Progress on flying leads!

Today we worked again on our flying lead changes.  We took a break from it the last few months, but pretty much everyone I watched at Training and above for show jumping could do them, and I just can't see how I will be able to get around a prelim show jumping course without them.
It was great!  First, Charlie caught on to the concept almost instantly (where he started offering them), which was a huge difference, because that seemed to be a mental hold up for him for years.  He got the idea of doing them from left to right, but it was like he couldn't even wrap his head around the concept from right to left.
He was trying to do them, but in this huge lunging, kicking way, where he would leap up all gigantic and forward (actually, that is what I saw him doing with Shannon over a ground pole in a lesson with Mike several years ago), and so sometimes he would get the change during the huge leap, but sometimes he wouldn't.
As we kept working, he quit needing to do the huge leap, and could do them a bit more reasonably.
John felt that I was a lot stronger and more balanced, so I could sit up and give something to Charlie to press into.  We also added in the detail of using my inside hip to press down, like if we were on the right lead and changing to the left, I would press down on my left seat bone, and put my right leg back, and use the whip, as well as have him bend to the left.
We worked on this with a couple of exercises.  We would half pass from the corner to the center line, and then turn the opposite direction (so if we half passed in the canter from K to X on the right lead, then I would bend him left at "G" so that at C, in theory, we would be on the left lead heading back towards H).  We also turned on the diagonal, then half passed starting at X, so if I was on the left lead, I would go pass A, turn left at F, at X start half passing to the left, turn his head right, and ask for the change at H, so by C we would be on the right lead.
Charlie was soaking wet (it was also hot out) so I walked him on the trail afterwards.  It was a really great lesson.  It's too much for me to try to do on my own, because John said he has a couple ways to try to evade the work (and it took me a while to get him really half passing).  When he does the carousel horse, John says we have to nip that in the bud immediately.  At one point, Charlie got really frustrated and wouldn't listen to anything or bend left at all, so John had us halt, then bend him left, then do a turn on the forehand, then go back to work, and it seemed to reset Charlie's brain.  When he was doing the carousel horse, John had us quit working on the flying leads and work on some trot work and transitions instead.
I liked that there was a pattern that set Charlie up for success, and also helped him figure out what we were asking him for, and I also like that it is a pattern I will never do in a dressage test, so he won't get too exuberant and start trying it willy nilly.
I also asked John about my two flops where Charlie saved my bacon at Inavale.  He said for the water, that it starts out at about 6", but within one stride, is like 2' deep.  He asked Peaches, and she said pretty much every rider had issues in the water.  So that's why the jump felt fine, and then I flopped, it was the footing and Charlie scrambling in it.  He also said everyone had trouble with the triple, because when they removed the first hibiscus, it took the "round" out of the turn, and everyone ended up making an angled turn, where we drifted right toward the judge's stand, and didn't come in nice and straight.  He said if they had left that fence up, it would have helped make the turn more structured.  So it wasn't just me, but I was lucky to have good boy Charlie (and all those grids) work through it.
Charlie got a puncture wound on Tuesday.  Diane said his stall gate seemed to have gotten half shut, and then there was a bolt on the "inside" that Charlie could have done it on.  It was the only thing they found (and they took the gate out).  He seems to be doing ok.  I talked with her (and Bre) about whether Charlie was too much for them.  They said he is more than they are used to, but they have that young horse that isn't ridden and Kevin …
She also told me that on Wednesday (?), Deb Stevens came by looking for a place to board.  She said that Deb said that she used to be at Forest Park.  I told her I had never met Deb.  She said Deb wanted to hug Charlie, but so far as I know, the only time she would have met him was when he was a baby.