Gia - session 570 - dressage with Suzin

 Gia and I worked with Suzin today on our flatwork.  She had a nice stretch to start with, and came up into a nice medium walk as well.  It took a couple of transitions before I was able to get a nice one from walk to trot.  Then we worked on some suppleness at the trot - leg yields, shoulder-ins, bending, changing direction, etc.  She was anticipating the canter quite a bit, so we avoided that for today, and instead worked on trot lengthenings.  She did those quite well!  The difficult part was bringing her back afterwards.  I ended up having to go all the way to the walk or halt at times in order to get a more obedient response.  We attempted to get a lengthening to a collection to a lengthening to a collection, twice per long side, but we never quite got the second lengthening (my arena long sides are not that long).  However, by the end, she had stopped worrying that we might canter, and was having fun with her lengthenings!

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