OTTB Charm

What a cool BlogHop idea from May As Well Event ! I've really enjoyed reading through everyone's blogs of this particular subject because it's so cool to see how much has changed in 10 years for everyone! 2010 I'd only been riding for about 3 years by this time. I was absolutely loving it, even though I pretty much only rode once a week in my lessons, or over the summer I would hitch rides out the barn as often as I could. I was the definition of a barn rat, climbing on anything they'd let me, or working all day for a 10 minute trail ride! The pony in the photo, Steel, taught me to have a sticky seat because he was a dirty stopper, and especially hated oxers. Despite the fact he was a bit of a brat, I loved him to death & appreciate all the lessons he taught me when I was young. 2011 2011 brought the coolest little pony into my life. He was a lesson horse that had carried many, many people through their C-3 Pony Club Ratings, first events, and just a...

Over the last few weeks, I've been trying really hard with Banner to stay on a semi-consistent schedule. The minimal daylight hours right now do not  help with our situation, so keeping the same kind of schedule we were on in the summer is just not possible, but managing 3-4 rides a week is generally doable for me. Our #1 goal right now is straightness - and honestly its more for me than him right now! Working on our bigger trot at home About 6 weeks ago, I fell off in a lesson. Pretty insignificant fall for the most part, but it highlighted some issues that I am having with my own body & magnified them. Banner has always been a crooked horse, and somewhere over this last year I became a pretty crooked rider too. And unfortunately we became crooked the same way! I've put a fairly significant amount of money into Banner to keep him in line, but I have neglected that same care for myself (I'm sure all of you can relate!). I used to be really good about chiropract...

This is probably a theme among a lot of horse people right now - the daylight savings time/winter struggle. The cold weather & short daylight hours are brutal when it comes to doing horse stuff. Trying to squeeze in a ride in the short time after work or just accepting your fate that it just won't happen any days you work. Lately, I find myself struggling with this adjustment more than normal. I feel more unmotivated in my riding life, and it takes a lot of effort to convince myself to rush outside right after I get home from work in order to fit in a ride after an already long, tiring day. My nostalgia is at an all time high though lately. Memories on Facebook and Instagram are reminding me of when I first began getting back to regular lessons 3 years ago. Memories of the first ride where Banner finally got it  over a jump last year. It makes me sad that even though my horses are the most accessible that they have ever been to me by a long shot , my motivation to d...

We had our final show of our local barn series this weekend! Saturday was supposed to be Dressage & Cross Country. The forecast for the week had not been boding well for Saturday all week, so on Thursday, they decided to call off the activities on Saturday. They didn't want to tear up the nice footing that we have the pleasure of having at the cross country field. I have never in my life been so happy to have a show called off as I was when I woke up on Saturday morning. It was pouring  rain, with an  intense  windstorm, and we even got some hail! I could not imagine having attempted to ride in that weather. Especially not running XC on a fit thoroughbred with 30+mph winds. That is the stuff of nightmares people. Sunday was still show jumping day! Unfortunately the massive amount of rain that came down the day before made for lots of slop in the rings, but a large percentage of the riders that attend these shows are eventers of various levels, so we braved the mucky...

Banner and I are gearing up for our last local HT of the year! If I'm being totally honest, I was 100% going to wimp out on doing the dressage/XC part of this show, and just do the show jumping. Since B was so tightly wound at our last outing, I felt like we needed some more schooling in order to make XC a positive experience for us. But Trainer sent me a text a few days after our last lesson and asked if I wanted to go cross country for our next lesson instead of another show jumping lesson (I had told her my thoughts on likely not doing cross country at this show), and I thought about it for a moment before deciding why not! I'd like to end the year on a more positive note than our last experience was (tense dressage, wild XC, lost shoe in SJ). In order to make for a (hopefully) nice, civil outing tomorrow, I have been doing lots of schooling rides at home this week focusing on brakes and reminding him he has a brain and he has to use it! He has been checking in really w...

After our little shoe incident at the last show (9/22), Banner got some time off. The first day because obviously he didn't have a shoe, the next few days because I was waiting for a brewing abscess (which fortunately never came), and then he had a scheduled vet appointment last week (10/1) for us to do his dental & then I ended up having some chiro done on him too because of the weird shoe thing. All of these things together made for a bunch of time off. I managed to fit in a couple short lunges over the weekend and one ride on Monday, before we headed to our regularly scheduled lesson on Tuesday. I didn't have high hopes for this lesson considering he had basically 2 weeks off and a chiro session in the middle. You might think mentioning the chiro seems weird, but he always gets super... spunky  after chiro. The last 2 times, we have had to spend half of our lesson reminding him he doesn't have to show us exactly how athletic he can be with his hind end over ever...