Getting Left Canter Lead

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Dec 22, 2008
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A friend has a 6 year old heavy cob mare who almost always canters on the right lead. She is so over-trained in right lead canter that she is more balanced on the right lead on the left rein than on the left lead on the left rein.

When out hacking it's always right lead.

Physio and dentist both say they can tell she is very right handed and right side is stronger. She also always falls out of her right shoulder and drifts right into corners rather than using her body to turn.

RI rode her for an hour yesterday trying to establish canter on the left lead, but was unable to get more than 1 or 2 correct transitions - meaning she got about 50 wrong ones! So each time the horse canters she just practices the wrong thing more. They tried asking over a pole/raised pole in the corner, asking with outside bend etc. She also always canters with right lead on the lunge. RI said 'never mind, just leave her, she's only a happy hacker anyway', whereas my friend wants her to be able to canter on the correct lead on both reins and also does not think being so one-sided can be good for her. Plus she does want to do some entry level dressage even if her horse is not the ideal build for it.

I have suggested they forget about canter for now, but focus on getting the horse more even with lots of walk and trot work in straight lines, plus raised pole work to strengthen the left. There is an exercise I've seen with poles radiating out in a circle from a raised central point so if you are going anti clockwise your left leg is working harder as the poles are higher to the inside.

Any other thoughts or ideas?
 
I agree with you. I would leave cantering in the school completely until the horse is much more supple, balanced and even. Horses don't just magically become "more" one-sided in canter than in the slower gaits - it just becomes more obvious in canter because of the lead issue.

I am surprised your RI gave up after one unsuccessful session, especially knowing it's primarily a physical issue (and one-sidedness is not something that just disappears when you put a more experienced rider on board!). Her attitude of "never mind it only hacks anyway" really doesn't impress me I have to say!
 
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My lesson horse finds one lead much easier than the other. You are right (I believe) that lots of bends and counter bend in walk and in trot prepare the horse to be straighter in canter. In other words it looks as if I may be doing nothing with the horse. People look at you and wonder why you are spending almost the whole session in walk. Not just in warm up. Riding dressage elementary tests entirely in walk, with total straightness and neatness especially at right angle corners is quite a hard task, I found. The point of this is to get the hind quarters evenly underneath the weight of the horse and to prevent to much bend (falling out) at the shoulder. One excellent thing to do is to ride small circles in both directions without using much rein at all, imagining your are riding the shoulders of the horse round the circle.
I dont think it good to omit canter altogether nor overdo the weak side - I was trained to do everything equally on both reins and I also intersperse some fun stuff or the horse and for myself. I dont think a horse should get fed up with being in the school.
As for happy hacking and equal leads - Maisie only ever gave right lead but it so happened I was myself learning to canter. I was frightened of canter in the school for many years and thus learned out hacking and on the straight and thus needed to be able to ask for either lead. She did give me left lead - but didnt do it for other riders and had to be retaught.
The point about a horse that normally hacks out on the lead of their own choosing is that you first have to teach it that you are in fact asking for a certain lead. A skilled Spanish RI rider taught me that. Once you have taught the horse (Maisie it took about 20 minutes) you have to be consistent and always ask for a particular lead, plus you need to revise and reinforce it with the horse.
Apart from the teaching the horse to recognise a cue, there may well be a physical problem why the horse has preferred one lead. With Maisie I went through countless efforts on a circle to no avail. In the end (after a couple of years) we remembered that when I was a beginner she had given me the lead I wanted on the straight and therefore might find it hard on a circle because she was bent. Some horse need to trot straighter on the circle, if you see what I mean. You have to picture it encouraging more straightness even though you are going round a circle.
And once you have the difficult horse doing these things, you cant let up. Yesterday I rode a forward going horse with no problems. He does his job. I was never out of breath! Other less easy horses you need to work with to create the quality, impulsion and straightness at every step. You dont realise at the time what hard work it is to ride them nor even that you are doing it.
I guess I agree with Joosie above but I typed this before the posted.
 
joosie said:
I am surprised your RI gave up after one unsuccessful session, especially knowing it's primarily a physical issue (and one-sidedness is not something that just disappears when you put a more experienced rider on board!). Her attitude of "never mind it only hacks anyway" really doesn't impress me I have to say!
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No nor me!! My friend felt too embarrassed to say 'actually we want to do dressage' but even if she didn't it is surely better for a horse to be level and even anyway!

