Gia - sessions 1093-1096 Three flat days and one jump day

 Monday 6/16/25 - 

I worked with Gia on her flatwork.  I had her do transitions between walk and halt, then walk and trot.  Throughout the transition work, I also asked her to keep her poll up, and helped her work on staying straight, as well as changing bend.  Things were going really well, and she was really obedient, so I decided to try adding trot to canter transitions.  Before I cantered, I made sure that I had her straight and that we had done a few up and down transitions correctly and obediently first.  When I asked for the canter, she was delayed at first, then blasted forward, so I brought her back to trot, which was too fast, so then back to walk.  I had her go back to trot again, and I played with the straightness and the tempo of the trot, back-and-forth, until I had what I wanted, then asked for canter again.  Same answer.  Rinse, repeat.  This went on, several repetitions, until she started to anticipate that I was going to slow her down as soon as she blasted into the fast canter, so she finally gave me a few steps of slower canter!  I let her take a break, and then we went the other way and repeated it all over again.  We only got one set of a few steps of decent canter in each direction, but it was a really good start!

Tuesday 6/17/25 - 

We pretty much repeated the same thing today that we did on Monday, with the same results. 😊

Wednesday 6/18/25 -

Gia and I jumped in the arena today, after a brief warm up.  It was too wet to go out in the field, so we played with a few of the jumps set up in the arena.  Our warm up consisted of just making sure that she was obedient and responsive to the up and down transitions (which she was pretty promptly), and making sure that she was straight and responsive to leg aids.  We jumped a variety of heights and styles, and she didn't seem to really mind any of the jumps.  I mainly had to help her find a rhythm and balance after the jump, which mostly consisted of asking for a down transition and waiting for her to respond, which was usually fairly prompt.  Once she regained her balance, we continued on.  

Friday 6/20/25 - 

More of the same flatwork from earlier in the week, with one new observation.  I was working quite intently and precisely on the up and down transitions between the gaits.  As we got very nit-picky, I started to notice that if I asked for an up transition (or anything really), with one light cue, and she wasn't immediately responsive, my typical go-to move was to immediately intensify the cue to the next level (either a kick or a tap of the whip).  And then I would get a huge surge in the up transition.  I wanted to get a more subtle up transition, rather than the more abrupt one, so I gave her the initial light cue and waited an extra step.  I started finding that if I did that, I would get exactly what I wanted.  I think Gia just needs one extra step of time to process what I'm asking of her in order to respond.  If she still doesn't get it after that, I can intensify.  But most of the time, she was getting it, and we were able to communicate much more subtly!  When I asked for the canter, I was even able to get a response from just using my seat bone very lightly, and her reaction was almost perfect!  It took us a while to get to all this, so we only managed to get one set of a few steps in each direction, but it's another good start! 


One of Gia's good canter moments, but I can hear all my instructors (current and former) yelling at me at once that my reins are TOO LONG! 😂

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