Great tip horserider12, thank you!
I actually wouldn’t do any of that.
I’d work at large. And work in a long deep frame.
(I don’t ride a horse until I can actively put it in some sort of frame. It goes on the lunge until it understands the bridle and forward well enough for me to have impact with my aids)
And always keep moving forward allowing as much schwung as possible.
And not work on transitions, turns, or small circles, or even be too worried about tempo until my horse can walk, trot, and canter at large with little management.
Think of it this way…this horse doesn’t want to go left. So how can it possibly do anything needed for all that fluff if it doesn’t even have directional control?
And personally I would forget about cantering. Get it all nice and going at the trot. Revisit canter in a month. Unless the canter is there and fairly decent. Then use it.
I did not say lunging has no benefits
I said it doesn’t benefit a clearly novice person with an unbalanced horse. I absolutely know how to properly lunge a horse, and it isn’t as simple as most people believe it is. Under certain circumstances, it could, I suppose have benefits, though truly, except for working a rider on the lunge to control the horse while the rider worked on correct position, I’m not a big fan. To me, it would be as if someone told me that for my fitness routine, I needed to jog. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to be jogging in a 20 meter circle with your head bent to the inside attached to a rope on a pole, until we think you’ve figured out whatever elusive thing we think you need to learn You see, even if you know what you’re doing, and you have side reins adjusted correctly, a static set of reins attached to the horse and a lunge line attached to a cavesson are incapable of making the instantaneous and minute corrections that a rider with hands, seat and legs can make to either encourage, reinforce or correct something, that by the time you “fix it” on the lunge, the horse is already dozens of strides past whatever needed fixing.
So do I think putting an unbalanced horse on a lunge and chasing it around to the left until it finally gets a left lead is the best way to do it? Nope.
And truthfully, I’ve never met a race horse that didn’t canter on the left lead. Unless it was sore. I’ve had a few that the right lead was a bit on the wonky side, but usually the switch from right to left was easy and left to right was hard.
I’ll stick with what I said. The horse isn’t strong enough to balance on a small circle and the OP isn’t helping by trying to get a canter before all the other basics are in place.
2ndyrgal, not sure you read my last post. We have only cantered under saddle once.
One of mine took 30+ minutes to pick up a left lead when we first started- he was trained to break right and swap to the left. The other one was one of the most insecure horses I’ve ever ridden, so taking your time and building trust and confidence is the most important thing. I learned the hard way not to overdo/overchallenge him- it would set him back weeks. He had both leads; it was just ugly and uncontrolled. The “the trot the ground pole and let her canter a few strides” was the only way I could get him into a decent canter. If I asked for a canter, he’d literally throw himself into one. Over a pole? Lovely.
Good luck!
My current OTTB had a missing upward transition onto a left lead canter. He could switch to it and he could land on it. Once on the left lead, the quality of the canter was much better than anyone had a right to expect at his stage of retraining. There was some muscular weakness that made him slow, but I think the biggest thing was the lack of coordination to do something he’d never been asked to do in years of training for a different career. I’ve compared it to trying to brush your teeth with the left hand (for righties!) or change a baseball swing to a golf swing (for someone who was a good hitter!).
It has taken about five months, I think? Weather, missing shoes and other projects have slowed the process down, although I think the unrushed and relaxed temp may have actually helped in the long run. But he executed his first lovely simple change a few days ago. (It was truly better than Christmas.)
It has been odd to make training decisions about a horse that’s otherwise progressed so quickly and responded so willingly and intelligently to retraining. I’ve done lots of things that I think helped – not picking at him daily for the missing lead, adding good joint support to his diet, never asking him to deliver the left lead on a day I didn’t have plenty of time to follow through, breaking up his routine with walk days in and out of the ring. And I’ve learned lots of things not to try – don’t accept the right lead and a flying change more than once (to demonstrate for my satisfaction that the left lead does in fact exist!), same goes for asking over a pole. You don’t want to know how quickly he latched on to ANY such crutch.
I have gotten more conservative about putting horses on the longe line, in general. Everyone has their own reasons. It was not a solution for this horse on this issue.
I knew what his physical issues were when I took him on. I also knew him relatively well as a racehorse and knew what his personality was like when life went according to his expectations. That may have helped? It may also have made me slow down even more, because I’ve always felt that he was TRYING extremely hard to do what I was asking. I could feel him getting frustrated when we came back to the trot and tried, again, again, again. The only time I’ve gotten rough with him was when he started looking for outlets for his own frustration – bucking his way into a transition is NEVER an option, even if it did help the back end of the horse launch off onto the correct lead!
