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 don’t scare the horse with too much roo soon.
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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.
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My young standardbred is a natural pacer. His pace is his answer to ‘trot’, he has a nice 3-pt canter. And he also can trot, but it’s 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?
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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 don’t keep the “up,” 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 don’t know why I neglected to mention that, but they’re right. Personally I wouldn’t put money on fixing the first horse’s canter.
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Thank you! I’ve never seen this before.
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How’s the horse’s walk? Canter issues are often right in the walk, just maybe at a level that’s not very obvious.
Any chance he some type of PSSM2 which easily makes the canter a struggle?
I agree that this doesn’t have to be about “dressage dreams”, but simply about improving how a horse moves so his body is better for it.
If there’s enough foot to square toes, there’s enough foot to bring the whole breakover back where it belongs and shape the foot like it’s supposed to be which is fairly spade-shaped. They need that bit of a “point” 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
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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 didn’t 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 didn’t 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 won’t 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.
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I disagree on the hind toes always being overly long, as my horses weren’t 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.
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What a GOOD JOB!
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Thank you! He taught me how much I didn’t 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.
He’s 21 now and the very best horse ever 
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I didn’t say they were always overly long. I am saying that if there’s room to square the toe, there’s room to round out the corners for a correctly shaped foot, for the reasons I listed. Horizontally shortening toes helps a lot of horses, as long as you don’t shorten too much, But unless you are trying to force a particular direction of breakover, you don’t want square toes.
Every squared off toe I’ve ever seen as helping movement, was actually just putting the breakover where it belonged, taking the stress off the back of the leg, hamstrings, stifles, and SI.
Meaning - it’s not usually the actual squaring that’s the fix, it’s the fixing of the breakover that’s the fix.
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YES! You can see this clearly in the first video of the two that blue_heron posted. The walk is obviously lateral and so is the canter.
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I was going to chime in and say exactly this.
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I thoroughly enjoyed your Before and After videos. You did an amazing job. And your horse is very handsome. He looks fun to ride.
Thank you very much. We had a lot of long unpleasant days before I accepted that I didn’t know what he needed me to know. And when we did get help, his crazy canter was still a lot of work!! He’s really a marvelous horse, so marvelous I bought his “nephew” 
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I definitely agree with cantering on hacks and up some hills.
Lunging over raised poles will definitely help - you can even put the poles on a bend and do it on a circle.
Lateral work - leg yield, should in, should fore and travers.
My horse is a Rocky Mountain horse(gaited, of course) and our canter has certainly been a work in progress. The travers definitely helped with the upward transition which made the canter easier. For downward transitions, it helps if I leg yield into them.
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It’s like the gaited tendency means they only understand even numbers of footfalls.
They can do a 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4 walking gait, or a 1 2, 1 2 pacing gait, but the 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 of a pure canter is a foreign language. They must be taught how to manage their legs and body parts to break up that natural body movement patterning.
Oooohhhh I love Chip! Lovely 
