Schooling the Transitions

So in my lesson on Friday, I did my usual warm up, working on bending, counter-bending, etc. Unfortunately, Radar's trot seems to be best when he's slightly counter-bent to the right to deal with his drift - fine for schooling, but not ideal for showing. While any judge should see what/why he's being ridden that way, you'd still get deducted for it. Hence, he won't be a show pony any time soon! When we went into the canter Mia had an interesting idea for me. Since I (and basically all the people who regularly ride him) am not strong enough to school Radar's canter (well, keep him cantering while schooling it!), we worked on schooling the transitions into and out of the canter. Basically, bending and establishing contact with the outside rein to get a good canter depart, cantering literally four or five strides, then bringing him down into an organized trot. Believe it or not, that actually worked and we got some fairly organized canter and trot transitions. It was a really good lesson, although I do wonder sometimes how my skills would translate onto a horse with both dressage training and some natural ability for the discipline. I've spent so long riding horses with physical issues and off-breeds, it would be sort of fascinating to see how that would translate into a proper "dressage" horse...

Had a funny issue vision-wise this lesson, too... I have Moebius Syndrome, a neurological disorder which among other things means that many (most?) of my eye muscles are paralyzed. I kept cutting off each end of the arena when I was riding the quarter-lines of the long sides... I literally felt like I was about to crash when I was in fact 10 feet away! At least I was the only person riding in the arena at that time, so I only had to watch out for myself. Luckily by the time I got onto my canter circle I was doing slightly better but it was kind of weird since that doesn't usually happen too often.