Gia - session 579 - dressage lesson with Suzin

 Gia and I had our dressage lesson with Suzin today.  After warming up with stretching at the walk, and walk/trot transitions, we moved on to do a little shoulder-in work.  I have to work on getting Gia to move her shoulders more off the rail in order for the movement to be more correct.  I also have to work on not bending her neck quite as much.  

After that, we moved right into the canter work.  Her canter to the right was actually quite good - no bucking, fairly obedient and responsive, and fairly collected while still moving forward.  Her canter to the left, not so much.  She was very disobedient and threw in a LOT of bucking, a couple that were really rough.  I was not having any luck with asking her for the canter using the traditional cue, and I noticed that her haunches were really trailing to the outside.  So, I abandoned the canter for a minute, and started to work on haunches-in.  Suzin also had us alternate that with leg yield to the outside to encourage bending to the inside.  Gradually, she came together better, and I started to ask for canter again, sometimes from walk, sometimes from trot - basically, however I felt she could give it to me.  There were still some attempts to buck, but it was harder for her to get her body up when I was able to keep her shoulders to the outside.  If I lost them to the inside, then things fell apart, and she was able to get a little naughty again.  It took us several attempts, but we were finally able to get a decent canter to the left, with no bucking.  On the plus side, Suzin said that Gia was really "sitting down" in her canter work today!

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