OTTB Charm

To me, the most fascinating thing about working with, or getting, a new horse is all the "firsts" you get with them. Everything is new, and you are constantly learning more about your horse with every interaction. Over the last handful of days, I have gotten some really fun insight into how Wonder works, and how he thinks. The #1 thing that I have noticed, is that he always seems to want to do the right thing. He seems to have very minimal training though, so he doesn't know what the right thing is. And he has the attention span of a gnat. However, he is friendly, and always wants to come over to you in the pasture. He is less of a fan of getting caught, but is always game for a scratch and cuddle. He leads well, but tends to be a little pushy about wanting to go where he wants to go, and as fast as he wants to get there. Poor kid was a little miffed that I shut that down really quick. Also, I have found that Wonder will do anything   for a peppermint. I mean an...

So for any of you that follow me on Instagram, you have probably seen the new face that has graced my feed. Yep, I picked up another horse. Apparently I'm crazy (although I believe that was already established...). Anyways, I have been looking for a second horse to be a buddy to Charmer for a little while now. I made a very casual ISO post in some local forums, and got tons of responses. I pursued a couple of them halfheartedly, one I was very interested in but didn't work out, and then finally a cute little OTTB. I wanted to find something that was in my area, and cheap. Since Charmer is my main horse, and I have no intention of changing that anytime soon, I had minimal requirements for a second horse. I went through lots and lots of Facebook messages, but most of the horses just weren't right. I pursued one pretty eagerly, but it just didn't end up working out. For about a week, I was conversing with a really nice lady who lived about 5.5 hours away from me. She h...

So I decided to make a post all about supplements. Specifically oral supplements. This always seems to be kind of a hot button issue with horse people. Some people are really big believers in them, some people think that every one is a hoax, and just makes really expensive pee, and then there are others that fall somewhere in the middle. Which one are you? I tend to think of myself as kind of a "middle ground" believer in supplements. I think some of them work really well, some of them are a placebo effect (for the owners), and there are definitely some that are a hoax. That all being said, I buy Charmer an approximate ton of supplements. No really, I think if you weigh it out, he eats a literal ton of supplements. I have a few that come in actual Smartpaks - but literally just enough to hit the $40 free shipping on everything . The amount of money I save in shipping makes up for the extra $0.15 I pay to get them in little packages. The rest of them, I either pick up at m...

I have been thinking for nearly a month now about what my goals are for 2018. When Charmer and I went into 2017, I had some really clear, focused goals that I wanted to achieve. I was having huge confidence issues at that time, and I felt stuck. So I came up with some goals that at the time felt like a reach, but turned out to be just the push I needed to have a fantastic year. A lot of it was "you and your horse should be perfectly capable of this, you are just a chicken" type goals. Which was pretty accurate for where I was emotionally. This year, I feel like I am heading into 2018 with about 1000x more confidence, and oddly enough, that has made coming up with goals significantly harder. There is less "get over yourself and just ride" goals that I can make, and I don't know if we are ready to make the step up to bigger levels or more complicated things yet. So here it goes for my 2018 goals. Who knows if we will reach even half of them! But goals keep me focu...