Gia - session 188 - more of the same, plus jumping

 I started today's ride working on Gia's halt transitions again.  It still took several tries before she responded more promptly.

Then we worked on moving off my leg on circles at the walk.  Those were pretty good today, so I added leg yields towards the rail, and away from the rail at the walk.  Those were also pretty good.  She was fairly responsive with very little aids.

At the trot, we also worked on moving off my leg on circles.  She still tried to canter several times, rather than move off my leg, but she was definitely not pissy about it like she has been.  Each time she cantered, I would make her do a smaller circle until she came back to a trot.  She primarily does it when we are tracking left. 

Once the trot was better - once she was more responsive to my leg aids without trying to canter - then we moved on to a few jumps.  We did our little pole-to-X-to-pole series.  For the most part, she had really good, straight approaches.  Over the jumps, sometimes she was too slow, sometimes she was too fast (I added small circles when she was too fast).  She started out going a little crooked after the jump, but after only a few corrections, she was traveling much straighter afterwards.  Sometimes she would pick up the canter afterwards and sometimes she wouldn't.  When she picked up the canter, it was usually too fast, so we did circles until it was a more appropriate speed.

After the jumping, I did a few canter circles with her in each direction.  She was great to the left.  To the right, she was a bit more tense, and took a lot of wrong leads, but we did eventually get one on the correct lead that was a little better.

I finished up her ride with a few more halt transitions, really focusing on staying straight before, during and after.  She was still pretty slow to respond,  but she did stay fairly straight.