CANTERING my RACEHORSE for the first time

And he might be too much horse for me to ride today. I think that his steering would just disappear. At the same time, you want to be ready to grab leather. I think let's try all right lead here. So today I'm planning on cantering Nelson for the first time, my first time cantering him. It was super cold and windy the past couple days, especially last night. So I'm thinking he's going to be like really fresh and he might be too much horse for me to ride today. So apparently I got to wake him up from his nap first and then we'll see if he's fresh or not. Hi Nelson. We got sleepy Nelson today versus naughty Nelson. He's a good boy. He's a character. Well, we got to get to work at some point today, Nelson. Come on. Oh no, now you're going to go all the way down? Really? We got some passive resistance happening at the moment. There you go. Get a good roll. How are you turning and rolling at the same time? He just did like a 180. Feel better? Marley and Lambo like, yeah, we're taking the day off too. No, but actually it was very cold last night, freezing temperatures. So we had a lot of ice and some frozen water lines, but I think it's in the like low forties right now. So it's still kind of chilly, but sun's out. So that's helping. I know, I know. I shouldn't complain. It's super cold up North. I'm from the North though. And I did many, many winters, freezing training horses. All right, so we got him saddled up. I'm going to run through some of my games that I've been teaching him. If you want to see all of the things that I've been doing with Nelson, those videos are going to be on Patreon. It's kind of the really complete version of restarting and off the track thoroughbred. But the main thing that I'm gonna show you guys today is the canner preparation that I'm gonna be doing with him on the ground to hopefully be able to set up good cannering under saddle. Hey guys, real quick, I want to thank the sponsor of today's video, Montana Premium Forage. We've been feeding their products for a long time now, and they are just fantastic. One of the things that makes them extra special and unique is they only use premium ingredients. So some people tend to use their not as great hay, sometimes a little moldy or not that great to make their pellets. Montana Premium Forage uses only their best hay to make their pellet tip. Timothy pellets as well as alfalfa pellets. But check out this hay. I mean, this is one of their compressed bells that they sell. I mean, this hay just looks and smells incredible. And it's like giving your horse a treat when you give it to them. They absolutely love it. But one of the things that I love about their pellets is they don't use any binding agents or bentonite in it. What a lot of people don't realize is when you're feeding a lot of other brands of pelleted feed, there's pounds of clay in every bag that you're feeding, which is why it doesn't break down into water that well. And so we soak ours just for a few minutes and it starts to loosen up and kind of swell up a little bit as it absorbs some water. And the horses absolutely love it. So if you're in the need for some good feed, check out Montana Premium Forage. One little thing that I've been doing with him is I've kind of kept him down to this end of the arena. And that has been intentional because down here, in other words, when I canter him or circle him, I do it down at this end. So if I take him down there, he'll get really up and he'll try to run back this direction. And so I'm gonna kind of flirt with going down there by just moving his body around and just working my way down there. But I'm not gonna work on my canter circles down here because he gets a little bit more elevated and then he thinks about running back towards the gate. So I can set myself up for success and teach him some good patterns and habits by just working on cantering in the easier environment, which is the same arena, but just at the near end. But that doesn't mean I avoid coming down here. It just means I'm strategic about when I ask for certain things. But he tends to be wide over here and then he tends to cut through it here. And so by doing a lot of transitions and yielding his hindquarters and then sending him off the other way, that gets him just in the habit of kind of getting his life up and then coming back down from it. But by doing a transition immediately and yielding his hindquarters and facing, gets him out of the habit of just thinking about running down there or running around. And now to get back down there, I'll just side pass. So when I'm gonna work on something challenging like cantering, I'm always gonna try to sandwich it between doing some easier things. So I would consider this to be a little bit of an easier thing, although he does think about running down there. And then after cantering, I'll bring him back down and kind of lower his energy level by doing some other kind of softer, slower yields. I won't just like canter a bunch and then mount up. You can see he's getting a lot softer off that halter compared to what I started with. But again, he was just a heavy on it cause he didn't know what I was asking for. So we're gonna try cantering a little bit, but if he pulls on me too much, I'll probably put the snaffle in his mouth and I'll just attach my lead rope to the snaffle. You'll see he's kind of ready to do it, but in my perspective, he's not totally ready, but it's like he's ready enough that we can give it a try to canter on his back in a circle, which again is very different. Even though they canter a lot in all their exercise programs and getting ready for races and whatnot, cantering is still an emotional gate for horses and he's not used to doing it on a smaller circle and having to turn so much. So on the ground here with this length of rope, this is a 14 foot rope. And then if you add my arm in, we got almost 16 feet of rope. So it's still a decently large circle, but what I'm working on here mostly is not how long he canters for, I'm