Ran through our whole repertoire today. Started by shortening her mane - not enough and used scissors, but it's a beginning. Then I put the double on her again. She really seems to prefer that to the snaffle and to the pelham. Weird, but that's Gracie.
Warmed up with walk squares, then change of bend through the trot. Went on to piaffe - the first two were pretty good, then she became a little resistant. Worked through that to get good solid half steps. From there to a little medium trot. She thinks there might be a monster in the trampoline and that helps the medium. Most of it was just a lengthening, but we had one or two diagonals where her shoulders came up while the trot stayed round and balanced.
Next, shoulder in at trot. Followed by canter.....
Right canter with shoulder-in caused a hissy fit. (More like a leg-yield on the rail). She really prefers to canter with her haunches in on that side, so asking her to put them out was interpreted like asking her to throw herself around, swap leads, and drop to trot. Worked through that though, then asked for a tiny lengthening at the canter -- yeesh. Swap leads some more, kick out hind leg, etc. Hot and sweaty by now. Didn't really solve the shoulder-in question before I asked for right half-pass. That was much easier. I still have trouble sitting to the right a little (and that might be the problem with the shoulder-in), but she can go over and I do have enough left rein to slow the haunches down while the shoulders come over.
Since this was so much fun to the right I thought I'd try to the left. Shoulder-in is much easier t the left as in the half-pass. I like to sit on the left, so that probably helps. We don't have as much bend as we do the other direction and my outside rein is pretty iffy, but she goes over without a fuss.
(Side note: Blogspot's spell check underlines words like piaffe and pelham. Nothing horsie in the dictionary I guess! Of course it also underlines Blogspot.)
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