First dressage lesson with John

John squeezed us in around Pony Club tonight, because the CVPC derby is this weekend.
We worked on big 20 meter circles around John where I'd open my inside hand way to the inside, then use outside hand to hold him on the circle, and then push him out (around my leg) with my inside leg.  The trick - which took a while for John to figure out what I was doing wrong - is to keep my inside leg up at the girth.  Little Dukela is so short in his barrel, that if I move my leg just a little behind the girth, he interprets it as an aid to push his hindquarters out.  So he's obedient, not unbalanced, because poor sweet Charlie learned to just ignore my leg which flapped all over the place, and I don't want Little Dukela to learn that same lesson.
John said to the right (clockwise) is a little harder because not only is Duke stiff to the right, but he also - I forget exactly the words John used - clenches his jaw that way.  So I had to do squeeze and release and move the bit around too, to help him soften his jaw.
At the canter, with the inside hand open wide (which meant moving my hand up four inches on the reins and pushing my hands way in front of me, but then bending my elbow to open it up), if Duke went faster, it meant I wasn't doing the exercise right.  Which was kind of nice, to have an immediate obvious aid I was doing it wrong.
So we did this both directions, and for a few minutes, I got him bent around my leg from the ribs, and then he got so balanced and soft in his mouth and we just went happily around on the circle for a while.  It was nice.  He's a good boy.
Duke started a little excited, with his head straight up in the air, but he settled down quickly.  It was good practice for a show, because Anna and Brooke and their students were around, as well as the farrier.
We "meandered" (per John's instructions from last lesson) around the cross country field afterwards, and he looked very, very intently at any horse off in the distance, and had a couple spooks, but otherwise was good.
John said that spidering your fingers up the reins is a bad habit, and at the end I asked him why.  Not only does it take "fucking forever to watch" (and do!), but the act of moving them is a soften/take up/soften/take up and a naughty horse will learn to grab the bit during the soften.  John showed me by holding the reins so I could feel it.  I thought that moving my hand over to grab them was worse, but it helped to feel it with him holding.  You can also grab the "tail" and not have to reach over.
John said to work on bending him to the inside this week and not moving my leg back behind the girth for any aids.