OTTB Charm

Well, it is the end of the year, and somehow it feels like this whole year has just flown by. I just cannot believe where we started at the beginning of the year, to where we are now. It feels like a different lifetime ago. At the end of 2016, I made some  goals for 2017  that honestly seemed pretty lofty at the time. But I knew without a driving goal (or eleven) for the year, I would not push myself, and I needed to push myself. 1. Start being competitive (bringing home ribbons) at the 2'3" and 2'6" levels locally We accomplished part of our first goal very early in the year. In March, we went to a  show  and competed at 2'3" and brought home a 3rd place ribbon. It was nothing fancy, but I found it to be the perfect start to our 2017 year.  2. Begin to play in the 2'9" and 3' classes locally Our second goal took much longer to attain, but I knew it would. And honestly when I came up with that as one of our 2017 goals, I thoug...

Earlier this week, I got my very first photos of riding Charmer at home! Considering he has been home for nearly 3 months now, I guess it was finally time I got some photos of riding him at home. Since life has gotten in the way of riding for the last few weeks, Charmer had gotten almost 2 weeks off. So of course our ride started out sassy . His stride length was approximately two inches long, and all of his energy just wanted to blow up. When we cantered, every stride was this funny little bounce and I could practically hear him saying "I just want to buck so bad ". But he did his best to be a good horse and only threw one little baby buck - and I couldn't help but laugh at it. After about 10 minutes, he finally settled down and got a good rhythm going. We worked on a fun little exercise of trot poles and canter poles, and he definitely started out putting extra strides in, or speeding up to make the distance, but after a while he settled, and thought about his...

I saw this particular blog hop from  the900facebookpony  who got it from hellomylivia . I found it to be a pretty interesting topic, as I noticed from both of them that their own horses had a pretty significant number of the qualities from their "perfect horse". As I thought about it, I realized that a lot of my "perfect horse" qualities mirror Charmer's too. It's kind of a chicken or the egg thing. Not sure if I wanted these particular qualities in the first place, and that is why Charmer has stuck around this long, or if Charmer made me really love and value his particular qualities. 1. Color and Size Right off the bat though, I can tell you one thing that I would hands down have in my dream horse. Chrome . Doesn't have to be anything massive, but like a sock, or a snip or blaze or something ! Fake chrome I pretend he has chrome by putting white boots on him but it is not quite the same. Now I have accepted Charmer's lack of white, and a...

This weekend I attended another local horse show with Charmer. I've been riding him at home, but we don't have any jumps (yet). But even with that being said, when we jump he has been doing really, really well! So I decided to be a little extra brave when signing up and enter him in 2'6" and 2'9", as well as our first ever 2'6" derby for fun. From our 2'6" round. New favorite photo For him, basically every time he has walked off the trailer lately, he just marches right off, looks around a little, screams a few times, and then just eats hay with zero drama. It is so nice I have never had a horse that will just do that. I can leave him tied at the trailer for hours at a show and feel confident he will still be there when I return. This show was no different. He took his look around and then settled right in at the trailer. I wandered around the show all morning talking to people and taking lots and lots of photos. Our first class of...

Charmer has lived at my house for about a month now, and it has been absolutely amazing. He loves living on a nearly 2 acre pasture for most of the time, and is more than happy to be ridden in our arena, or climb on the trailer for lessons and shows. I gave him nearly 3 weeks off when he first moved to our property because we were working on making the arena ready to be ridden in - pulling weeds, getting a drag, etc. Once the arena was finally done, I climbed up on my horse (which was a little comical, as we don't have a mounting block yet, so I wandered around trying to find something tall enough to use as a mounting block for the day). As we were walking around the arena, the horses in our pasture come galloping  over, and I was sure Charmer was going to have a full blown meltdown. Wrong. He lazily flicked an ear in their direction and went right back to work. Even halfway through our ride, the neighbors' horses decided to start screaming and running because ohmygosh there ...