OTTB Charm

Well I'm nearly 2 weeks late with this post about my little schooling show with Charmer but oh well. Better late than never I suppose. Despite the fact that this show was only 12 days ago, somehow it feels like a lifetime ago as the world seems to continue to get crazier. I know we are all seeing far too many posts about all of that, so I'll try to keep this post a bit happier and away from the craziness of life for the time being. We left off in my last post with me getting Charms back into a bit of a program and jumping some little fences again. Throughout the week leading up to our final winter series show (on March 14th), Charmer and I did some nice little conditioning rides and a lot of work on getting his hind end under him and being softer in the bridle. I did pop him over a couple of fences the night before the schooling show just to make sure  that I didn't have fear of imminent death for taking him out. He popped fences like a civilized creature and remained...

I've got some stuff to blog about with Banner, but for now the spotlight is still on Charmer, so Banner's posts will be coming up later this week. Bringing Charmer back into work has quite honestly been such a joy for me. He's a lot of horse, and there's no denying that, but he is quite athletic and I have a connection with him that I'm not sure I've ever felt with any other horse. His back feels like "home", and I kind of always know what he's going to do even before he does it. It's a very wonderful and unique feeling that I'm appreciating even more after all the time off he got last year. I've been slowing building up his strength (as I mentioned in my last post) and working on getting him to use his body appropriately again. His baseline fitness tends to come back pretty quickly, so I've been really working on making sure he stays soft in the bridle as he gets more fit. Sort of on a whim, but not completely, I picked u...