OTTB Charm

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...

Back in July, my husband and I picked up a dog! A super cute 4 month old GSD. He was supposed to get picked up by a family who ended up not being able to come pick him up, so he sat around while his breeders planned to market him (but didn't really, which worked out for us). Husband fell head over heels for this dog before we even met him. I kept a more level head until I met him and then promptly fell hard for him! Meet Radar! He was definitely underweight when we first got him (he was in a home with 5 other dogs and I think was getting pushed out of his food), but we have definitely fixed that. He went from about 25lbs when we first bought him to over 50lbs now! I have only ever owned little dogs during my lifetime, and the last 2 were Dachshunds at that (they both live with my parents). If you've never met a Dachshund, let me just tell you - they are stubborn little suckers. LOVE my little dogs, but their obedience is always contingent on whether or not they  fee...