Gia - session 344 - flatwork

 Gia was a little spicy today!

I mainly worked with her on transitions today.  We started out with a bit of stretching at the walk to warm up.  Right away, when I asked for the trot, she was against my hand, especially on the right.  I did a lot of figures, really focusing on getting her to move out of my right rein and into my left rein.  

When that was better, I started working on a lot of transitions - trot to halt to rein-back to trot.  She was a bit resistant at first, but started to soften more as we went.  Then I added canter work, after she had picked up the trot from the rein-back.  She seemed irritated at the canter.  She was swishing her tail a lot, and almost kicking out behind.  She was also getting very low on her forehand.  I found that putting her on a smaller circle, and spiraling in, helped a lot.  

After we were done, I took her out on the small trail I have in the woods to cool out.  She was a little nervous, but not too bad.  I did have to duck under a few low branches though!

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