We've restarted the lead changes on Nicole, and the good news is that she understands what's being asked of her - she consistently changes correctly and on the signal. She needs to come more underneath herself, and that's been difficult for her. She prefers to stay camped out behind, as she has done for 14 years, but this produced consistently short changes, which obviously we don't want. So we've been working on making her right canter more collected. Which has been an adventure. An almost rearing adventure.
Nicole, of course, is Nicole, which means she's hot and likes to avoid the bit by sucking back into herself. This habit has caused the mare to almost rear a few times, and come somewhat close to flipping over, had I not released the reins and sent her forward. She isn't being bad, just stuck in the collected canter, and needed to be driven forward. But yesterday she did 5 absolutely clean changes, so we're getting somewhere.
To the left, she does a great collected canter, but to the right she isn't quite there yet. She doesn't like to use her right hind leg. But she does a great working pirouette to the right, so go figure that one out.
I'm finally getting somewhere with passage-collected trot-passage transitions with Nikita. I did them fine initially, but lost the ability to keep the rhythm and relaxation for a brief while. The passage is always fine, but the collected trot started to feel wild, flat, and not through, but I wasn't sure how to keep the throughness and uphillness in the transition.
