One of the more difficult aspects of Lady's training was getting her to travel balanced while going to the right and taking the right lead at the canter.

Not all of Lady's unbalance can be attributed to racing (as racehorses go counterclockwise or left), but her being bred soon after she came off the track also created balance issues. She was bred to a Dutch Warmblood, and her foal was quite large. The odd thing about Lady was that she carried the foal more on her right side. (When looking at the horse, she didn't have nearly the same size bulge on the left as she did on the right.) This unbalance in weight carriage also made turning Lady to the right more difficult for her, and she felt like she was about to fall over.

Much of her retraining was geared toward building equal strength in her hindquarters as well as equal suppleness and balance.

When asked to take the right lead she typically did one of three things: 1) scurry into it by trotting at warp speed; 2) take the lead but then switch the back lead several times and cross canter; 3) refuse to take it and took the left lead.

Three exercises helped set Lady up better to take her right lead as they better set up the outside hind leg to strike off on the correct lead:
1) haunches in on a circle
2) leg yield sitting trot into canter
3) spiraling circle sitting trot to the right, spiral in with correct bend, spiral out and when good crossover is felt, much like in a leg yield, sweep the outside leg back while positioning your inside hip forward

All three exercises were successful in preventing her from evading the request by picking up the wrong lead and they also prevented her from scurrying at warp speed. Instead, often she just rolled right into the lead balanced and content.

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