Gia - session 290 - A little bit of everything

 I started Gia out with some stretching down at the walk, and then moved on to work on walk/trot transitions, as well as circles, changes of direction, and leg yields at the trot.  She was a little stiffer than usual today, and a bit more distracted in the beginning.

Once she was warmed up, we played around with the things that she has been learning.  Based on how she felt at the time, I would ask her for shoulder-in, leg yield, lengthenings, half halts, and haunches-in.  Now that she is pretty familiar with the moves, I can start to apply them as needed as we work around the arena.  

We also spent some time working on haunches-in to canter transitions.  She gave me a really nice one to the left, but it was a bit more difficult for her to the right.  After coming out of the canter, I would also ask her for a trot lengthening, especially if she wanted to come all the way down to walk right away.  She was very responsive to the lengthenings, but she did try to go back up into canter a few times.

Towards the end of our ride, both of us were concentrating so hard on what we were doing, that neither of us saw that my coat had fallen into the arena until we were right up on it.  We both noticed it at the same time, and as I tried to steer her around it, she spooked straight up in the air.  Dylan said we must have been 10' off the ground with all four feet!  It certainly felt that way!  Luckily, nothing bad resulted from her spook.  She actually felt like she tried to stay under me, rather than trying to ditch me, which is nice!  Afterwards, she acted like nothing had happened, and we finished our ride with some stretching at the walk.

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