Gia - session 278 - Transitions!

 Gia and I had a dressage lesson with Suzin today.  After warming up with a good stretch at the walk, we picked up our trot though a pretty decent transition.  We worked a bit on lots of figures, bending and flexing, to loosen her up.  She was really responsive to all my aids.  

Then Suzin had us work on walk/halt transitions on the rail.  I had to keep Gia flexed during both the up and down transitions, and work on being as soft as possible.  I also had to work on stopping the motion with my body rather than my hands for the down transition, and using a very correct leg cue for the up transition.  Gia struggled a little with it at first, but quickly got the idea.  Also, anytime she took even a hint of a step backwards, or was too wiggly, I had to move her forward right into a walk and then try the halt again in a few steps.

We repeated all the same stuff with walk/trot transitions on the rail.  Once those were good, we moved to a serpentine, using the whole width of the arena, and placing our transitions as close to centerline as possible.  That was difficult for Gia, at first, because she didn't have the rail to help support her.  She had to learn to rely on me for support instead.  At some point during the work, I was asking for the trot transition, and suddenly I felt a LOT of suspension.  Gia was in Passage!  Just like her moments of Piaffe, a few rides ago, her offering of Passage was definitely not correct, and I immediately pushed her out of it into a regular trot, but it is pretty awesome to know that she has the potential to go Grand Prix (the highest level of dressage) one day!

We got several more nice walk/trot transitions, and then cooled down with some walk/halt transitions.  As soon as we got one that was square, I let her walk on a long rein and ended our session there.

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