Welcome to Trainer Tuesday! Each week we ask trainers a question and gather their answers for you. These trainers have a range of experience, backgrounds, and focus points of their programs, so the answers have as much variation as you would expect and also probably much more similarity.
This week’s question posed is: What are some good exercises for a horse that anticipates the trot or canter?
Here are their answers:
“Change it up—never do it in the same place at the same time. Always make sure you mix it up!” – Lindsay Yinger
Listen to Lindsay on The Plaidcast here.
“Soft hands and patience (over-correction leads to hard mouths) with quiet, repeated downward transitions, then standing in place for a moment until asked to move forward at a walk.” – Scott Keller
Read more Trainer Tuesday answers from Scott here.
“I think the first thing to figure out is why the horse is anticipating the transition. Is the rider giving the horse clear aids to what they are asking the horse to do? Is the horse balanced and strong enough to do the transition smoothly? And finally, is the horse relaxed? I think changing up the transitions and not over schooling a particular transition helps the horse, the key is never to do the same thing too many times or in the same place in the ring. Sometimes you may ask for the canter transition from the walk, sometimes from the trot, asking for a simple change of lead across the diagonal. Also incorporating transitions within the gaits to help keep the horse’s focus on what the rider is asking.” – Heather Pinnick
“When a horse anticipates the canter or any transition, I think we first have to evaluate ourselves. As we prepare to canter, what is happening to our bodies? Are we holding our breath? Beginning to get fussy with our hands, shifting our weight, overly preparing, basically anticipating the transition first. Being clear in our intention without any conflicting aids will set the horse up for success. Maybe we unintentionally gave him the cues and in doing so got a response that we were not ready for and then corrected him, destroying his confidence in answering the question.
Listen to what the horse is telling you. Remember his number one need is to feel safe and he will do what he needs to do to feel that way, that might mean getting ahead of himself to try to please or to avoid being corrected. Go back to the beginning if you have to, walk, halt, walk and build on the good steps. His confidence in how he answers the question will allow him to take a breath. Going back to basics is never the wrong answer.” – Karine Gordy
“I find the best approach with anticipatory trot/canter transitions is to really mix it up. Throw in a walk, or a halt at random. Never ask the same thing twice in the same location, and avoid repetitive ring exercises that are very known to your horse, like figure eights. Most importantly, if they do it well once, don’t continue to drill it. If you have the ability, changing locations can also be helpful. Try it in a different part of the ring or in a grass field if you have access. The goal is to encourage them to forget what they think they know — and defer to you instead.” – Jennifer Smith
Read more about Jennifer here.
“For horses that anticipate the trot/canter, I find that most horses that anticipate the next gate are trained (sometimes inadvertently) to do this by always doing the same thing. Horses are habitual and will follow the habit when they feel that is what they should do. They think they are helping and do not like to be wrong.
I have found that if we slow everything down and ask different questions during the ride at different times during the ride. The plan is for the horse to start to look for you to give the ques, instead of them taking over. The key is to give clear and deliberate cues for what you want to do. Use the ring more as well, try not to just stay on the rail, go across the middle, circle, and go on the diagonal. Try to incorporate different things to do during the ride, add some pole work (one pole will do).
I think the key to not getting upset or angry and just pulling, is to work through the ride with your horse and have open communication through your voice, arms, and legs. Try not to stiffen up when your horses anticipate the next thing, change their thought pattern, and give them something else to think about.
Also, think about this question: Are they anticipating it because I have been asking without thinking about it and was just out of position or are they overthinking on their own? Most times this is learned behavior and as it can be learned, it can also be unlearned. That one takes longer and requires patience. Please remember they will do what you ask of them, they don’t understand right or wrong, only what you are telling them with your aides. Whether you mean to or not.” – Christopher Mitchell
“For a rider who is riding too stiffly, I would add lessons on the lunge line. I would do many exercises where the rider’s hands are not on the reins. And beginning at the trot, I would do many transitions from rising to sitting to jumping position all to establish a more confident foundation that will allow the rider to be more supple in their arms and back. At the canter, I would do the same exercises in both a full and half-seat. I think often, without reins, a rider is more able to truly feel their seat working properly in conjunction with the motion of the canter. Once a rider has developed more suppleness in their seat without reins, I would slowly add the reins back in. At first, without a contact, so the rider will only mimic the correct motion in their arms. And then inch by inch, re-establish a soft connection with arms that have learned to follow the motion of the horse.” – Shaun Clark
Read more of Shaun’s answers for Trainer Tuesday here.
“Moving sideways in any gait and transition is beneficial for a horse that anticipates the next gait. When horses are anticipating the next gait, they are typically forward thinking and need somewhere for their energy to go. Most of the time, if you try to just shut it down, they will respond poorly in some way because they need an outlet. You need to train them to harness their enthusiasm and not use it for ‘evil’ and to listen and wait until you tell them. Another good exercise is to focus on smaller shapes. So small circles, serpentines, tear drops, figure eights, etc. A smaller turn will naturally make a horse back off a little without you having to hold them back. Now, let me take a step back and also say that I actually don’t have any issue with a horse ‘anticipating’ the next gait (or next movement in general). What is actually the fault, not just for me but for anyone, is when the horse acts on that anticipation. Anticipating the next movement is actually ideal. You want a horse that is ready and waiting for your next command, whether that be a shoulder in, or an ask for a different gait, a half pass, turning to a jump, etc. They just can’t act on the anticipation until you give them an aid and ask them for whatever it is.
Because oftentimes, they are assuming incorrectly and we don’t want that movement, and we certainly don’t want it to be earlier than we planned because then neither horse nor rider are on the same page and it’s not harmonious looking. Anyway, in terms of trying to train a horse who is acting on their anticipation, like I said, it’s vital to give them somewhere for their energy to go. Especially when they’re young. If you shut it down and just try to stop it and contain it, it will typically boil over on you in some way like an explosion, tension, etc. So as hard as it is, because we are creatures of instantaneous gratification nowadays, we have to be okay with diffusing and somewhat walking on eggshells for a moment with a horse like this. It’s not going to be perfect, and that’s okay. Meanwhile, aside from waiting for some maturity and experience to grow, the baby steps you can take now are to focus on extremely small increments of waiting longer.
For example, if a horse is walking and feels you gather up the reins and starts wanting to jig, keep practicing that and try to just get them to wait a step/second longer before trotting off. Over time (and I mean days, weeks, months, and even years) that step will end up growing into multiple steps and into even more steps and eventually to the point where the amount of time that they are withholding themselves is so long that it’s no longer a problem. I’m going through this exact situation with my new young horse. He is extremely easily distracted and extremely forward thinking. But even just the past 6 months or so since I’ve had him, we’ve made huge progress in not acting as much on his anticipation. When I started, I could barely get him to stay walking. Now he’s happily walking and striding out, for the most part, and mostly waiting until I ask for something. It’s not perfect, but it’s immense progress. I’m not going to lie to you, this is something that there is no quick fix (honestly very few horse things are…). But if you are diligent and stick to it and focus on just trying to get tiny little baby steps of progress over each ride, it will eventually add up.” – Michael Willham
Read last weeks Trainer Tuesday article here.