working on the transition into it and being able to follow his nose around off the lead rope. So you gotta keep that in mind. Then when I've been riding him, I've been building in recovery strategies so that if he gets amped up, I can bring him back. And I've been working on his steering cause he really had very minimal steering cause I believe they're kind of used to following a group of horses to ride out for exercise on the track and that sort of thing. So it's a very specific pattern that they're used to, not necessarily working on arena riding and turning all over the place. So we got a nice little trot going. Let's go ahead and ask for a little canter. So that'd be a transition I don't wanna ride. I did like how he swapped his leads behind. That was good. He was on the, he was cross firing and then he got onto the correct lead there. Really good. Take that one. Whoa, I love that. Hopefully he can do that under saddle. I don't know about you guys, that's a Western canter if I've ever seen one. He wants to be a Western thoroughbred. Good thing that's the classes we signed up for. So again, you can see he's amped up right now. So I'm not gonna, I don't know if you guys could see that or not. His breathing changed and his head is elevated. And so for him, that's a bit amped up. So I'm just gonna get him to settle in a little bit more, drop his head, get a little more softness. You can see it starting to come through a little bit. And then we'll canter to the right. Ooh, there's a change. So he kind of did a downshift there. Let's go ahead and try to canter this way. So the more relaxed and comfortable he is here, when I go to ask for the canter, it just is gonna make it that much more kind of easy for him to be soft and steady with it. So I pick my moments of when I ask them to do harder things. I like that he picked up that right lead pretty consistently. There's a counter canter. There's a lead change. I think he's gonna be a really easy horse to change leads on. Super. So way better than it was when I first started with him. And I feel like if I go on an even bigger circle when I'm riding, we have a reasonable chance of doing a decent canter. If it's not, I feel like we have enough recovery strategies. We can come back down and go, okay, maybe today's not the best day. One of the things that's a little bit unique about me and my program is I weigh equally trying to teach a horse things I want them to know with trying to not teach them things I don't want them to know. What do I not want him to know at a canter? I don't want him to learn how to take off on me and push through pressure. I don't want him to think about getting worried at the canter. I don't want him to learn how to rubber neck and not steer while we're cantering. And so I can offset those things or worst case scenario, learn to buck or take off something like that and get in a wreck. But I'm not worried about that. For him, the reason I wouldn't want to canter him isn't because I think he's gonna buck me off or do anything really bad. I think he would get worried about it potentially. But probably the number one thing would be I think that his steering would just disappear and he would end up just learning. He'd be trying to turn and he would just be pushing through it. And I just have no desire to teach him how to not turn very well. And so by getting his steering much better at a trot, that gives me a way better chance of having a conversation about steering when I'm cantering him. Which is a big shift for me. Several years ago, I used to just kind of canter. If I didn't think they were gonna buck or really blow up, I was ready to canter or anything. It's like, kind of didn't ride him unless you cantered him. But I've really changed my perspective on that because, and I've just had way better success with cantering in terms of how well, the quality of the canter, how quickly it gets there by taking some more time at the trot and just putting in the things you need in place. So if we compare that transition to his first one, significantly better, cruising around, leaning out a little bit, but not bad at all. That was probably the best canter circle he's ever done for me. So I will take it. And now I'm gonna do a couple of softening things before we mount up. So we're gonna work on a backup here a little bit. Off the halter, that's gotten a lot better. We'll work on a little bit of head down. That's gotten better. And I'll put the rope around the saddle. See if he can find his way out of it. Much improved. So we had a lot of confidence and relaxation with it, but he used to get kind of stuck there in that first part of the turn. You can see he rolled through that really nicely. So one other habit that he kind of had that stuck with him is wanting to go somewhere as soon as the rider got on. And so that's something I've been working with. And I think it kind of gives it a good setup by just doing a little backup first before I step on him. And my wife is just pulling in the driveway with a horse that she recently got. You gonna be a good boy and not walk off today? Oh boy, I think that was the first time he didn't try to walk off as soon as he got on him. The trailer distraction might've been helpful. So Nelson got very distracted by my wife bringing in with a new horse. It looks like he's just starting to come out of it. But main thing I try to do is allow him, he wants to like look at her and face her. So I kind of allow him to get locked on. And then I take the rein and I redirect him. And so I yield the hind quarters and then I release him the other direction. What I don't try to do is just make him not look at her. I let him look at her and then I let him experience a little bit of a negative pressure right there. So he's looking at her. Now is where I'll put a little pressure on with that rein and redirect him back here. And so I'm just trying to kind of get his mind back on me. And sometimes when you get moving faster, trotting and cantering, there's enough going on for them that they don't pay