Gia - session 835 - dressage lesson with Suzin

 Gia and I had a dressage lesson with Suzin today.  We started with a good free walk, a good transition to medium walk, and a fairly good transition to trot.  It started good, but then we hit a little resistance, so we went back and did it again.  At the trot we did a lot of changes of direction and bend.  I used lateral work, as needed, to get the correct bend and straightness.  It was easy to get her to bend right, but much hard to get her to bend left.  It wasn't that she was stiff, just crooked in a way that required me to fiddle around with my position and lateral work until we found it.  I discovered that she wants to shift me off my left seat bone and left leg, so I have to work to keep them in position.  When my left seat bone and leg are in the correct position tracking left, then it's easier to find what I need to do to get her straight.  When she was correctly bent, we had some really nice canter work!  There was only one buck, when we were tracking left, and I was trying to find my left seat bone and leg.  We lost it, and she kicked up because her hind end was falling out to the right.  We also used turn-on-the-haunches today to encourage more loading up of her hind end, to improve the canter work.  She did really well to the right, and to the left, when I was able to keep my left seat bone and left leg, she also got it!

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