Great additions, Makana!
I think I'll turn this topic into a sticky, there's so much useful information in it already that it deserves a place of honor.
By the way; yesterday I accidentally got a simple change of canterlead, with two steps of collected walk in the middle!
Blacky and I were just running next to each other on a large circle with Blacky doing a canter, when I decided to go in the other direction. Because I came a bit in front of Blacky in order to ask him not to circle around me now, but steer away from me, he slowed down with a canter-walk transition, and then started off in the new canter lead! Of course I was overjoyed, clicked far too late, tried to repeat a couple of times and failed miserably,
but I think this could be an opening into canter leadchanges for us.
It's essentially what Karen does, only I run next to Blacky instead of in front of him. Blacky is really good a being redirected from his side. We discovered yesterday that he can do tiny serpentines with me walking next to his shoulder in a straight line, and cueing him to turn his shoulders a bit toward me or away from me as walking a shallow serpentine by just turning my shoulders towards him (then he movest out) and away from him (then he moves in).
It will be tons of fun to see what we can do with all this! I don't expect us to do the flying lead changes real soon though.
If only because Blacky can only do walk-canter transitions on the right lead. On the left lead he needs to be in a trot in order to take off on the left lead, because from walk he tends to go to the right lead. So we actually already managed to do the counter-canter,
, but it would be great if we could do a real good canter too.
And that's the basis of every leadchange!