Good day for Lyric! I saddled up and we worked inhand for a few minutes, warming up and reviewing his lateral cues. His trotwork was much better, and we got our FIRST trotting shoulder-ins. He tried to trot a travers, but just has trouble with it right now. But, he tried, stretched NICELY across the left side, and is responding MUCH better to the left leg. If he forgets, a simple tap reminder on the hip with the whip sends that hip RIGHT over. He pulled off a trotting half-pass to the left. To the right is still a challenge, (yet in hand, he's better!!!!!). Overall, he was light and did excellent. Moving the lateral work up to trot is a big deal for him, as this will REALLY begin to help build his stifles even more.
As for cantering, we started playing with the transitions. He has a very hard time rounding in the canter and putting his weight on his hindquarters. HILLS would help this (can I order a hill?!?!?!). He gets SO active in the hind that it almost feels like he is pacing in his canter (inside front and hind are slightly out of sequence and are coming forward at the same time). His inside hind is hanging in the air and his front is coming down too soon in the canter sequence, giving him the downhill feeling. It's the opposite problem I'm used to ("bunny hopping" in the hind). The "fix" (besides all the obvious conditioning work to fix the hind end problems) is LOTS of transitions (half-halting to keep his weight on his hind) while keeping his forehand raised to delay the premature strike and subsequent downhill "fall" of the canter.
He was handy in his canter, though, handling corners ok when supported with inside leg, rein and seat. The only other issue I had was in his mind :-) Once he was doing canter transitions, he got heavy and fast and needed to re-focus back to the lateral work.
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