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Lope/Canter Training
Teaching the correct lead on the
Lunge Line
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Move your longing circle close enough to an arena fence, to where your
horse has to turn a slight corner to adjust for it. You will have to
time the canter departure for that little corner. Your horses body will
naturally be set up to take the correct lead. As Wish has to manuever by the fence, she has dropped her inside shoulder for just one step. Her inside hind leg is underneath her just a little bit more to compensate for the dropped shoulder and to enable her to lift her shoulder on the next step. If she picked up the lope on the very next step she would reach with her outside hind far underneath herself for propulsion and lift the inside shoulder into the correct lead. |
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On the lunge line
- First time loping - Outside the arena - The correct Lead - Dropping a shoulder - Hard to catch Lead |
On the lunge line...Wish is a pretty balanced mare, but I have used this method to teach a little yearling, who refused to pick up the r. lead.
I time the lope departure to just the step before my horse has to round the fence. If he has a hard time getting the lope, I might ask for the lope quite a ways away. The little colt I was talking about earlier needed a 1/3 of the circle to finally get into the lope. So I started asking him that early. Most of the time he'd step into the lope just in time for his body to have to balance for the arena wall.
As he progressed, I could ask for more and more obedient departures. Additionally, as he learned to lope on the right as he got more practice at it.