Help with Canter

By throwing the contact away suddenly, you can make some horses nervous. You are essentially leaving them on their own with little direction.

Keep your contact, make sure you have a good working trot that is off the forehand, in front of your leg and with your seat. On a circle, leg yield out off your inside leg for a few strides, then cue for canter.
Some horses will canter off the inside leg, others off the outside. It depends on how they have been trained.
Also remember that your seat has a huge part in the canter cue. On my own horse, I find that I get the best strike off to weight my outside seat bone, 'lift' my inside seat bone forwards, and ask with both the inside leg on the girth, and outside leg slightly back.
If you start shoving your outside leg back as far as it will go, you'll tip your upper body forward, pinch your knees, block your seat and piss the horse off by kicking it in the flank. Totally non-productive ;)

Yep... that's how it was!! Now I know better, lol! :)

Thanks to everyone for the tips!

Riding lesson tomorrow.... fingers crossed!

At the walk, have someone help you determine when his outside hoof touches the ground. Try saying "now" each time you think it is. Your spotter will let you know if you have it wrong. You need to practise this until you can do it unfailingly. When you ask the horse to strike off it helps the horse if you ask at the right time. You will learn by how his hips roll. When going to the right, you will focus on his left hip. When you feel it roll to it's highest, that is when you ask him to strike off. This not only helps him canter but get him on the correct lead. It may help to squeeze and release the left rein to signal a change of pace.

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I have a question about canter but on my end not the horses. I ride A QH who goes straight into canter from trot no problem.

I'm loose in walk and trot but I get stiff in canter but I don't completely relize it. I'm trying to improve and was wondering if anyone had any helpful ideas that can help me out.

Thanks

Really? You are asking for a right lead, correct? So the step off foot is the left hind. But, when the hip is at it's highest point , at the walk, is when the horse is pushing through with body weight ON that leg. So, you cannot influence that leg to step forward and initiate the canter if it's already weighted.
In the pelvis, the leg that carries the weight will cause that side of the pelvis to go higher. That's what the rider feels as sort of the top of the arc that each side of the horse goes through as it walks with its' back legs.

So, I guess what you must be saying is that although when you feel it at is't highest point (the "now" part of your counting excersize),its actually weighted, it's going to be unweighted in just a second, and if the rider shoots for that high point, and since we are always a little late, then as we put our leg on, the horse just finishes that step through and is ready to lift and place that leg under himself for the strikeoff.

Oh I know when to cue.. I don't get the wrong lead and can feel the legs.. I was just confused about the cue.

~~

Riding lesson was a huge... pain in my back. I have never experienced so much back pain. I couldn't move the next day, and had to take a day off of work.

Cantering went better but my instructor had it out for me. She was quite belligerent... eventhough I was waiting on her for my lesson (she was running late) and it'd been weeks since I had ridden with her...

Needless to say I'm trying a new barn, closer to where I'm at. I have a lesson Sunday morning..

My back still hurts and it's 4 days later :( I've NEVER had back pain this bad.

Your back definitely shouldn't be that painful from riding :/ I'd steer clear of that coach, muscle soreness is understandable, but not severe back pain.
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Sky, what do you think happened at the lesson to cause that back pain? That sounds awful! The only time I get really bad back pain IS when we do a lot of canter, and transitions, because I tend to over cue with my leg behind the girth...instead of BARELY letting my leg touch her right behind the girth it's as if I'm tightening and almost twisting my HIPS to apply the cue!

You're the first I've read who MAY be doing the same? Again, usually with many upward and downward transitions, walk to canter, canter to walk..TIGHT BACK!! A r g h h!

Hope you're feeling better!! :0(