Gia - session 294 - flatwork - transitions

 I warmed Gia up with stretching down at the walk today.  I focused on keeping her body straight as she stretched.  When I brought her up to prepare for the trot transition, she felt a bit tight, so I did a little bit of leg yielding and circles until she was softer.  Then we worked on walk to trot transitions until she was softer and more obedient and prompt.

Once at the trot, we worked on suppling exercises, such as circles, leg yields and changes of direction.  She got a little distracted at one point when a few horses were running around.  I put her into a few leg yields, and quickly got her attention back on me.

We focused a lot of our work today on trot - halt - trot transitions.  She was slow to respond to the down transition at first, but that got better with time, especially when she started to anticipate it.  Once at the halt, I asked her to soften before asking for the trot again.  She was fairly good with everything tracking left, but things were more difficult tracking right.  She kept wanting to swing her haunches in during all phases of the work, so I had to block her with my right leg, and, at times, push her haunches back over to the left.  She was also more difficult to soften in this direction, and not as prompt in the up transition.  I was able to get several nice transitions tracking left, but tracking right, I ended our session when I was finally able to get one nice one.

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