Smooth Sailing.. Kinda

While we're doing pretty well right now, I'm kind of at a loss with how to proceed. As long as I don't ask her for something unexpected or change up the routine too much, everything is fine. The minute I ask her for something she doesn't want to do, we hit a snag. I haven't figured out how to approach cantering to the left, since whenever I attempt to work through it frustrations just escalate until we end up angry with each other. I know I need to tackle this issue and get it eradicated but I think I'm going to ask around for opinions before I try to tackle it again, since nothing I'm doing seems to be having a (positive) effect.

So while that's a bit annoying, she's a perfect angel when I don't canter left first. The needlepoint exercise I've been doing is really helping her with switching her bend, and her flying changes have been getting a lot better because of it. She still tend to get stuck in sharp corners, so I'm thinking of upping the circles and direction changes at the trot this next week, then introducing some serpentine patterns at the canter to get her more agile. She /can/ make sharp turns, but she really bulges out with her outside shoulder and I have to heavily correct her with outside aids to complete the turn.

This weekend we had two very nice rides. Saturday she was very relaxed and we had a low-key ride, where we basically warmed up with the needlepoint, chugged around the ring at the canter a couple times, then hopped over a cross pole and low vertical a couple times. We finished out over a hogsback made from three cavalettis, which there is a picture of but I haven't received it yet.

Sunday I demanded a little more of her. We did have a minor tantrum when I corrected her after she started charging at the warmup fences. She gets worked up and starts throwing herself at them sometimes, so we take it back to the basics and trot the fence several times, then canter it until we get a nice slow approach. It takes a couple tries at the canter, but I just hold her to the fence and let her bury herself at the base of it until she realizes she can either wait and get a decent spot or run at it and have to jump from a very short and uncomfortable spot. I also had to correct her when she starting running into the canter again after I would do a downward transition; it's nice that she knows that I usually want her to take a few trot steps and then pick up the correct lead if I bring her down to a trot after a jump, but sometimes she jumps the gun and runs back into the canter before I ask which is not okay.

After our jump warmup we tackled a triple, which was essentially up a diagonal line of a cross pole, two strides, 2'6 picket, four strides, out over another cross pole. She kept going sideways after the first fence which screwed up the striding (we ran out of it the first time because she literally went sideways and would've jumped the standard), so we trotted in a couple times until she was relatively straight after it before going for the two strides. We probably went through it a good 10-15 times, but the last time through was slow and straight with the correct striding, so I was really happy with that and proud of her for being so gung-ho about something she's never done before.