Gia - session 333 - jumping

 I started Gia's ride today with halt transitions.  At each halt, if she wasn't already soft, I asked her to soften, and then asked her to walk on.  Several times she tried to rein-back on her own, so I immediately asked her to go forward when she did that.  Once she was standing more patiently, I did ask for a few rein-backs.  Some were pretty good!  She stayed soft and moved her legs in diagonal pairs.  Some were a bit resistant, so I had to work on getting her softer.

At the trot, I put her through various figures to improve her suppleness.  Then I put her over a few trot poles that were on a curved line.  She really had to figure out where to put her feet correctly through the curved line, and also figure out how quick or slow she needed to go.

Once that was pretty good, I had her move from the poles to a small jump.  Going through the curved line of poles helped her to jump the obstacle straighter and in a better tempo.  She went over the jumps pretty well, but she often landed a bit unbalanced, so I worked on allowing her to find her balance after each jump as well.  She was better to the left, and cantered off several times after the jumps to the left.  The right was definitely harder, and she never felt balance enough today to land and canter to the right.

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