I have been working with a client recently to improve their horse's canter. This has included using jumps to get the horse to become stronger in canter, especially into the transition. The horse is quite low energy and the new, faster activity has brought up some new emotions. Obviously we don't want to stress horses but if a horse is building canter, you have to go there for a bit and progress incrementally. My client was telling me that they had recently gone for a ride and the horse had got concerned about something that it normally did not. When we looked at what they had done as a warm-up beforehand, they had used the canter pattern to warm the horse up.
Many years ago I was asked a question by a teacher why do we work horses on the ground? There are three reasons: to teach a human something, to teach a horse something or to prepare for something. The canter work is teaching the horse something. Warming up to go for a ride is to prepare for something. In this instance, the two activities need to be done separately until the cantering is not novel. At some point, the canter will become more familiar to the horse and then it could be used as a warm-up for a hack because it won't be carrying emotions into the hack. If you are not sure, it's always best to teach one thing at a time so the horse is clear as to what it is learning.
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