Meanwhile Uno...

 Is just an absolute star.  In our last lesson, we started with a quick warm-up and then jumped right into a grid.  It was a small vertical - land - one stride to a set of 4 poles over a 90-degree turn, then 2 strides to another small vertical.  

Last summer, we committed to using grids to keep his feet moving and keep him thinking, but we almost always approached in trot to let him have time to see everything.  Which worked for his wonky vision and my confidence.  On Sunday, everything was set for actual canter strides, and our rule was no trotting allowed.  It did not work perfectly the first few times - he kept breaking into trot at the poles to sort his legs out, but Trainer just had me keep coming and focus on "soft forward."  The goal wasn't to rush or gun him at anything, but to encourage forward thinking WHILE cantering.  It was hard.

Then we started adding in courses and dropping the grid.  And the canter we had!!! My gosh, we actually got a BIG but not fast canter in between fences.  And I cantered the whole course. There were a few interesting distances in the related lines - short leg problems - but sitting up and half-halting in the middle solved those nicely.

I rebuilt a line of fence in the drylot that had stopped containing the donkeys...

Since the lesson, he had a lunge over poles - 2 raised canter poles.  The goal was to stay on the correct lead the whole way through.  When Uno really pushes behind in the canter, he tends to swap leads behind. I think this is part of the whole sore/ weak/ built wrong issue we addressed with Adaquan.  Now that there is no soreness, we are actually building strength and are able to retrain some bad habits.

Then I did a quick dressage school, which was quick because he was SO DAMN good.  A quick walk, trot, canter and then we went to work on adjusting within the gates forward and back.  Then, into transitions focusing on balance and SLOWING down the transition on my side.  I have started counting out the steps of my "down shift aids."  One - as I sit up straighter. Two - as I add a supporting leg.  Three - as I pull my abs and shoulders back and in. Four - say out loud the new gait we are moving into. By saying it out loud, I actually balance INTO the transition, and he picks up a forward gait even as we transition down.

Not life changing stuff - but good things none the less.