Gia - session 391 - lesson with Suzin

 Gia and I had a lesson with Suzin.  We primarily focused on transitions between walk, trot, halt, and rein back.  Gia was really responsive to all those.  I did have to work a little bit to keep her soft, but she was pretty good.  She was also really good at keeping a consistent shape to her body. 

We also got to work a little on collecting and lengthening her stride.  The big challenge is to do it without losing the tempo - either getting too quick or too slow.  We practiced changing the number of strides between two set points in the arena (after first determining the average number of working trot strides between the two points).  The goal was to get more or fewer strides between the points without allowing Gia to speed up or slow down.  She did super at the lengthenings!  Collecting her without slowing down was a lot harder, but we did manage to get a little bit.

She did throw in a little tantrum in the middle of our work at one point.  I'm not too sure what that was all about.  It's possible I was getting tense in my efforts to make things work.  Once I pushed her through the tantrum, I focused on staying relaxed whenever I could.  I think it helped a little.

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