For many horses, the easiest introduction to the canter pirouette is the working pirouette. Work on this should only start when the travers and half-pass are fairly established in the canter.
As with all most exercises, building the horse’s confidence is key. This is best done by building towards the exercise step-by-step. The first, and simplest, step is to establish the circle. Twelve metres is usually a good diameter to start, but it very much depends on the horse. The circle should be small enough to challenge the balance and encourage the horse to work harder and collect, but not so small that he starts to struggle.
Most importantly, ensure that you can stay on the line. When riders start influencing the quarters, they often don’t notice if the circle is starting to lose its shape. The is often a good indicator that the horse is getting crooked or not giving the correct tendency in the pirouette work. From start to finish, whether positioned straight, in shoulder-fore, or in travers, the horse’s shoulders should follow the same as if down two train tracks.
Once this circle is established, and the horse is comfortable maintaining a slight shoulder-fore positioning, the rider can experiment with bringing the quarters in. As with many exercises, much of it relies on the rider’s ability to stop before it becomes to difficult. Be careful not to get stuck in the working pirouette – see how seamlessly you can move from the shoulder-fore positioning to the travers and back again, noticing whether the horse tries to change the shape of the circle or the canter stride.
To start off with, I tend not to ask for too much collection. Instead, I want the horse to see the working pirouette as a game that they can play with ease. Once this is really smooth and established, the rider can start riding variations in the stride length within the exercise. Again, it is really important to keep this work light and easy in the initial stages, until the horse is confident with what you want. The key thing to remember is that getting out of the pirouette is more difficult than getting in – always keep the feel that you can move the canter on or reposition to the shoulder-fore.
It is worth spending some time on the working pirouette, making it easy and established, before moving on to the tighter pirouette. If the horse is comfortable coming in and out of . the collection, and between the shoulder-fore and travers, then putting it all together will be much more straightforward.