Ride Notes: Longitudinal Work

• Have done so much lateral work, time to work on the longitudinal suppleness, aka develop a real medium trot. Right off the bat in the warm up trot, back and forth from a short trot to a big trot. Takes a long time to develop as he finds shortening very easy but his "big" trot is just his forward working trot still. 
• When shortening, keeping both legs on and pushing up up up to make sure the trot stays engaged instead of just being slow and dragging his feet.
• Gave him a tap on the butt with the dressage whip and that does seem to make his hind end move faster which gets the stride bigger without getting faster. But then he gets tense very quickly. I need to work on getting a couple of good strides and rewarding the shit out of him instead of keep pushing for more and more when it's just not in there yet, and he doesn't correlate that his response to the whip is good.
• Need to work in a bigger more forward canter for awhile because he wants to get stuck in his super collected canter and it's turning more lazy and on the forehand instead of uphill and bouncy. He's very easy to coil up, need to work on making him longer, too.
• Went to do the counter canter across the ring in 2-2 and he started half passing across the ring instead of going diagonally across while holding the lead. Part of me is like, "Oh yeah, Third level by the end of the year for sure." But, aside from the current lack of medium let alone extended trot, it's A LOT of subtle aid changes and I don't need him to start guessing and doing the wrong thing when my leg is one inch off from one aid or another--see the flying changes and half pass when not asked for.