attention as much. And this would be the same thing. Let's say he was afraid of something over there. In this case, he's sweet here. So pressure comes on right there where he's sweet. Pressure goes off where I want him to be. Well, if he was scared over here, I would do the same thing. He would be avoiding it. So he would be trying to turn, go, I don't want to go down that scary end of the arena. He'd be wanting to go this way. And so I'd let him go this way. And then I would redirect him back the other way and give him relief towards the scary thing. So you can use it for either scenario, a horse that's kind of sweet on another horse in the arena or a horse that's avoiding a scary part of the arena. So now it feels like he's somewhat with me. So I'm going to go ahead and just trot around a little bit. And again, all I'm going to do is reinforce what I've already been doing, which is an exercise I call riding guide of using my neck rein and direct rein and working on kind of riding some squares and getting him to make square turns. Because before, if I would use a direct rein like this, you can see now his nose and feet follow it. But when I first started riding him, it did not happen. He would, it would take a while for him to turn. Now there, he got a little elevated. And so I'll reinforce a recovery strategy that I may need once I start cantering him. So I'm going to walk him on this circle and just kind of pull and release on my rein and just get him to bend his ribs and kind of leave his head and neck in on that circle. And just ask him for a little bit of softness there. Very good. Once it comes through, we'll head back into a trot. And so that's a way that you can just kind of get ahead of it and just proactively work on that steering. That's kind of the name of the game. So I'm feeling, I'm feeling pretty good. I think let's try a right lead here. Theoretically, this is maybe a little bit of the harder side and I'm going to do it kind of over here, headed back towards the barn. So I'm just going to sit on my pockets and just kind of bring my life up. Now we didn't get it. We just got a really big extended trot. So instead of pushing, pushing, pushing and kind of scaring him into it with more pressure, I'm going to retreat there and let the pattern do the work. So he knew that I asked for something different there, but he wasn't sure that I asked for canter, probably because we've been trotting a lot. And so we're just going to recover and then we'll head off the new way and try it again. And so by letting the pattern do the work, what I mean is I'm just going to trot him until he's in a good frame of mind. And then he's going to feel me bring my life up and try to just tip him into the lope or the canter out of that faster trot. So here it is, that faster trot, bring my life up. Now there he didn't respond. So I had to kind of bump him with my leg and I didn't get much of a faster response from that either. So that was my like, hey, let's try this, put a little bit of pressure on him and still no response. So again, we'll just retreat. To me, this is a much better plan than just doing all the things you'd have to do to get him into the canter. Cause then you'd end up with a really fast canter. Where again, I'm hoping just to tip him into the lope. And I don't know on the racetrack how they cue them to canter. Cause you know, when they first go out there, they're not cantering, they're walking and then they trot and then they go into a canter. And I just, I don't know if they come around the corner and open them up, I don't really know. But he doesn't really know cues to canter is what it boils down to. So I have to remember that I'm teaching it to him. I'm in a teaching stage. I'm not, he's not being bad. It's not like he's trying to be lazy on me. Even though he's kind of a slower horse, he's not a lazy horse. Like he's pretty happy to move around. So ask here a little bit. You could tell he saw me, feel me make a change there, but we still didn't get the canter. So we'll just bend down and recover again. So I just say, oh good. Another opportunity to work on my relaxed rein and coming back down after your emotions and your life got up a little bit. By letting the pattern do the work, that's what I mean by just keep setting it up. I'm just gonna keep setting up this pattern and keep asking and he'll give it to me when he's ready versus me just saying, let's go. There it is. Beautiful. Really nice little canter there. And he got a little unsure when I picked up a rein to make the turn and we'll just recover and just let him be good. So I'm not gonna do as much in this little recovery, really soft with my pressure. I want him to feel good about what he just did there because that was a pretty soft little transition that he made. He's like, is this what you want? And you can see I did not have to use more pressure to get there. I let the pattern do the work. I stole that from Gordon Ramsey. He always says, let the knife do the work when he's showing people how to chop vegetables. So I switched it to let the pattern do the work. It means you don't have to use more physical pressure to try to make something happen. Oh, he almost had it. We got a counter lead, no big deal. Since he thought forward, I'm not gonna shut him down there. I'm gonna keep going because he had the right idea. There it is. Oh my goodness. Beautiful canter. Super smooth. And it feels correct. It feels kind of that rocking horse canter where he's using his hindquarters correctly in it. He's breathing differently. When they're on the track, they breathe like pretty shallow and you'll hear a lot of horses going around an arena where they kind of make this noise like. And that's to me not the kind of breathing that I want. I want her to take deeper, fuller breaths. And so he's kind of learning how to do that too. As strange as that sounds, I really believe that's kind of what's happening because he's moving around but still breathing fully as he goes. He's not taking those short, shallow breaths. And