in balance

Of course now that summer is almost over we are making some great progress. Today was let's-keep-her-guessing-where-we're-going day. We warmed up on a loose rein, picked up our trot. Pony made one decent-sized spook going head-on at the riding lawnmower right next to the arena but didn't mind the rest of the time that BO was mowing further around us. In order to keep her focus on me and not the mower we did tons of circles of varying size, serpentines, figure 8s, diagonals, and trot/halt/walk/back etc transitions. Mare is getting quite responsive to the verbal "whoa" command. It's certainly not a western-horse whoa but I can definitely feel her sit on her butt and think about what I'm asking before I cue using seat/reins. Hopefully she'll retain that for the school year. Doing the lots of transitions didn't seem to get her as wired as it normally does. I got some of the nicest canter I've ever felt from her today, to the right (both of our' bad direction) no less. Did a lead change across the diagonal to reverse and that wound her up some, so we did lots more nice relaxing transitions and she steadied back down. She also is beginning to listen to the command "eeeeaaasyyyy," which I utilized during the corners. We did some trot on a longer rein, then walked out while the lawnmower was moving right up next to the fence.