@Skib today I spent a whole hour schooling Xavier in walk. Mainly riding in 'squares' round the arena - straight line, 1/4 turn, straight line etc and eventually asking for some bend in the turns. It looks like we aren't doing anything. But he can't do even this simple task well yet so what's the point in progressing! I did mix it up a little for his (and my) sanity, but then went back to riding squares.
 
Raf is one sided in the same way as your friend's horse - finds left rein more difficult than the right. I went to a very interesting talk by a farrier once who said he could tell horses that hacked on roads a lot because their right (I think, might have been left but we worked out it did match with Raf's symptoms anyway!) side is bigger, due to the camber on the roads. Just wondered whether that could apply to your friend's horse? Not that it's a significant enough reason to make such a difference between left and right rein, but I thought it was an interesting observation anyway. Suppose it's a bit like the exercise with the poles raised in the centre, except that it's the road raised in the centre and you're always travelling in a 'clockwise' direction.

The other thing with Raf is that I find he tends to throw me onto his right diagonal (as in right rein) when we're trotting on a hack and I have to make a conscious effort to even it out with some left diagonal trotting.

One thing I was told by both my RI and the physio was to do equal amounts of work on both reins, not to do more on the 'bad' rein in an attempt to speed things up. I'm afraid I can't really remember why now - my memory is shocking - but I'm pretty sure it was at least partly because the horse will get sore on the side he finds difficult if he's overworked on that side and not compensated on the other.
 
My friend has a real chunk of a cob, as a 4 yo he got his leads pretty well, then at 5 and 6 really struggled to get one way, with persistence you might get it right but it was bloomin hard work for him, to the point he would buck on occasion :( she spent hours working with him, I rode him a bit, AI's rode him, but there was no 'he gets it right if you do this' moment with any of us. then he had most of last winter off due to his owners ill health and as a 7 year old he has suddenly matured into this huge heavyweight cob, grown into his body and his brain and he can now canter both ways!
Honestly I think he just needed to grow into his mind and body, he was going through the 'kevin's' and his body was still developing so he just found it harder. Based on that, I think backing off on the canter, at least only cantering out of the school so that he isn't practicing getting it wrong, is a sensible option and as you say focusing on forward and straight for a while.
 
The YO rode her and got left lead in minutes. They key was correcting the INSTANT the right leg lifted off the ground. This horse is willing so she needed to understand that right lead was wrong. Letting her canter a stride or 2 before correcting did not clarify for her what was wanted whereas an instant correction did. The problem for me is I can't ride well enough to feel the right leg coming up and then to correct! So the YO had to step in.
 
We have an older well schooled horse who physically moves the rider so he can canter on his prefered lead. The secret in correcting him was to do walk to canter transitions so he couldnt shift the rider seat so easily and never allow a wrong strike off to carry on into canter.It is also much easier to tell if the strike off is wrong when going from walk. The other thing that worked with him was to get riders to sit in the transition with outside hip and shoulder forward thus creating more bend to the inside
 
She should look up Straightness Training - it's all about horses' natural asymmetry, how difficult it is for horses to bend the "wrong" way, and how to train out of it. No quick fixes, but it's been a great help with my left-bended Haffy. With a lot of horses it's not that they don't understand what you're asking, or that they're being stroppy - they just can't do it. Like suddenly using your left hand for everything, if you're right-handed.
 
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