I really pay attention to that when I'm training a horse because I know that's one sign that there's quite a bit of tension in them when they're doing that. Let's go again here. Keep her moving, Nelson. You're a thoroughbred. Keep her moving. Oh, that's a great canter. But I'm amazed that actually his steering is as good at the canter as it is the trot. So very encouraging. There you go, let it out. And then I'm just trying to be really loose so don't judge me too hard in the comments on my riding. When you're riding a green horse, you're just trying to really go with the flow and just not have any part of your body get in their way. But at the same time, you want to be ready to grab leather should a situation arise. And so it's kind of a funny balance where when you're riding them all proper here and you kind of know what the horse is going to do, it's a little easier to be correct. Let's try to get one more canter over here. There it is. Oh my gosh, this canter's fantastic. Super happy about that. When a horse has like a naturally pretty nice smooth canter, boy, it saves a lot of time and effort on the training side of things. Boy, I can feel it. He wants to have a little Western lope in there. Fantastic. That was awesome. So I think to wind him down, I think what I'm going to do next is I'm going to teach him a little bit of side pass just for fun. On Patreon, I showed kind of a graduation for a horse and a rider is to be able to use your inside leg to widen out. So I'm going to press my inside leg here to see if I can ask him to step over. And why I think this is really important is if you don't have that, if I want to continue going to the right, but I want to be over there, I'm going to pull his nose to the left, get over there. And now I'm going to pull his nose to the right to go back to the right. I would so much rather not do that. That's like driving your car, getting in the left-hand turn lane with your right turn signal on and then turning right. It just doesn't make sense. But if you have that little inside leg move, you can start guiding the horse around off of your legs and I can move his body laterally over there. And so to me, that's a precursor to the side pass. But if I have a rider, maybe the horse knows how to side pass, but the rider is only direct reining their horse. That's one of the things I'm going to try to get them to do is ride off their legs a little more and our horses will really appreciate it when we can start giving them a looser rein as we go. So he's familiar with side passing on this fence. So I'm basically going to do it exactly how I've been doing on the ground. Tip his nose in and get a couple of steps of side pass right there. And that's all he's got to do. And then we'll head back the other way and do the same thing. So same thing, get a little couple of steps of sideways. You can just see how easy and natural that is when you put those pieces together of he knows how to side pass on the ground. He does that pattern here on the fence. Then I taught him to yield off my inside legs. That's the same cue I'm using now. It just makes it super simple for them to figure out over here. And you can see there, we hardly have any momentum, but he can figure out how to step off that leg. So here he's a little unsure. And there he stepped off of it and he gets immediate relief. Very good. And if I want more, you just ask again. Yeah, he's going to be good at side passing. He feels like pretty light for his very first time doing this. A lot of horses are a little bit stickier when you're first side passing them. Really nice. So that's what I'm super happy with is as chill as he is, it doesn't really take hardly any pressure to motivate him. Once in a while he gets a little stuck if he's unsure, but it's just him being unsure. He doesn't really seem to have a stubborn streak or anything to him that a lot of left brain horses have when they're naturally really confident like he is. And so he's just a really good natured horse. He's just kind of a pleasure to work with. It's just always nice to just work with a really good natured horse. That just makes all the difference in the world because you feel really successful when things are going well and they're getting along and you feel safe on them, that sort of thing. And again, not that he's going to be perfect. He can make as many mistakes as any other horse, but they're shorter lived. You get through them pretty quickly and things go well. So what I've been doing is finishing my rides with him with a little backup. So when I start the backup, I'm creating a pattern of this by disengaging his hindquarters first, and then we're going to flow into the backup. Now, race horses do not naturally back up well because at the track, reins mean go. And so I'm teaching him that it actually means the exact opposite. Reins mean back up. So I'm going to wait here and let him find that answer. There, he found the answer. That's where the relief is. You just keep peppering that in. I started off with somebody on the ground, kind of reinforcing my cue here. Now we're kind of moving away from that and just using that pattern of the hindquarter yield into the backup. And I'm absolutely thrilled with that. So we're going to call it good there. Good boy, Nelson. You were a champ today. Now a whole new world has opened up to us and now we can go around cantering around everywhere. So thank you guys for tuning in. If you haven't already, hit the subscribe button and we'll see you on the next one. They're so shiny when you pull the blanket off. That is one nice thing about blankets. Tip his nose into the fence. Oh, scary palm branch. It's like, who put that palm branch there? She's like, I just want to look at her. We got to clear the cobwebs here a little bit. I don't know why I always feel bad getting off a horse that's sleeping. Like I always feel guilty about it. Like he's being so peaceful right now, but is he on strike right now? Is that what's going on? Do we have like a strike going on? Like it's too cold?