Gia - session 296 - lots of transitions

 Gia and I had a dressage lesson with Suzin today.  We warmed up with stretching at the walk, and then moved on to trot work - circles, leg yields, changes of direction.  She seemed a bit crooked today, in all directions, and a bit twisted.  I used a lot of lateral work to help get her straighter, and it definitely helped.

Then we started working on a lot of transitions.  Walk to halt to walk, trot to halt to trot, trot to halt to rein back to trot, etc.  There were a few times when Gia started to rein back before Suzin came up to help her, but most of the time, she still needed Suzin tapping her on the chest to understand the rein back cues.  

Then we started adding canter in to the transition work.  She actually gave me a lot of good walk to canter transitions, and even a couple from the halt.  However, her canter was a bit wild today.  She did a lot of bucking and kicking out at the canter.  Luckily, her bucking isn't that hard to ride, so I stuck it out and pushed her through.  I pushed her to do leg yield, shoulder-in, and positioning of her head and neck until she would relax and let go.  As soon as she would take a correct, non-dramatic step, I would relax and praise her.  In the beginning, she would go right back to her antics, but she eventually relaxed enough when I relaxed, and we had some decent canter work.

I'm not sure exactly why she was so dramatic today.  She's possibly a little grumpy from being in heat, but that's still no excuse.

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