John Wayne and Lucky Luke

Luke :) 

We got two new horses in today! They were not what I was expecting at all... When Heather texted me this morning asking me to come out and ride two new horses, I was expecting a new dressage prospect. Nopety-nope-nope.

Two polo ponies! That we are going to teach to jump! :)

Heather and her sister had gone to a polo school in Upperville this morning to ride lots of horses (they have over 90!!) to decide which ones were best, and these two were their top picks. Lucky Luke and John Wayne!

Luke meeting Gambler :) Love this picture! 

They are currently in the upper field, to get to know the herd over the fence. We also don't have stalls available for them yet! So they will probably just hang out up there for a while. John Wayne is very hard to catch! It will be interesting catching him when he is in the big field!

They are both Chestnuts. Lucky is 15 hands and John is 15.2, and a lot stockier. Heather got them because there is a leaser who is thinking about getting a horse for her family.

Well, I got to ride both of them! It was so much fun. They are both still a little confused about direct reining, but were both so good.

I love polo horses. They are so unflappable. They have a pretty rough life as polo horses, so I think they will be so happy to have a fun, relaxing life here! They were both super well behaved on the ground.

They also had no idea what treats were! Or a bucket of grain that we were shaking to try to catch them! They will love their new pampered life!

JW on the left, LL on the right 

So, what we did in our ride was pretty simple. We started off just walking around the ring and I kept encouraging both of them to stretch down, as they naturally carry their necks pretty high and are tense. John was really good about this! Then, we did lots of trot work, mainly on a smaller circle. They were both great about this. I was able to canter Luke on the small circle as well, but with John I cantered him around the whole ring. They both have never been ridden in rings before! So going in a circle was kind of confusing to both of them! But they both picked it up very well.

Then, we moved on to trotting some poles, and building up to a little jump! Lucky was not into actually jumping the jump! Which was kind of funny. He did jump it once. John was a different story, he loved it! We had to get the jump bigger until he actually started jumping it, but he was so good! Oh man, I am so excited for the next few months! We are just keeping John, because Heather's sister found out that Lucky has an old injury. Perhaps when he goes back, we'll pick up another one.

Enjoying their new life already! :) 

In any case, it is going to be so much fun! I am so glad that I get to start getting back into jumping!