Outside rein/stretchy circle

Just in the middle of august Darby turned four-and he has been under saddle now for a year. He is doing really well-he has great movement and a good mind, easy to work with unless he is being stubborn, but very happy to be ridden and usually tries very hard to please. He is way more capable than I am, and I am not sure how I feel about this! But I love riding him and being around him, he has such a personality. Other than my built in challenges of major arthritis and pain in my lower spine, some of the things I have been working on are keeping the outside rein connection-( I just reworked the words to the Muppets Rainbow Connection in my mind! Someday we'll find it, the outside rein connection) when I can keep good consistent contact, things go a lot better. We recently showed Training level test one and four, one is pretty straight forward-but on test four we have to do this shallow loop serpentine showing two changes of bend, and also a stretchy circle.  We haven't worked on the stretchy much, (or at all) so I sort of bombed it in the test.  But in a lesson I learned that I need to get him to give downward as far as I can on a short rein before I even think about starting to let the reins out. And guess what? You need outside rein connection and inside bend to make this happen! Its almost like magic when the formula works...so I am committing this to writing so I don't forget!
Outside rein and inside bend....