Camina 14

I thought I had better get this posted before I go in for another workout with her. Yesterday, we had a good session. She had an attitude of disrespect that had to be worked through even as I saddled her. That was solved by making her move her feet backwards. Then I started to flex her laterally, bu there was some tightness in her so I decided to have her do circles and then do the falling leaf exercise up and down the arena 2x. Then we went back to lateral flexion and she was much better. She is really light when I ask her for this.
Next, we went to the lunge line and had her move out in transitions from walk to trot. However, her energy spilled over and she wanted to canter and buck so I made her canter and wouldn't let her stop for several laps then when she relaxed a little a I brought her down to a trot. She must have trotted for 10 to 15 minutes before she was consistently in a nice cadence with her head starting to lower and her ear and head cocked toward me. I slowed her to a walk and changed directions and moved her up to a trot again going to the right. She moved much sooner into nice cadence. I asked her to canter and there was no buck at all so we slowed to a trot again. I did this transition a couple times and each time she was relaxed. I didn't trot her near as long in this direction because she relaxed much quicker. However, I am not so sure that just lunging her for this length of time really does alot of good except get her into better shape. The purpose of it is to get her to learn to stay on the same track of the circle with body framed on the arch of the circle and her hip a little to the outside. Having thought about the purpose of it maybe it is a good idea. This is one of tasks that I will do under saddle too. I think today I will try it with a different lunge line and halter and see what kind of result I get.
Anyway, back to our workout. At this point we had been working about 50 minutes or so. I wanted to bridle her and ground drive her again. She is getting much better about carrying the bit and the ground driving worked out great. I asked her to do several direction changes which she followed lightly for the most part. She actually moved out with much more energy.  I used the wall a couple times when we were stopped against it to have her turn into the wall and mover her shoulders over which she did very naturally, without much contact on the rein. I had her leg yielding several times to the left, which she does nicely. However, going to the right doesn't work out as well. After doing this several times and going around the arena with several stops, we quit for the day.