Gia - sessions 273 and 274 - lunging at a show, and dressage

 Gia tagged along to a schooling show that I took several students to yesterday.  We got home quite late last night, so no time to write my blog, which is why you are getting a two-fer today!

I was finally able to find some shipping boots for Gia that were large enough, so she got to wear those yesterday for a test run.  They feel a little different from the ones she is used to wearing, so she over-reacted a bit in the beginning, but it only took her a few minutes to settle down.

When I was finally able to work with her at the show, I pulled her off the trailer and took her to another arena to lunge her in the rope halter.  This was a show venue that we had never been to, and she was extremely distracted by all the strange things to see - a swan, a tractor, the concession stand, the big open track.  It took quite a bit of lunging before she quieted down.  I had to really work with her to get her to give me more space, since she kept trying to crowd me to look at all the things.  Once she was a bit quieter and more focused on me, I let her go over a small jump that was set up.  She was very nonchalant about it, and it didn't even matter that it had a flower box under it.

On our way back to the trailer, she got quite distracted again, and really pushy with her body.  I traded out the lunge line for a lead line, and I got a nail to hold in my hand.  She was not very respectful when I yanked on the lead line to back her away from me, so instead, I pushed her away with my hand, and if she refused, I poked her with the nail in her chest or shoulder area.  She was much more respectful of that, and within a few moments, she was standing at a more acceptable distance away from me.  I decided that, instead of lunging, what she really needed was just to hang out near all the scary show stuff, and just learn that it wasn't going to kill her.  She was quite nervous about "hanging out" at first, but eventually quieted down.  We stayed there for quite a while, until I had to leave to prep for the next class.  I think that made more of a difference with her than all the lunging.

Today, I worked with Gia on our dressage stuff.  We started out with a nice stretch at the walk.  Then we worked on free walk to medium walk transitions.  Then we worked on walk to trot transitions.  She actually gave me nice stuff all around!  I did a bit more work at the trot, to loosen her up, with circles and changes of direction. 

Finally, we worked on trot to canter transitions.  Those were a bit harder for her, but I was able to get at lease one nice one in each direction.  Using a leg yield during the transition really helped.  I also worked on her canter to trot transitions, which were probably the hardest of all.  At each down transition, I put her on a small circle to help her regain her balance and tempo.  That definitely helped, but she wasn't able to get it without the circle yet.