I have a new youth student who lessoned on a school horse initially and then brought in her horse. I suspect her grade mount has some gaited blood (could be incorrect) in that the canter is extremely lateral. The horse and rider are both struggling just to canter around. I have worked with a couple of horses with lateral tendencies, and have found them to be difficult to ride even as they improved for the average rider. They had tendencies to fall back into it if not ridden just so and/or not kept in condition. In this case, this is a young teen rider who didnāt even realize there was an issue. Do others find this issue easy to fix and I am missing something? What are the realities that I can fix this with this student? Note that this student does not have dressage dreams with this horse, but I felt this would be the best place to post to address the issue.
I had a little Appy mare with a horrible canter. She would get tight in the back and just kind of āproingā along when I bought and started her at 3. By the time I sold her at five she had a pure, fairly cute canter. The keys were I took her out in the hills once a week for a gallop (luckily she was the worldās safest baby horse), and also jumped her through grids and cantered through cavalletti. Iāve never worked with gaited horses though, so YMMV.
I rode a little Paint mare that did it. It improved as she got fitter and stronger but I never really felt that it went away completely. She was pretty successful at very low level events despite it but eventually developed soundness issues that Iām guessing were brewing all along.
Depends. How old is the horse? If heās gaited, this might be an actual gait impurity. I have a friend who has an in with some standardbred people. Sheās gotten a number of standardbred pacers off the track and resold them as pleasure horses or LL dressage horses and they did have a pure canter. I do know that she could tell when they were cantering laterally and didnāt allow them to go on cantering incorrectly. She restarts them like babies and starts the canter on the longe line so they can find their balance on their own. One thing that really helped her was getting them out in a field to open up and really canter, but Iām not sure I would recommend doing that with a young student.
IME, sometimes a lateral canter is tension and sometimes itās lameness. If itās lameness, it can come and go with the horseās fitness, like you mentioned, . If itās tension, it might remain their go-to whenever theyāre feeling pressured. If this is a fixable problem, I think the hardest part will be getting your student to recognize and correct it on her own. IMO if itās not corrected consistently, itās not going to get much better.
For those of us (well me) with nothing to offer so just here to learn ā can you describe ālateral canterā?
Is this a canter where the horse moves as if it is pacing, one side at a time? Or more of a 4-beat canter, the flat kind?
Thank you. 
Go sideways. Zig zag on and off the rail.
A few ideas, canter Cavaletti. Gradually raising the Cavaletti a little bit so the horse essentially has to do very tiny tiny jumps.
If the horse is ready for it, counter canter can help a bit. Itās really not the easiest thing to fix, especially if itās ingrained habit or if the horse has some gaited tendencies.
Good adviceā¦I have also seen the āfanā approach to setting the cavaletti.
Inexpensive esterone injections and square the hind toes for quicker breakover, just to eliminate overly tight ligaments as a concern.
Cavaletti on the longe line, make it manageable and donāt scare the horse with too much roo soon.
In a lateral canter, the outside hind and front land together, followed by the inside hind and front landing together. This is rather than the correct cadence of outside hind, inside hind and outside front together, then inside front.
My young standardbred is a natural pacer. His pace is his answer to ātrotā, he has a nice 3-pt canter. And he also can trot, but itās his trot that is inconsistent and kinda like riding a boat over waves.
I had a young warmblood that would fall into a lateral canter on occasion. Turned out he had sore SI joints. I suggest a thorough check for pain maybe?
Lots and lots of transitions and lateral work in the canter, like leg yield, shoulder in, etc.
The first one is very obvious once you see it. The second is a lateral tendency that I think could be improved with training and a lameness eval. I think there are videos of this horse breaking up the canter, or of her greatly improved.
ETA: So yes, both the pacing kind and the flat kind. The flat kind can be improved with forward motion and fitness. Sometimes you see it when riders ride the horse backward into collection and donāt keep the āup,ā and the rhythm of the gait is disrupted.
ETAA: Multiple posters also pointed out that in the first video, the walk is lateral, too. I donāt know why I neglected to mention that, but theyāre right. Personally I wouldnāt put money on fixing the first horseās canter.
Thank you! Iāve never seen this before.
Howās the horseās walk? Canter issues are often right in the walk, just maybe at a level thatās not very obvious.
Any chance he some type of PSSM2 which easily makes the canter a struggle?
I agree that this doesnāt have to be about ādressage dreamsā, but simply about improving how a horse moves so his body is better for it.
If thereās enough foot to square toes, thereās enough foot to bring the whole breakover back where it belongs and shape the foot like itās supposed to be which is fairly spade-shaped. They need that bit of a āpointā at the toe to help push off, and need the roundness to the foot to be able to break over in the various directions that changing direction requires
I had a MFT that did this. i fixe it by teaching him to go over the back and stretch into the contact properly. It actually didnāt take him long, maybe 60 days, to go from a hot mess canter that felt like riding a washing machine to a very nice 3 beat gait. For the first month I didnāt even canter, just fixed the contact and back issues at the walk and trot/gait. By the time I was cantering again it was already a dozen times better.
They wonāt have the strength to go long periods so I kept his sessions short so he could build up gradually and not get sore. You will be asking him to use muscles he has never used.
I disagree on the hind toes always being overly long, as my horses werenāt long behind at all, squaring help this pacey horse, and layering in esterone was a cheap, safe way to see if that was an issue as well.
Original Chip
Chip after a lot of work and teaching him that he could selectively manage each limb and his parts. Leg yielding, shoulder in, shoulder fore. etc
He is a tight minded TWH that is very pacey by breeding and his default setting.
What a GOOD JOB!
Thank you! He taught me how much I didnāt know. My very western, not very refined background, coupled with a previously sored young, brilliant TWH meant we were in a bad way. We got into dressage to teach me how to help him.
Heās 21 now and the very best horse ever 
