I’ve been thinking about how to get the canter at Liberty. Asking for more energy at the trot just wasn’t doing it. I tried sending him around things and then running away which got him cantering, but there seem to be too many variables for him to associate a cue to that.
So I stopped to think - what do I really want the cue to initiate? To reach deeply underneath himself with the leg he will lead with. The best way I could think of to replicate that was to set up a post that he had to lift his hind leg over. Once I got the rhythm of his movement when doing that, I started adding the cue at the point the other leg hit the ground, so just as he initiated movement on the reaching leg.
When I give that cue at the trot now he’s giving me a nice canter which I reinforce right away I think he knew I wanted something he just didn’t know what it was. Now that he’s being reinforced for picking up the canter, it’s getting more consistent.
We’ve only done this for two days and I plan to continue the routine of going over the pole a few times and then just asking for the canter a couple of times just to help solidify it all in his brain. Never rush to this stuff.