polka dot sunshine

So I think Trudi leveled up again last night. It's not test levels, like 1st, 2nd, etc, it's more like a roll playing game where there are like 100 levels. It's like she's collected enough XP and there's a little fanfare and suddenly she has a new skill. We rode outside at first, and the arena looked like a salt pan from the downpour the other night. It looked cool but I felt it was a little slippery for canter work, so after some really good walk/trot work (in spite of a line of scary yellow caution tape strung across the end of the neighbor's driveway and a bunny hopping around) we went inside. I thought we'd do just a little canter each way and be done in a jiffy. Trudi instead was all huffy/snorty (I think she thought we were done) and suddenly acted all stupid. She got in an absolute tizzy over a spot of sunlight on the wall. I remember her being silly about this before, and she briefly made a sucker out of me- I was like, oh, she's really scared, and I backed off trying to push her to it. Then common sense kicked in and I went "Dude, it's a polka dot made of sunshine. It cannot possibly hurt her. Get with it". So we braved the polka dot, and eventually we did some canter, and some of it was even good.
But during the ride she did get very supple, and she seems to have been developing her hind legs lately, where she will start to really carry the weight and I can feel them and control them better and better. I found when I bring the hind legs closer together and farthur under her body that the lateral work gets a lot better- another one of those vague peripheral thoughts finally being put into practice.