Gia - session 277 - flatwork

 I wasn't able to go down to CDP today with Gia, so we stayed home and worked on some flatwork.  Tuesday is usually a jumping day for Gia, but since I was out of town at a competition, and she hadn't worked since last Wednesday, I decided to keep things a little easy today.

We started out with a lot of stretching at the walk, and then worked on her free walk to medium walk transitions.  She did those a lot better today.  Then I did a little bit of shoulder-in work to prep for the transitions to the trot.  She has done a lot of shoulder-in work lately, and it's not very easy.  She got a bit tense when I asked her for it today, and ended up giving me a couple of piaffe steps right from the walk.  Because I didn't ask for the piaffe, I immediately pushed her up into a trot to get her out of it.  We came back to the walk a few steps later and I asked for shoulder-in again.  She was more responsive that time, so we moved quietly into a nice trot transition.

At the trot, we worked on a lot of circles and figures to loosen up.  I also did a tiny bit of shoulder-in at the trot, but not too much since she seemed tense about it today.  I did, however, do a lot of work on haunches-in today, in preparation for the canter.  The first few times, she was a little confused, and thought I wanted her to canter, and she seemed a little pissy about it.  Once she realized that I only wanted haunches-in, she relaxed a bit.  Every time she gave me even a hint of haunches-in, I would immediately stop asking and pat and praise her.  She quickly got the idea, and seemed much happier about the work.  When she felt straighter and more balanced, she even offered a really nice canter transition in each direction.  It did take her a bit longer to offer it to the right though.

We finished our ride with some work on halt transitions.  Every time I asked for the halt, she would come up against my hand, so I would immediately ask her to flex and soften.  Once she softened, I would release and walk on again.  It took her a while, but on the last halt transition she stopped without any resistance.  I rewarded her for that by hopping off and patting her!

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