relaxed trotting

So for the last few sessions we've been working on Jonza trotting peacefully and relaxed, not all jazzed up, head in the air with a crazed look in her eye. It seems to help her tremendously if we do some inhand trot work before I get on. So I get her all tacked up and lunge her. We do a LOT of walk/halt transitions with changes of directions...ie: walk five steps, halt, walk 3 steps, halt, change direction walk 8 steps, halt, walk 2 steps halt, walk 4 steps, halt, change, etc. So that she never knows when I am asking her to halt, or turn. So she walks very calmly completely focused on me to get her cues. You can see her thinking with each foot forward...do we stop yet??? Then after a couple of minutes of that we do some trot/walk transitions...trot a few steps walk a few steps, trot, walk and throw in a halt here and there. I try to make it so that she doesnt expect when the transition is coming. Otherwise she will do it before you ask. She is very good at figuring out what you want next. The hole process has been taking us anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes. The first time it was about an hour! but now she is really getting into the hang of it. That all I want is her complete attention. Once she's really listening and being calm then I get on.

When I get on we walk around the paddock (my arena for the time being) doing little circles and going this direction and that, changing bends and such, reinforcing the calm. We halt every so often and change direction often. Then when I ask her to trot she is usually pretty relaxed. So we trot and if she gets tense I try to slow her with my seat. If she ignores that, I really put my seat on, and we stop dead in our tracks, wait a few seconds and walk on. We walk till she's calm again, then ask for the trot....this has been what we've been working on for the last week or so.

Its been going really well. She has really calmed down a lot from the first session. Her trotting is fluid and relaxed. Today she even had some *together* moments. I wish I could have seen her going today. It was nice to have her moving so well. Towards the end of todays session she did trip pretty badly :(. She fell down on both front knees. She seems ok though, tomorrow I will check her thoroughly for soreness, she didnt seem to have any today. Her feet look to be at a normal length....I'm finding out when the last time she saw the ferrier. I may have one come out (I need to find one sooner or later) and do a trim just to make sure. She is barefoot, but I don't think that has anything to do with the tripping. She does trip here and there, and its normally when she's not paying attention or just being lazy and not picking up her feet.

So I am thinking I will try to see what I can find as far as ground poles are concerned....Have her go over a few of those, and see if that helps her to pick up her feet more. Oh and Glo thought it would be helpful to do some reinbacks and teaching her to pick up her feet in hand. So we will work on those tomorrow too. I am pretty confident that she can do the reinbacks...we've done a lot of backing up and such in hand. So anyways that is my update...I'll post again tomorrow with the next step of her lessons....picking up those feet!