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The benefit of counter canter is not that you can manage to canter around on the “wrong” lead. It’s that to make a decent one, you must be able to create and sustain enough balance and self carriage that your horse can perform it comfortably and correctly.

When a horse has a good true canter, once you’re in it, it tends to take care of itself. In similar fashion if you begin a shoulder-in on the long side of the arena, once positioned you usually don’t have to do very much. Put that shoulder-in on a 20 meter circle, however, and your interaction with your horse becomes busier and more complicated.

In like fashion working in the counter canter provides a venue in which you must develop a more intimate, meaningful relationship with your horse to help him stay balanced and relaxed. He has to be real to do it right. He can’t just “mail it in.”

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