Gia - session 528 - flatwork

 I kept Gia's flatwork very simple and easy today.  We basically did a lot of stretching at the walk.  When that felt low and relaxed and consistent, I worked on bringing her up to a medium walk without any resistance.  She actually did that fairly well today.  In medium walk, I worked on getting her body straighter.  In that work, I did start to feel resistance.  Anytime she resisted, she would put her head up, and I asked for a halt while positioning her to let go of her stiff side (mostly the right).  Suzin had noticed that Gia would throw her head up right before she would start to buck, and I could feel that coming today.  She tensed up with that work, but started to relax after a few minutes of defusing the resistance with walk/halt transitions.  Then I started asking for the trot.  Since we had worked through most of the resistance at the walk, there wasn't a lot at the trot.  She was a bit behind my leg to start, and a bit nervous, but anytime she came against my hand, I transitioned to walk, softened her, and transitioned back to trot.  After just a few minutes of this, she was much more relaxed, so we worked on a variety of figures at the trot - half circles, leg yields, etc, then called it a day.  She was very relaxed by the end.