Stop the presses! A good ride on Willig!

I had a lesson a few days ago with the owner of my barn, Shannon, who has been riding for years, and just got fourth place at Inavale in Novice on one of her horses. It was a great lesson.
She pointed out a lot of little details, including my now teeth-grittingly bad lower leg, listened to my description of the woes we've been having, and then we did one simple exercise a whole bunch of times. This included a spectacular stumble where Willig almost went on his knees, and one time THROUGH the jump (so he learns it's easier to just jump it for the love of god), all down at the scary end of the arena where the new neighbor's poodle ran out at him last week in an incredibly ironic attempt to make him LESS scared of that end. All of this is build up for today's ride, where I brought T out (in case Willig had another stumble in which I did not stay on), where he ...
floated over it.
Over and over.
And over and over.
With scary things under it, he just jumped it.
He got it!
Willig IS smart after all! Shannon thought at the end of our lesson that we would have no problems coming along together, and while I was glad she thought that, I wasn't sure I 100% agreed since the last 18 months have been, well, tough.
But in explaining things to her, I realized that a) he has no xc experience, so his bad habits have been taught to him by me, and b) he just genuinely doesn't know what or how he's supposed to do things, and I don't know how to teach him. So we've needed a trainer, and simple exercises.
I had sort of come to the conclusion, which this sort of cemented, that I pushed him too hard too fast (he didn't need to work on a ditch or a bank yet), and now I've wasted time because we have to go back and build his confidence up. This is good though, because I'm learning how to teach him too.
So the lesson in detail:
Our jump was just a vertical with two ground poles on those little plastic stands that you can set at different levels. Then 9' from the center is a ground pole on each side, but tilted a bit in, so it makes a side of a circle.
Then we cantered it in a big circle, each way.
My homework is to do that until it's boring, which I think will only take a couple times after today. During his lesson, he was trying to jump the vertical, AND outside the next 9' pole, so he kept hitting it with his front or back legs, he'd stumble, I'd open my hands and the reins would slide out, he'd be on the wrong lead, and I couldn't collect everything back again in time for the next circle, so we'd have to make a medium circle to get collected.
Today, however, he had, upon reflection one presumes, figured out how to bounce in and out, and it was just a cake walk. There were a couple little knocks, but nothing like the lesson. And people (horrors!) were even walking around next door and he put one ear on them, but stayed focus on his job - the jump.
I am so impressed. After each perfect jump, I made a huge deal over him and he got a break, so today we didn't do it until boredom, but just two good ones in a row and then something different (other direction, scary barrel underneath).
Anyway, my lesson:
Heels down, toes up. Make my stirrups a hole shorter, and practice riding without stirrups to improve my lower leg.
Mostly we need to clean up on the little details (and he needed, for example, to learn to condense his body, not jump all splayed out), but it's not bad.
He needs to pay attention ALL the time. When I'm sitting on him talking, he doesn't get to fling his head around anymore. When we lead, no more stopping and looking around. No giraffe neck, no looking. So when I lead him, now I walk with my crop on the inside hand so I can tap him (like my leg would) if he tries to look. He's also caught onto this pretty quick.
When I'm riding him and he wants to fling his head around, he does extra work. Like if I wanted to walk in a straight line, now we make a circle and he has to leg-yield.
So, Shannon thinks he's a good horse, but I pushed him too hard too fast, which was my mistake, in thinking he had the nerve and the knowledge to do it.
And Shannon thinks I have a good seat (if a terrible lower leg) because even though he almost went all the way on his knees, I stayed on him. I had to grab around his neck, but it was a decent save.
We also tried different gear. A bit, I'm blanking on the name, that has the long shanks up and down so it has a bit more leverage on his cheeks, and a cute little martingale that fastens to the breastplate. Shannon had a horse with a similar personality to Willig, and found that those two pieces of equipment helped a lot with controlling his attention. It certainly seemed to help today.
Shannon said he's not getting too strong, when I feel him go towards the fence, but she said just to sit up and do a half halt and make sure I can slow him down, but otherwise, let him go to it. She said it's a great sign. She said it's also great that after he had to walk through the one fence (because it looked different, and I didn't ride him assertively to it even though *I* knew it would look scary to him - I am quite the passive jumper), he came to it the next time intending to, and actually jumping it. She said a bad horse would have come in planning to refuse even harder.
She said he's paying good attention to the fence, and just doesn't know how to use his body properly yet.
I asked her to ride him for a few minutes, and she said he is squirmy, but to work on giving him a task - like going over a pole, making circles, doing transitions, etc., and then he does better. And to get him to lesson, respond immediately (no four steps before the transition), and to make sure I get a nice working trot - not too fast or too slow, which I'm usually doing on him.
It was a great lesson, and I absolutely encourage anyone in the Oly area who needs a jump lesson to try Shannon out. I thought she was great to work, and I've made more progress with Willig with that lesson than I have the entire time on my own or at the clinics. (The ground work was really consistent with what Mike has been telling me too, and my lessons with him are also making huge improvements. For the first time, I really feel like me and Willig are going to learn a lot, be a good team, and have fun!)