Trainers that challenge you

Not asking for a Spanish walk -- just a walk!

Boy did I have a good lesson. Well, not good in terms of my performance, or Riley's. Good, in that it made me think. Here is the scoop.
The walk
Ever since I have owned horses, I've never had much luck in getting a good walk. My horses shuffle and resist and fall out. I know the pattern, and I struggle with it, and with horses I've ridden in the past, I can ultimately get communication going and get something like a four-beat walk. Never great, but often passable.

Then came Riley
When Riley shuffles and throws his shoulders around,  nothing I try seems to work. In the end the unforgiveable happens and he blows me off and shuts down. There's nothing left to try, and it takes a Herculean effort to get him forward. I see, or saw, his behavior as a giant middle finger.  I'm annoyed, he's annoyed.  I've had trainers tell me "it's a baby thing. Don't worry about it." I've had people shrug as if it doesn't really matter (I get decent, good walks in competition, somehow).

Working at the walk
My current trainer, though, pinpoints the problem. She took away my small spurs and forbade me to use my whip except in a particular way.  We worked endlessly at the walk. Booorrring. Yuck. And it seemed there was little to show for it in that first session.  I turned to her and said in my best simulation of a whiny teenager, "He's just not improving at ALL."

Her response, delivered with good cheer: "We're not working on him, we're working on YOU."

That was the dose of humility I needed. There was miniscule progress in that lesson, but I worked on the walk in the days that followed. It got better. And by the next lesson, we were probably 25% better. More importantly, I was starting to feel exactly what I was doing wrong, and what I needed to be done to at least start a line of communication. Riley had been tuning my out at the walk. Now he was listening, and trying. And the walk was getting decent.

I thought that the exercise wasn't doing any good, and I was questioning my trainer's method. I was wrong, and in cases like this it feels REALLY GOOD to be wrong. Hat's off to trainers who are willing to do the unpopular thing for the good of a horse/rider partnership. It takes integrity to do that. It it really helped me.