nice, hunter type canter). This is not the type of conformation I am used to working with, so I am not sure how to help her “sit” more at the canter. She isn’t leaning on the bridle, and holds the rhythm on her own, she just doesn’t have the sit and push I am used to at this stage of training.
The horse has buttons, and works off light aids, but I need some semblance of jump and sit at the canter to get anywhere further with her.
(don’t say hill work. Its the middle of winter and we have a foot of snow over a decimeter of ice…it will be while until we are outside!)
Have you looked at some of the cavaletti exercises? Ingrid Klimke’s come to mind, especially for improving the quality of the canter. You can check some of them out on youtube, but she also has a book that I’ve found to be tremendously helpful. That might be a place for you to start looking…
Second the cavaletti. I’ve started using them just a little at the beginning of the ride to remind my mare that she can flex and fold her hind limbs; otherwise, she wants to keep them stiff and straight. Working towards piaffe in-hand can also help to engage and flex the hind limbs. I’ve only gotten to teaching the leg-lifting but it seems to be helping her understand how to bring the legs under the body, and she’s started to go in a more compact frame on her own on the lunge line since starting this. Also, backing up a couple steps in-hand, trotting off, halting, backing, or doing shaukels (sp). Jumping can also help to teach coiling the hind end, even small grids.
The cavaletti suggestions are spot on. I am working with a new-to-me half arab who has super large shoulders, short back round but weak back, and croup high. His hing legs canter sort of together and it has taken and will continue to take time to strengthen this - so in some ways I feel your pain. Here is what has been helping us:
A decent transition within the trot- as in can you have her shorten steps, lengthen steps? Teaching her how to do that at the trot will help you translate the ability to adjust the canter.
Move her shoulders (square turns exercise), move the haunches, separately and together.
Do you have lateral movements like leg yield and shoulder fore, shoulder in?
These little arabs are masters at being able to go crooked and swinging different parts of their bodies every which way, getting control of the different body parts will help you to adjust her at the canter, which will improve the canter quality, her strength through straightness, and then her ability to sit.
Leg yield in the canter - it helps bring the canter up in front! As she gets stronger, you can add shoulder fore/in, but those require a lot more strength. Arabians don’t tend to have great canters, but you can improve the canter with strength and getting her more supple in the back.
Definitely make sure she’s up and open in front, and really work on the hind legs coming under and supporting weight at the trot. Some in hand work on piaffe can really help you out. In general, if a horse is far better in one gait it can help get the strength and mechanism working properly to help the weaker gait.
Leg yielding out (plie) at the canter does help as mentioned by MOR. Really riding transitions for correct use of the hind legs will help you, too. If she’s like most smart horses I’ve worked with, she’ll try to do whatever she can to make transitions happen promptly - and with incorrect mechanisms right now, that means she’ll do it on her forehand and bracing front legs. So make them happen in more steps with your legs enouraging her hind legs to be more active as you do them. Those transitions REALLY add up to help improve a canter.
In addition to the good suggestions above, I’d do a little in-hand work starting the half-steps. Under saddle, I’d do small trot - almost walk - back to working trot. Both of those should start showing the horse how to rotate her pelvis and bring the hind legs under. Do a ton of shoulder-in in the walk and trot too.
When there is some adjustability In the canter on a circle, start working on shortening the canter for a stride, 1 step of a square turn, and back out to working canter. You can do the traditional square or I found thinking more about a diamond shape helped too.
She lacks strength, which is ultimately what allows horses to have that “jump” in trot and canter.
I second (third?) cavaletti exercises- Jec Ballou’s 101 Dressage Exercises book is full of endless ways to use poles in strengthening work.
I’d also recommend incorporating “drifting” in walk and trot. Have her soft but lifted at the base of her neck and, on a soft bending line, use your inside leg to ask her to “drift” her hind end around her front. The action of stepping under and obliquely over with the inside hind is a powerful exercise that you cannot do enough in any form. You can then take this a step further and go from straight --> bending line --> drift --> couple steps of leg yield —> drift --> bending line --> straight. Sounds simple but it’s challenging even at the walk.
This made me LOL, eyeroll and sigh because it’s so true.
The analogy I come back to is that it feels like I’m holding too many basketballs in my arms–everytime I get one body part under control, another pops out! It’s a constant game of readjusting and balancing but never getting static or stiff!!
All fantastic suggestions here. My half-arab has better conformation than what OP describes, but she still loved to haul around on the forehand and had a pretty lateral canter. It took significant conditioning, lots of poles and cavaletti, backing up, in-hand work, lots of turn on forehand and turn on haunches, to really teach her that she could sit on her bum and round through the canter.
