OTTB Charm

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, the one good thing that came out of Banner's little injury and my subsequent panicking was that it finally allowed me a chance to take Charmer out to my lesson this Tuesday! I'd been trying to set up time to take him instead of Banner for a little while, but my schedule hasn't really allowed it to happen unfortunately. Photos from an unrelated jump ride at home! I've been able to keep up a reasonable amount of consistency with Charmer lately, which has been nice. And we are slowly working on improving his strength and adding in some jumps again. I have an annoying tendency to get very in my own head about riding him so I knew as we progressed, I needed to prioritize a lesson sooner rather than later so that I could get some good direction on how to improve with him. We arrived in the early afternoon Tuesday, and he was his nice calm, cool collected self on the ground. He's incredibly well mannered and handleable...

I'm definitely a few days late with this post, as I intended to make it on Monday, but oh well! Better late than never. Last Thursday (Feb 20th), I pulled Banner out as normal for a casual dressage ride. Everything seemed nice and normal until I started grooming and saw a big fat spot on his RF leg. It was super unusual swelling and definitely sent me into a wild panic. The outside of his leg looked 100% normal, but the inside had odd swelling in a place that made me fear suspensory or possibly tendon damage. I immediately called my vet in a fairly worried, but trying to stay level-headed, state and left a voicemail explaining what I saw & wanted to get her out as soon as I could fit into her schedule. Bless her, she called me back within an hour (she was in the middle of acupuncturing another horse but called as soon as she was done), and we were able to make an appointment for Friday. The plan was to keep him in his stall, wrapped overnight and see what we found the next...

Banner has been in a pretty weird funk for the last few weeks it seems. Our winter schedule is always a little lighter since I don't board anymore and therefore don't have an indoor arena. He's on a 2-4 day a week schedule depending on the weather, arena ride-ability & light. Our summer schedule is generally 5-7 days a week, so definitely a big difference! I'm not totally sure what's up with him, but I'm feeling a touch lost about it and a bit frustrated, so we are back to the mega basics for a few rides to see if I can get my happy lil pony back! I'm hoping he is just a little burned out on the tough stuff we have been working on & some light work will return him to his unicorn status.  With the days getting longer though, I've found myself with a little extra time now that my rides with Banner have been short & sweet. Its been perfect timing for continuing to bring Charms back into work. I've been trying to hit a lesson with him ...

Charmer has been an absolute rockstar this last week or so as I've been slowly easing him back into work. I had to move my lesson from Tuesday last week to Thursday with Banner, and it was just pretty horrendous - think temper tantrums every 5 minutes. I left on Thursday feeling pretty frustrated and discouraged, plus being super exhausted after dealing with Banner's antics for the better part of an hour and a half. After I got home, I wallowed in self pity for a few hours as I did some laundry and watched TV, and after an appropriate amount of time feeling sorry for myself about how miserable our lesson had been, I finally picked myself up and went outside to go play with Charmer. The day was lovely, nearly 50* and super sunny, so I felt guilty if I let the lovely weather pass me by. It was a pretty good thing it was so nice outside, or I would've probably passed up going out. My poor property is still mildly a swamp from having basically a week straight of rain, bu...