"Collected" is not slow or small, it is cadenced, balanced, and with
great impulsion and suppleness. If it is "collected" that you want, it is
not necessary to "compress" it - in fact, it is undesireable to do so.
Rather than "compressing" the canter, I try to think in terms of "directing"
the canter from "long and flat" to "elevated and bouncy", which will be,
by default, somewhat shorter in length, without loss of energy. By fussing with the implusion the rider may hopelessly confuse the horse.
The terminology here is the important key and must be clear in the rider's mind, because it affects the way we think about the training process.
Horses are a bit like elastic bands - you don't know that they are elastic
until you *stretch* them, and only when they are stretched are they
elastic. I have never had any success compressing an elastic band - it just
makes a wad of inelastic rubber in your fingers. Same principle applies to
horses - try to compress the horse, and you get a wad of jammed up horse between your hand and leg.
So it would follow that the development of an elastic gait comes from
stretching the horse ... We do this when we ask for roundness and lifting
in the back, thereby making the horse round and bouncy. It really was necessary to make this sort of convoluted introduction to the following exercises, because it underlines a *philosophy* of training that, produces a supple horse that is capable of genuine collection.
Arena exercises to achieve the same:
1) True canter, on the inside track, shoulder-fore position. On the
long wall, lengthen the stride, keeping the shoulder-fore positioning, collect, ask again, collect before the corner. Transitions, within the gait.
Important points - rider must stretch "up" with upper body and "down"
with legs, sitting exactly in the middle of the horse for successful transitions to collected canter, and must use the seat and legs to ask for the collection, NOT the hands - the hands should hold the contact, and ask
the use to direct the energy upwards and rounder for collection.
The shoulder-fore positioning must be maintained through the down
transition, so that the hindquarter does not swing in and disrupt the
throughness of the canter.
The same rhythm should be evident - altho subjectively, the lengthened
canter will *feel* slower in tempo, and the collected canter will feel
a bit quicker.
2) True canter, on the inside track, shoulder-fore position. Counter
flex to the outside - keep the rhythm and forward without allowing a change
of lead or break in the stride. Sounds easy. Counter flex for NO MORE
THAN 3 strides, then flex to the inside again.
3) Counter canter, on the inside track, shoulder fore positioning (ie:
the shoulders will be slightly pointed towards the arena wal). Counter
flex for a stride or two. maintain positioning, counter canter and forward rhythm.
TIP: It is not necessary to counter canter around the short side.
Develop counter canter with a change of rein on the half-diagonal, or with a
simple change after the corner. Be careful with counter canter and ask only
for what the horse can do, otherwise the horse will swap leads, which is
undesireable and not something you want to train the horse to do.
Counter canter is a "collecting" exercise, and should be introduced
to the horse, stride by stride, as soon as a balanced working canter is achieved. MY OPINION, of course. *One* stride of balanced, supple counter canter is an adequate beginning. Add another one tomorrow.
The most important thing a young horse can learn toward the development
of a good collected canter is to canter in shoulder-fore positioning, keeping the rhythm and forwardness of the canter.