Calo improvement!

Yesterday I had the best ride so far on Calo, even though I had been struggling with a llama head and tiny steps up until the moment John walked in.
I had four practical questions for John:  which vest to get (2 point), what harrow to get (not the ones I had flagged but one with multiple circles), when can Charlie canter (one lap at a time, once he's up to 15 minutes of trot), and is it ok to use small circles to slow Calo down when he's rushing (yes, or shoulder in).
We worked on a more prompt canter transition, and John said that Calo's ability to get into the trot from the canter without sprawling (for more than a couple steps) showed he was improving.
We did some stuff that was hard for me, but it was nice that Calo was being so cooperative.  The canter work focused on getting him connected from the inside leg (keep it next to the girth!) to the outside hand (use it when he is drifting out!).
For bending, I have to be ready to put on my inside leg, because Calo is going to naturally fall to the inside.  But then I have to RELAX that inside hand.  I can ride Calo between my inside leg and outside hand and I don't have to hang on the inside hand and make my arm tired.  I just use it to bend him, and then soften it again.
We started with some nice trot, which really only needed a bit of inside bend.  Then we did a bit of leg yield, which Calo did quite nicely, stepping under himself.  So then we spent the majority of the lesson working on the canter, especially the right lead canter.
We put Calo on a circle, bent him to the inside, and then I pushed his shoulders in by moving my hands to the inside (to the right, for a right circle), while keeping my inside leg on.  This made a slightly shoulder in on the circle.  From there, I'd ask for the canter by sitting up, and putting both legs on (inside leg forward, outside leg back, inside hip pushing down).  Once he was going, we'd work on inside bend again.
John said that last year we made a lot of improvements in show jumping, but what we need to focus on next is the canter aid - that my aids are kind of weak but Charlie knows them so he knows what I'm asking.  He thinks if I can sharpen them (and sharpen Charlie's response) it will help with the dressage scores.  He also said that feeling how to ride from inside leg to outside hand will help me with Charlie, who likes to do half the movement to see if I'll keep asking, and help me learn that I can let go of that inside hand and still get the movement.
It was, as always, a great lesson - incredibly educational and I felt like we made even more progress.