I started by moving all the jumps and poles to the edges of the arena so Rose would be able to make a larger circle around me. I left three trot poles to send Rose through on the lunge. Then we brought the girls in from the field and tacked them up. Rose has started to prance around again when I'm putting the saddle on, probably because she hasn't had the saddle on much at all this winter. I'll have to work on getting her standing nice and still like she used to.
Anyways, since I don't have a surcingle (but would love to get one!), I used Rose's saddle instead. I just put the end loops of the side reins around the girth on each side right under the saddle flap. It worked okay, but I found the reins would slide down the girth and therefore not work as well because the angle would change. So I tried threading the reins through the stirrup leather loops on either side to hold them up and that worked a lot better. Still, having a surcingle with secure metal rings set at different heights on Rose's sides would be the best.
By the end of our lunging session, Rose's frame and attitude were beautiful. She was giving me this loose, bouncy, swingy trot. She was tracking up, her head and neck were stretched down into a beautiful frame, her back was lifted up to create a very nice, balanced outline. She had lots of foamy white slobber and had a little sweat going on, which means she was relaxed and working well.
The best part though is how much the side reins teach her how to use her body in order to balance better. She's always had trouble with canter transitions, and normally she would just explode in a frenzy of head tossing and mini-bucks when I would ask her to canter on the lunge. Today, she had to actually think about how to transition from trot to canter while keeping her head in a nice frame instead of tossing it everywhere. It took her off guard the first few times and she would stop, turn to face me, and just look at me with slight confusion. When this would happen, I just calmly asked her to trot on again and asked for the canter transition again until she figure it out. She eventually gave me a very nice transition going both directions.
Once she did a nice canter transition, I would only ask her to keep the canter going for maybe one circle around me, then ask her to go back down to trot and give her lots of praise. This way, she realizes that I'm rewarding the actual transition, instead of ignoring it and pushing her on to canter a couple of circles. Finding her balance enough to not break back into trot on the circle is the next thing we would work on.
To get an idea of what Rose looked like today and what I'm aiming for in each session, here's a little video from Will Faber, a classical dressage teacher who has a youtube channel. I've watched a lot of his videos and have probably mentioned him on this blog before.
So happy to be writing again!