Lack of Rhythm

I am going to be totally honest here. Up until a few weeks ago, I wondered at how a horse could lose the rhythm. Most of the time when that word is used, I suspect most people (like me) mean tempo. Until just recently, I had never felt a loss of rhythm on Speedy. On Izzy, yes. When he gets tense in the canter he feels as though he loses the lead behind which is a major loss of rhythm. That should actually be termed scrambling for footing.

At Third Level, the horse is asked for more collection than ever before. There's a 10-meter canter circle and canter half pass. We're also schooling some of the canter work at Fourth Level, especially the 5-6 strides of very collected canter between quarterlines (test 1) and the partial pirouette at canter (test 2). All of a sudden, I felt what was meant by a loss of rhythm.

Inside right hind not stepping very deeply.

When we canter right lead, and I ask for a very collected canter, Speedy feels almost lame. It feels as though he is stuttering in the canter and about to drop to trot. At our last lesson, I asked Chemaine Hurtado, owner and trainer at Symphony Dressage Stables, what we could do about it.

She explained that Speedy has less range of motion in his right hind leg. Over the years, he has successfully cheated by carrying that hind leg, his weaker one, slightly to the inside. As a result, that leg doesn't step as far underneath him. In the collected canter, the horse has to sit more deeply with that hind leg reaching even farther underneath his belly. Since Speedy doesn't use that inside right hind as well, the rhythm of the collected canter feels off.

Not quite the same angle as above, but the left hind steps farther underneath his body.

Chemaine gave me several exercises to help him begin to increase his range of motion. First, we're doing a lot more stretchy trot to the right wherein I ask him to leg yield out on the circle. I am doing the same thing at the canter. Another exercise is to canter a square with canter to walk transitions in the corners to insist that Speedy step over BIG with his inside right hind. Now that I am aware of the problem, I am constantly insisting that he step deeper through corners and that he carry his haunches correctly and not to the inside. 

With a show coming in less than two weeks though, I am being careful about not making him sore. Just because I want him to bend over and "touch his toes," it doesn't mean he can do it in one day.

There is always something to fix, isn't there?