Gaining control of the outside shoulder was key – she really likes to kink her neck and pop through that shoulder. Accessing the outside shoulder/rein and being able to gather energy via the inside leg / outside rein connection enables her to sit up. As she started to get the idea, Working a smaller circle, like a 15 or a 12, and thinking about bringing the shoulder in/up/over with each stride and strong/frequent halfhalts in my core helped. The smaller circle helped her not get strung out and scrambly.
Some days we also worked figure 8 10-meter circles, with a change of lead through trot. Those were ugly, but she learned to sit back and straighten by anticipating the change in bend.
Some days we worked walk/canter and canter/walk (or canter/short trot/walk/canter) - that also helped set her up to sit. We couldn’t do that too much or her brain would fry. Just a few, and then back to some of her easy/favorite exercises to return to he mental happy place. It’s such a brain game with the ayrabs.
She now has a nice collected canter and is starting changes!!
I’m assuming that she’s first/working on second? My arab/hanoverian has the open hip angle/straight hind legs you’d expect from an arab, and it’s been a pain for sure. I tend to do a lot of rein back rocker exercises (rein back -> medium trot -> halt -> rein back. It tends to get them thinking that if they’re about to have to trot or halt, they better sit down and keep their hind legs working! If your mare hasn’t learned to rein back without going wide, you might try doing it in between poles, or just a few steps at a time before going forward.
You might start half steps also - Piaffe to medium trot has been super helpful for my guy, but probably not applicable. One thing to definitely keep in mind if you’re used to warmbloods, is that collection can be pretty difficult for arabs, so when they first start in true collection there just isn’t that much thrust until they build way more strength - I remember feeling like I was riding through mud.
I played with some of these ideas. She is very “broke” and I can control her body parts at the walk/trot/rein back, no problem. She can rein back straight for as long as I ask. Half Pass is weak. but it’s there. Renvers/travers/shoulder in/TOH and leg yielding is all there. Her moves lack some power, but she is correct in her shape.
The problem is that this doesn’t transfer to the canter work. Her working canter feels like a wheel going round: the energy flows from her hind back to her front and she can hold it forever. When we try to come together, it feels like we have a flat tire.
She really isn’t any level: We have shown first, but mostly just playing with her training right now. I just want a trained/developed horse. So she has buttons of a higher level, but not the gaits.
I did do @MysticOakRanch leg yield exercises at canter, and that might prove helpful for her.
Cavaletti makes sense, I struggle with doing cavaletti without a ground person to set them for me and help me figure out the spacing. I did some jumping with her last year and she is well suited to it (keeps a rhythm/takes them in stride), so cavaletti might be good for her.
I have tried doing ground work before with her. It’s how I typically start and develop horses, but this one just never made the connection between the tap on her leg and moving her leg, so I stopped. I should try to revisit this though.
On another note: I had an animal chiropractor work on her today and found some soreness over her loin and in her sternum. (Had her out because this horse has TMJ). She’s coming back to work on her in a few weeks. Hoping this might be of help too.
If she’s well broke you might consider also doing walk pirouette into canter, or rein back into canter. It may honestly just be a strength thing; canter is by far the place most arabs struggle with.
I definitely feel it is just a strength thing. Just not sure what I am missing in the development of her physical training/ability. Transitions are something she can do, so upping the difficulty may be good in addition to cavaletti. We have been doing canter, roll back, canter and she does those well, but perhaps the more collected walk pirouette would better get me the canter I am after.
I don’t think you are missing anything. Consider it this way, a “properly” confirmed dressage horse has a nice, long sloping hip and can easily sit down. I ride a 7 year old sandro hit mare when my trainer is out of town, and the other day I just asked her for canter half pass for the hell of it - and lo and behold we half passed across the entire arena and hit the opposite wall at B. It was easy peasy for this mare because she is literally built to do it.
If you contrast that with my half arab, sitting down is a challenge for him. Can he do it? Absolutely. Does it take more effort? Absolutely. So when we’re working with arabs, especially camped out ones, they’re already putting in significant effort just to work with their hind legs tracking up. When you start asking for thrust on top of that It’s just a whole different level. It takes a long time, and unfortunately, you’ll just have to be patient.
Interestingly enough, I just was rereading the Klimke book on cavaletti exercises and remember a comment very much along the lines of “the benefit of schooling the dressage horse over cavaletti at the canter is so trifling as to be not worth the effort.” I was specifically looking for exercises to improve the canter and also thought of cavaletti. It turns out that while the basic mechanics of the canter are the same the horse actually completely unloads and extends the hind end to jump over so it’s not quite what we want in dressage.
Yeah, I was disappointed to find this out too. So it’s back to the dreaded countercanter
It seems this may actually be a horse that is not able to structurally handle dressage. Getting a lameness specialist out in three weeks. Sigh. I wasn’t pushing her very hard, but it was still too much. Explains why we haven’t really progressed in that regard despite her having all the buttons.
