Natrlhorse
I DO appreciate your comments and suggestions image As far as him rating his speed based on my motion, this is one of the other issues I am working on with Justin. He is extremely sensitive to all movement on the part of the rider BUT he interprets all rider motion (legs or seat, weight shifting, hands, contact) as "You want me to trot/canter as hard and fast as I possibly can? Sure! I can move out! Sure! I can do that! See! See! (trottrottrotrottrot…)" He is sort of stuck in high gear, similar in some ways to a poorly ridden barrel horse... It goes without saying then that he also doesn't move off of pressure very, his automatic response is to press into legs pressure. So we also work on lots of forehand and hindquarter pivots. The last two days, we have also been working on leg yields at a walk, relaxed but expecting the hind legs to cross over nicely and staying straight. These have been going pretty well- he is beginning to figure out that leg pressure is not default a cue for more forward motion.

I am not cantering the whole time, there is also a lot of trotting and walking. My tendency would be to just never canter at all so this is to keep me motivated to actually work on cantering, but I should probably document some of the non-cantering stuff also.

Three rides have passed since my last entry-
Friday (day 5)- Very similar to Thursday, only I was expecting him to start off well and then start to rush again. So, when Justin starting rushing into a hurried and out of control canter, we worked on trotting instead for about 20 minutes and then went back to the canter. At a trot, we are working on moving the shoulder in and out during serpentines (as in, moving flexed in the same direction as the turn and flexed counter to the direction of turn). The key seems to be not trying to go in one direction too long right now. We then went back to canter-stop-canter. He is increasing the number of non-rushed cantering steps dramatically.

Sat (day6)- This was the best day yet. There were many incidences of Justin picking up a very relaxed canter, going for about 5 strides, and then stopping quietly. We did this by going up the center of the paddock cantering (with several s top/starts) and then leg yielding from the fence towards the center of the paddock, and back again..

(didn't on Sunday, had to move round bales *sob*)

Monday (today) (day 7) Similar in a lot of ways to Sat- lots of canter-stop-canter-stop down one length of the paddock followed by leg yields at a walk going the other direction. He can do flexing in either direction at a trot but not leg yields yet. I want him to be relaxed and straight through his body while doing leg yields. These sessions of behaving sane and rational are sprinkled with incidences of him launching into a lurching/thrusting trot or launching into a high powered, out of control canter. It is somewhat discouraging. I have to be careful to put enough pressure on him so he is progressing, but not so much pressure that he slips back into his default habits.

One thing that this has made me aware of is that he is actually trying hard to figure out what I want from him. He anticipates horribly. If I pick up a canter two times in a row next to a certain cone, the third time we pass that cone, he gets anxious and tries to canter. So that is a new conundrum- horses do best with some routine but if he thinks he knows already what I am going to ask, his mind turns off of me and he just does it (does that make sense?)