For months, I threw a full-on party and abruptly ended my ride any time he struck off on the left lead at my request. Then I started throwing the party, walking for several minutes, and repeating the question. When he gets it a second time, we quit. That’s where we are now. 
Two points that may or may not be helpful:
- COTH is great and frustrating with the constant reminders to check every physical cause under the sun. If you’ve checked everything to your satisfaction, then you might try throwing the horse some bute before you ride. Once. Just in case. If she’s magically perfect, well, maybe it’s worth spending more money to chase physical causes.
In all likelihood, she is arthritic. But, IME, TBs that make it to the races “accept” a certain amount of soreness, much like human runners and gym rats who go every day in spite of their aches and pains. Sad or wonderful, I don’t know, but it is one of the qualities I’ve come to expect with a retired runner.
- There are racehorses who refuse to travel to the left under tack. Most tracks in the U.S. require you to jog (trot) the “wrong” way, or tracking to the right. Horses out for a gallop or a work travel to the left. Most trainers I’ve seen send horses out to work by “backing up” – jogging the wrong direction – then turning them around and letting them roll with varying degrees of abruptness. It is not terribly unusual for a horse to refuse to turn around and gallop. Much like a ring sour horse acting up at the ingate, or a dirty stopper, this probably starts as a physical problem and develops into a habit.
Your filly is very cute. She may turn out to be a bazillion dollar eventer/hunter/jumper/cirque du soleil performer. But, for a racehorse, she is cheaply and unfashionably bred. That means ZERO for her future. All it means is that, in her past, IME, owners, trainers, grooms and even exercise riders do not always give top notch care to a runner they perceive as cheap. That’s certainly not a hard and fast rule, and have never even heard of anyone connected to her except her last jockey. She may have been treated like she was headed for the Breeders Cup. But care based on anticipated rate of return is very common. She had three starts and some pretty troubled running lines. If she had turned up in my shedrow with only her pretty face and a past performance, I would assume something wasn’t right and needed to be addressed before running her.
Thus ends my epic post.
Hi Kels,
My current OTTB gave me quite the run around to the left as well. As others have said it does take lots of time and patience before they are able to balance themselves in a ring. It took months for my guy to be able to canter fairly normal to the left while taking up the whole ring. After awhile we were able to get down to 20 meter circles.
He was much harder to get the correct lead to the left while under saddle but harder to he right on the longe. I didn’t even try longing him at the canter for a long time because the circle was just too small for him until he figured out his balance.
I eventually figured out that he was having issues to the left because of his feet (well one foot- the left). Once that was solved he was better but overall he has been stiff to the left for the 2 years I have had him and the chiropractor has been fixing that.
Best of luck and just have fun with your pretty new girl! They can certainly test your patience!
[QUOTE=2ndyrgal;7352869]
Put the lunge line away. They don’t improve your horse, nor will it teach your horse anything.[/QUOTE]
Only if you don’t know how to lunge well :rolleyes:. As a blanket statemet, that’s just so inaccurate.
I agree with you. The last thing you want is to create tension about the transition and/or to encourage the horse to run into the canter.
She needs to be a lot stronger to the left in walk and trot, and to consistently bend to the inside. Get her soft first, then a few weeks or however long down the track when she is stronger and more confident, you can quietly ask for a few strides of canter.
I had a stock pony who was awkward to canter (both ways) to start with, but rather than thrashing the canter we spent a lot more time in trot then over a period of weeks slowly added bits of canter. Quality not quantity. He has the easiest transitions now and a lovely flowing canter and is winning champions on the flat. He just needed that time to get stronger, and a kind lunger to give him confidence that he wouldn’t be pushed beyond his ability (creating tension).
Lunging will be good for her, if you (or your trainer) can do it with nuance.
From your video - and u want the horse go left -
Move her to the other side of the arena so u can work her
against the wall.
If she doesnt get it place a ground rail
near where she has to make the turn. Voila!
Why dont u lunge or ride the horse? Free running it around is waste of time.
OTTBs are just fine to be ridden.
Kinscem, I’d like it if you had read my other posts. The horse has been ridden and is regularly on the line, not free lunged. I was only posting the video to get input on the habit of avoiding that direction in general.
She was restarted before I got her, too.
Meany, thank you for that post!!
Great to know that your horse is doing well!
