This was the stride of extended walk before the halt. I don't think I engaged the back legs quite enough here as she's stepping into the halt rather than doing it instantly. I didn't notice that whilst I was riding, guess this is something I'll work on next week.



Here is collected walk, you can't see Tia's legs all to well but you can just about see how she's lifting her legs up rather than out.



Preparing to change the rein B to K in collected trot.



Ack, I make some weird faces when I'm riding. I'd just lost my stirrup and was putting it back in after Tia shied slightly at a jump pole, so that's why my right foot is sticking out, lol.



And canter! Only one pic of canter as my mum couldn't get very many good shots of this faster pace. Tia has a lovely rhythmic canter, but as I said before, her balance is pretty bad, especially around corners. I basically had to keep the inside bend all the way around the school, as you can see I have my heel pressed against her side. At least here though it's easier for me to take up a better contact in order to keep the bend. This is one horse where it's easier to make her do a flying change than keep the correct lead! (Mum missed a spectacular photo moment when we did a huge flying change right in front of her )



Turning in diagonally, heh heh.



Then we had a loosening walk whilst my instructor talked me through how we'd done. Canter transitions needed more work, as did keeping the correct lead in the corners, when she is off balance most. But we were perfect at our circles at B and E, and our walk/trot and trot/walk transitions were exactly at the markers. So for our first actual test together, we didn't do too bad.

That's it, hope you enjoyed!