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Does your gaited horse struggle with a flat four-beat canter or bumpy lateral canter? You’re not alone. I’ve learned a few ways to improve canter quality with my gaited horse.
Here’s my story…

Improving canter with a gaited horse

By Jennifer Klitzke

Experiencing dressage with my naturally gaited horses proves that relaxation of the mind and body produce smoother gaits, including canter. This means less lateral canter and four beat canter.

“Don’t practice a poor-quality canter.”

I learned an important lesson from my gaited dressage mentor, Jennie Jackson. She says, “Don’t practice a poor-quality canter.” This means as soon as my horse begins to feel flat, hollow, bumpy, braced, or out of balance in the canter, I need to stop cantering and start over from relaxation. That’s when I transition from canter to a walk or halt, reestablish balance and relaxation and ask for a quality canter depart to quality canter steps.

This also means I need to recognize the feeling of a quality canter and a poor-quality canter so that I can ask for more of the former and reduce steps of the latter. If I continue riding a poor-quality canter, that’s what I teach my horse.

If I want a quality canter, I must know firsthand what a quality canter feels like and practice more of it. That’s why taking lessons from a qualified instructor is so important to me. Instruction provides me timely feedback so that I can learn the feeling of quality and the feeling of poor quality. This helps me train my horses with greater progress and success when I am riding on my own.

Introducing canter with a gaited horse

Exercises to break a pace canter or four-beat canter

Below is a cantering exercise over two ground rails in an L-shape. I begin by letting my horse walk over the rails before we cantered over them.

This is a super fun exercise for the rider and horse.

In addition to improving the quality of canter, you’ll also learn:

Balance of the horse
Rider balance on the horse
The horse’s rhythm
Keeping the horse forward yet relaxed
Looking ahead to plan the arc of a turn and line to a rail
Getting a feel for how many canter strides to a rail

The L-shape can also be used to school flying changes over the rail by alternating the direction over each pole.

Exercises to improve canter quality

Gymnastic jumping and ground rails

Course of Rails at Rocking R — Showing stadium jumping over rails

While I will never become serious about show jumping my naturally gaited horses, I enjoy schooling them over ground rails and small fences for gymnastic purposes. It gives them variety in their training. I’ve noticed that when we ride over ground poles and small fences, it creates more lift to their canter and brings out a truer three-beat canter.