Gia - session 539 - dressage with Suzin

 Gia and I started our lesson with Suzin with some stretching and transitions at the walk.  Then we moved on to transitions at the trot.  She felt a little tense, but not too bad.  Suzin had us start working right away on a lot of lateral work.  In this work, Gia felt a bit against my hand, especially my right.  We worked on shoulder-in, leg yields, shoulder-out, haunches-in, etc.  Gia was struggling with trying to give me the correct answer to my questions.  She kept offering a variety of answers to me, especially the canter, since we had worked on it so hard lately.  I realized that I had to be much more clear with my aids, but also more disciplined with my corrections.  Even though she gave me some really nice canter transitions, if they weren't what I had asked for, then I stopped her and continued with my previous request.  She finally started to offer the correct answers.  I would reward her with some lengthenings (which turned into a REALLY nice medium trot at one point), and also the canter, since she had wanted to offer that one so badly.  There was some bucking, but because I was able to get the canter from a shoulder-in or leg yield, for the most part, it wasn't too bad, and I was able to work her through it.

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