40/ JANUARY 2013 THE RIDER


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already knows how to yield to your leg laterally. That is one of the tools necessary to do this work. You should have control of your horse’s hips as well. A horse that “fishtails” his hips to the outside of the track will be unable to compress his stride. Start with turn on the forehand work. Make sure your gas pedal is working – that he goes forward immediately when asked. Every time. Every- where.


And does he flex and give to any pressure from the bit? Or does he resist, cross his jaw, or raise his head? With these tools available, when you send him forward into the resistance of your hands, he collects his frame and gives to the bit, vs. spilling out the back door. It sounds like he’s already comfortable with slowing the trot.


Q. I have done most of the training on my 4 year old gelding myself. He will yield off my leg, do a turn on the haunches and collect his trot to a jog. I just can’t seem to slow his canter down. When I try, he just breaks into a trot. How do I keep it togeth- er?


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A. You’re on the right track when you used the word “together”. To simply pull on the reins will (as you have discovered) will only cause your horse to fall out the back door into a trot. So how do we shorten a horse’s stride while keeping the can- ter rhythm going? To simplify to the max, by using the brakes and the gas pedal in unison! Counterintuitive, it would seem, to the equine mind, but if we use the process of shaping, we can teach any skill with less stress. First, let me remind you to keep your expectations realistic. For instance, not every horse is physical- ly capable of loping slow enough to be a competitive western pleasure horse. Horses that are suited to west- ern pleasure are shorter in stride, WANT to lope slow more often than not, and naturally don’t have much of a motor. It is frustrating to try to fit a square peg into a round hole as you ask your horse to travel at a pace he can’t deliver with quality. The result will be an artificial, four beat canter.


Any horse, however, can be asked to slow his rhythm and compress their canter within a certain range.


Get your tools


Having the right foundation in place before you build is key– and you need to have the tools to ask him for this work.


It’s great that your horse Hwy 7 Georgetown, Ontario (905) 877-2261 Toll Free 1-800-565-3545 Shaping


Shaping, in learning science, is gradually teaching a new behaviour through reinforcement until the target behaviour is achieved.


Have you ever played the “hot and cold” game? As the player gets closer to the prize, you yell “Hotter!” telling him that he’s on the right track. When I tell my horse that he’s on the right track, I reward the approximation of the behaviour. I call it rewarding the thought, or rewarding a try.


Sometimes the right try hap- pens by accident, as if the horse is guessing. So when teaching your horse to shorten his canter stride, you’ll catch the moment he starts to shift his weight back in an attempt to collect himself. At first many horses respond by raising their heads, speeding up, or trotting. Your job is to block all the wrong answers and reward the right tries.


Back to the box.


To slow the canter, you must resist every time your horse is lengthens or quickens his stride (pic- ture the front of the box), while maintaining the canter rhythm with your leg and seat (the back of the box). Provide freedom every time he slows his stride. (In the box) He will eventually see a pattern developing and will seek the freedom of remain- ing slow. This sounds simplistic, but it’s pretty common to see a rider hanging on her horse’s mouth, tug of war style, while he motors around, oblivious to her.


Motivation It’s important that the resis- tance you use to slow your horse is enough to get his attention. When


Shaping the canter


slowing, establish firm contact by sliding your elbows back, with hands directed in a straight line toward your hips. Your hands will be closed into a fist, but avoid a cement- like response which would only create fear and escape If the fingers of one hand remain a bit spongey, your horse will give to it, not flee from it. Keep it up until your horse acknowl- edges you by yielding or flexing his jaw and compressing his stride – even a little. He may try many escape routes – head up, head down, break to a trot, etc but only relax your mus- cles when you feel him take a small- er canter stride. Immediately allow your arms to flow with the motion of his head and neck.


Timing


Your horse won’t recognize the pattern unless your timing is abso- lutely consistent. Having a ground person is especially helpful. When I’m teaching, I ask riders to let me “ride through them”. I watch very carefully, calling out “resist” fol- lowed by “release” and the moment the horse nails the right answer. Through the shaping process, the horse figures out the box boundaries.


Lindsay Grice Bio: Coach, judge, speaker and equine behaviourist, Lindsay Grice has trained hundreds of horses and hundreds of riders in her 25 years as a professional. Riding clinics and seminars take her throughout Canada, teaching for equine associations, riding clubs and at private farms, creating think- ing horsemen of her students by teaching the “hows” and “whys” of riding. “Most training problems are just communication issues between horse and rider,” she says, “solved using the science of how horses think and learn.”


Lindsay teaches Equine Behaviour for a course offered by University of Guelph.


She also draws regularly on sports psychology principles. “Han- dling show nerves, distractions, and disappointments is as much a part of a success as the technical riding skills.”


She is an Equine Canada and AQHA specialized judge as well as a Provincial Hunter/Jumper judge as well as a certified Equine Canada coach and an NCCP level 3 coach. Her students have won at major shows in the United States and Cana- da.


For more information, visit her site www.lgrice.com.


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