OTTB Charm

I'm pretty much the world's worst blogger, and I'm just owning it at this point, but I've had media from our outing with my trainer that was 3 weeks ago and didn't get around to posting it. Oops. I really intended to, but my dad, husband and I went on a week long trip right after my clinic. It was so fun, incredibly healing, and a great respite from life. Then I got back and went into full swing on my "new" job. I've off and on been working for my vet for nearly a year, but of course with all the things that had happened with my mom, I couldn't be 100% there. Now, I'm working with them more regularly and getting trained on the phone system which has been a big learning curve but an awesome experience. So anyways, blog got backburned again (big shock) but I do have some fun stuff to write about, even if its a little late.  Today's post is for my lil chestnut lady, and tomorrow we will follow up with Charm's weekend as well. Two posts in ...

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...

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...

This weekend brought around another one of our local schooling shows! I entered Banner in at Novice again, as he definitely needs more & more practice doing that level. He is laughably bored at BN, but still just a bit intimidated by some of the Novice questions, so its a great learning experience for him each time we get out. In our recent show jumping lessons with Trainer C, we have finally unlocked a new level with Banner. He is finally feeling confident & schooled enough at the 3' level that I need to stop "helping" him as much (okay, lets be real, I need to stop micromanaging him). It is super  hard for me to learn to just almost sit there in a supportive role for him. I do my part, trying to set him up well & give him a fair chance to make a good decision, but now I need to let him take some of the responsibility. Banner is loving this new balance we have struck. When I finally stopped fidgeting with him as much, you could almost hear him sigh ...

Heading into day 2, Banner & I were sitting in 1st place! But to be honest, I had no expectation of keeping that placing or anything, and I was not worried about the placing we got at this show. Right now at Novice, XC is sort of our weakest phase. Banner eats up the galloping fences (rolltops, tables, steeplechase, etc.), but some of the tougher questions (1/2 coffins, trakehners, etc.) still back him off a bit at this height. Unfortunately for the barn that puts on these shows, their tractor broke, which didn't allow them to move any of the XC fences, so our cross country course was the same as it was in July . Part of me thought "whomp whomp..." because this didn't mean really any new lines or new challenges (they did add one up bank out of water, but that was it). But then I thought about it and actually this was perfect! I knew the mistakes I made last time and we had done some XC schools to improve our weird ditch issue. The course being exactly the s...