Hi. I need some advice on helping Ruby relax into the canter transitions. Just a quick background - Ruby is owned by my riding instructor, and she's been my project since about August (meaning that I ride her just about every time that I'm there, and other people generally only ride her once in a while when I'm not there - and I ride about 5 days a week). She's 10 years old, an off the track TB. When she was off the track, she had a kid rider who did a lot of walking and trotting, and so she is very relaxed about walking and trotting. Cantering, however, gives her anxiety (a subsequent owner did not really know what he was doing, we think, and gave her some bad habits and anxiety). She will relax once we are at the canter, but she gets very anticipatory when she thinks that a canter is coming (ie: if anyone else canters in the ring, or when we get to a certain point in the lesson, or after we've cantered). She doesn't actively take off with me, but she will spurt at the trot, lift her head in the air, chew on the bit, and basically tense her entire body. As I said, once she canters she will relax, but she gets herself so worked up that I have a problem just getting her to relax and do something else (if I don't want to canter), or she has a crappy transition. This is particularly pronounced in her bad direction (the left), she will pick up both leads but has a strong preference for the right, where she is a bit more balanced, and it sometimes takes 2 tries to pick up the left lead.
I try to not have a pattern in what I do when I ride her, either in my position or what we do before the canter, but she is smart and figures things out. I have tried asking for the transition both from the half-seat and full-seat; she usually goes better (and relaxes more at the trot) when I am sitting. I try not to ask for the canter when she is anxious, but she doesn't have the crispest transitions (another issue), so she often tries to run into the canter. If I give the signal too strongly, she gets upset and offended and throws her head even worse before jumping into the canter. Then, I she almost always relaxes at the canter, even in her "bad" lead.
She has been checked for soundness, tack, etc issues. I think that the problem is mostly mental - she can canter quite nicely, and will pick up the canter quite nicely over jumps and get quite nice simple changes to her bad lead after jumps, when she doesn't have a chance to anticipate the transition. She is somewhat the same way about jumps (we are working on low jumping - generally about 2 ft, has done a very nice 2' 6" jump as part of a gymnastic), where she will spurt in the corners, but once I get her steady on the approach she jumps very nicely.
Anyway, that ended up being really long! But, I would really appreciate anyone's ideas on how to get her to mentally relax, what signals to use, etc, to try and keep her relaxed into the transitions.
I don't have any video of the canter transitions, but I do have a video of me cantering her and doing a tiny warm-up jump from October:
http://www.facebook.com/v/510528724918
http://www.facebook.com/v/510550900478
I try to not have a pattern in what I do when I ride her, either in my position or what we do before the canter, but she is smart and figures things out. I have tried asking for the transition both from the half-seat and full-seat; she usually goes better (and relaxes more at the trot) when I am sitting. I try not to ask for the canter when she is anxious, but she doesn't have the crispest transitions (another issue), so she often tries to run into the canter. If I give the signal too strongly, she gets upset and offended and throws her head even worse before jumping into the canter. Then, I she almost always relaxes at the canter, even in her "bad" lead.
She has been checked for soundness, tack, etc issues. I think that the problem is mostly mental - she can canter quite nicely, and will pick up the canter quite nicely over jumps and get quite nice simple changes to her bad lead after jumps, when she doesn't have a chance to anticipate the transition. She is somewhat the same way about jumps (we are working on low jumping - generally about 2 ft, has done a very nice 2' 6" jump as part of a gymnastic), where she will spurt in the corners, but once I get her steady on the approach she jumps very nicely.
Anyway, that ended up being really long! But, I would really appreciate anyone's ideas on how to get her to mentally relax, what signals to use, etc, to try and keep her relaxed into the transitions.
I don't have any video of the canter transitions, but I do have a video of me cantering her and doing a tiny warm-up jump from October:
http://www.facebook.com/v/510528724918
http://www.facebook.com/v/510550900478
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