Another possibility is to use a pole for the canter depart. You know how a horse will often break into a canter after a small jump? From a balanced trot?

Put a pole in your training area where you want a canter depart. Play around with the height a bit until she will canter after the pole. Should not have to be high.

When she's got that as a habit, you can start gradually dropping the height of the pole, until she'll do a canter depart over the pole on the ground (you may want to give her some go on cues at the pole, although not necessarily a canter cue just yet). The pole becomes the indicator that you want her to canter.

When she's doing that reliably, teach her the canter aids - when it's looking more like a canter depart than a jump. Then you can remove the pole.

Then when she's good at that, start cueing her to canter in different places around your working area ... just a stride before where she's used to it at first, then increasing the variation in location as she shows you she understands.

Train both sides. But you may want to get one lead pretty good before starting the new one. Less confusing for the horse if you are only teaching one thing at a time.

Edit: On reading posts made while writing my response, I see you want her to gait not trot. In that case this might not help much as it involves some impulsion over the pole. I know nothing about gaited horses at all so cannot help with canter from a gait. I would normally teach canter from walk after the horse understands canter from trot.

Last Edited By: sidoney Jun 24 08 7:45 PM. Edited 1 times.