Riding arrengements

I went over to school Wilastra (my Project Horse) and she was a typical baby! It's funny how young horses can make you feel- like you barely know how to ride! Anyway, she worked nicely on a chambon on the lunge, was very responsive to the poll pressure and you could see exactly which muscles are worked on her skinny neck. She has a bouncy, upward bound trot which needs a little more ground covering to be good and after 15 minutes on the lunge she started relaxing and tracked up fairly nicely. We have problems with trot to walk transitions as she is mega keen and thinks walk is a waste of time. Funnily enough CB has exactly the same attitude and it will be interesting to watch them both learning.
My ridden session on Wilastra was not too good yesterday. She was quite tired after the lunge session and I think also a little confused by my riding style. Wilastra's owner and I are trying to merge our ways of riding for Wialstra's good and I am sure we will get there in the end. I like horses to be light and very responsive and don't like too much tugging on the mouth. At the moment W. can fight for her head a little when she is feeling full of beans and is used to stronger hold on the reins and lower hand position of the rider than I ride in. If I imitate the position she is used to she goes well so I will continue that for a while and then try to slowly make sure she accepts both ways. In the end of the day, she will be for sale at some point so it is good for her to be able to respond to both lighter and slightly stronger contact with similar confidence.

Somewhere on the way I have also acquired one more schooling project - a lovely Connemara pony which I will be calling B. for the purpose of writing this blog. I will be riding B. twice a week and I am looking forward to our next session on Thursday.
B. is generally well schooled but is mostly used for hacking and Trek competitions so can be a little lazy (in a way he can 'skip' on effort;) and smart and not quite on the job when in the arena.

I am rather pleased with all the arrangements which give me 5 hours a week of challenging riding - exactly what I need right now!