Lips, lunch and video games..

A lull in the horrid weather this morning so I took Remy up to the school for a ridden session.
It was a bit of a strange session as he seemed perfectly fine, in fact he gave me some of the best shoulder-in at walk that I've ever had. He generally felt soft in the hand, relaxed through the neck and active behind, but, half way through the session he started flapping his lips. He does this if he's a little apprehensive about something, but he has done it before when he's really given his mouth and completely relaxed through his neck, so I don't know, but I'm hoping it's the latter as he was working so nicely.  I'm careful to give him lots of stretch breaks and today was no exception, so I don't think I was asking too much of him. We carried on for a short time, including some trot work, which also felt ok and finished on a good note, moving him around with lots of changes of direction stretching to a fairly long rein.
We had a lovely lunch out with my mum and dad who are here for a week and spent the afternoon playing video games - oh how childish!! :-))

Bonbon and Remy progress

It's been a busy weekend so not had chance to do much with the horses.
This morning the weather was lovely and ideal for a session in the school with Remy. He was very calm and responsive, he was staying soft and relaxed and gave me some really nice work. Shoulder-in and counter shoulder-in on both reins, some nice reinback and some of the nicest, balanced trot work to date. A long way to go, but definite improvement.
My last two sessions with Bonbon have been a bit wayward. Groundwork and close lunge work ok in walk and then squealing and overreacting when asked to trot.
Today, we continued with this and although reasonably calm in the walk work, we got the same reaction into the trot transition. Not as extreme, a bit of an explosion and a squeal, then stopping to face me.
It's definitely a worry thing, and in the walk work, I've always walked with her, staying reasonably close and she's pretty ok and relaxed with this. When I ask for the trot transition, I am, in effect sending her away from me and I think it's this that's confusing her, so I started to trot slowly at her side as I asked her to trot, and after a few seconds she started a hesitant little trot with me, and it seemed like you could see a little light bulb go on in her head. I asked once more and she gave me another little trot, so we happily left it there for the day. Hopefully it's a start and we'll progress from there in our next session.