OTTB Charm

Tonight, Charmer has a vet/chiropractor appointment. Mostly a routine "get all the things back in line" checkup, but also checking up on a few things to ease my paranoid, nervous, crazy horse mom brain. Assuming all goes well in his appointment tonight, I will have some very  exciting news coming up tomorrow. I cannot say anything until all of the i's are dotted and t's are crossed, because the situation is somewhat delicate, but suffice it to say, I am busting with excitement and nervousness about it right now. This is my face about our exciting news 😁 Also there is a new piece of tack that is gracing my plain bay horse's face. I haven't gotten the chance to ride in it, but it is a new noseband from  Uisce Saddlery . I first heard about them from  SprinklerBandits blog  and got a sudden itch to get one. I have wanted a white padded, fancy stitched noseband for Charmer for quite a while now, and that seemed like the perfect thing to order. It arri

I am basically too tired to do a real write up on the show that we had on Saturday, but in order to sum it all up - the day started a little rocky, but once I got on and we got to work, Charmer was a superstar! We had some of our best rounds to date. We kept our brains in our skulls and we ended up being one of only a handful of horses all day that did not buck, bolt, spook or refuse at anything. Also, every pole stayed up! Charmer did not even try to take anything down. Lots of people commented that he looked really nice, and calm. So yay for a successful show and I hope you guys enjoy this photo dump. Rocking our warmup Trotting through puddles Power trot Loving the burgundy and navy look Crossrail king I love the mountains in these pictures Eating up those 2' jumps "2'3" and scary fillers? Psh, easy." Snappy knees "Oxers are no big thang" Wow look at me actually looking up! Ever so careful hind end

Approximately a year and a half ago, I broke my pelvis. I was at a horse show, riding a horse for a local lady. There were a lot of various mistakes made by several parties (myself included) and long story short, it ended up with the horse falling down at a warmup fence. She took the pole down and all would have been fine if she was more experienced, but she was too green. She lost her footing, I jumped off, and she ended up crashing down on top of me with her left shoulder on my left hip. After being carted off in an ambulance, getting x-rays, and a whole lot of waiting, I found out I had broken my pelvis in two places. Luckily the breaks were fairly stable so I didn't need a full body cast or surgery, but it still meant I couldn't ride for a while. The fear, anger and depression that followed consumed me almost entirely. Even when I could walk and ride again, I was depressed and frustrated that I just couldn't ride the same - and maybe I never would. I was angry about t

After two weeks of absolute magic in our lessons, I knew I couldn't expect it to last forever. Our lesson this weekend ended up being a little less magical-unicorns-dancing-on-rainbows-with-sunshine-and-happiness and a little more remember-that-your-horse-is-a-seven-year-old-OTTB-who-is-still-green-and-just-learned-how-to-pick-up-his-feet. We warmed up fairly well at a decent w/t/c. Our canter work is definitely wayyy better in these last few weeks (yay!). We did some 20m circle work over a couple of poles w/t/c and she brought up the same point that she has for the last couple weeks - I'm too nice. I tend to be too giving with the reins and don't give him the poke in the belly when he is falling in. I need to work on being a little more assertive and a little less "nice". As soon as we started jumping it went a little downhill. For some reason I was just casually looking down at the jump. Couldn't tell you why. So of course that made Charmer nervous

After having such a fabulous lesson last weekend, I was quick to set up another one for this weekend. True to form, Pancho and Charmer loaded up like champs. The drive over was quiet and calm, and everyone unloaded quietly and happily when we arrived. After tacking up, I had to make the decision of whether I lunge or just get on and see what happens. Due to a busy schedule this week, I hadn't been able to ride since our last lesson, so it was probably the smart decision to lunge. Which of course means that I did not make the smart decision and ended up just getting on. There was a lesson going on before ours, so we went onto one side of the arena to work on our warmup. Something just seemed to be in the air, because both of the other horses in the ring were definitely excited and looking around, and Trainer S said that someone had fallen off earlier that day (because ghosts in the field next to the arena). Pancho and Charmer were both a little up, and so Jayne and I

New. Favorite. Photo. I just have to drop that there for you to look at for a moment. Because I am obsessed  with this photo. Okay, well now that I'm done gawking over that photo (who am I kidding, so not done, but I'll try to move on), we will move on to the actual blog post. Originally, we ( Jayne and I) had a lesson planned for Saturday afternoon, but after quite a bit of rain poured down in the morning, we opted to move our lesson to Sunday afternoon. There ended up being a bit more rain on Sunday morning, but nothing too terrible, so we loaded up the ponies and headed off to our lesson. The drive over was fairly uneventful, except for the couple of miles traveling down a road under construction, but thank goodness for ponies who travel quiet, because we all got there in one piece.  Honestly, Jayne and I were both 100% under the impression that one or both of us was going to take a swim today. Neither of these horses have been ridden outside, let alone o