Gia - session 917 - lesson with Suzin

 I started Gia with a nice, stretching, free walk in my lesson with Suzin today.  She had us work on a serpentine at the free walk, and practice changing bend using my seat bone.  Gia was fairly responsive to that.  Then we had to pick up to the working trot without her inverting.  That was much harder for her.  I had to encourage her to soften, and pick the right moment to ask, but Gia also had to be responsive to my leg aid.  It took a few tries before she got it correctly.  At trot, we worked on getting Gia a bit straighter.  She wanted to overdo her haunches to the left, and be too soft on the right side.  I had to get her body straighter, without having her swing her haunches back over to the right.  Easier said than done, but we did get a lot of good moments.  She did have some moments when she was worried about some things going on outside the arena, so we also worked on shoulder-in to help her get past it.  That was fairly successful.  Then we took shoulder-in right into the canter transition in each direction.  Both were very good!

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