OTTB Charm

On my "Facebook Memories", it showed that, two years ago today, I bought Pancho. I can hardly believe it has been two years. It both feels like it was yesterday, but also like it was an eternity ago. At the time when I was offered to buy Pancho, I had been exercise riding him for about two and a half months, and had fallen in love with him. I loved his crooked blaze, and cheek "dimples", even his little white sock and stripey hoof. I loved his funny quirks, like always having to show off his teeth, needing a routine (down to the point of even being tied in the same spot), preferring to do some canter work before real trot work, and  always  taking the long spot. I fell in love with everything about Pancho. So I jumped at the opportunity when he was offered to me. So on January 4th, 2015, I bought my very first horse. Pancho was a dream come true for me. In his younger days, he had been a Prelim event horse, and regularly competitive in 3'6" show jump...

I have really been enjoying these review posts on everyone else's blog, so I figured I would jump on the bandwagon. First outside ride First jump school We kicked off the year, in January , with typical frozen ground and no riding area. So it started out with indoor flatting rides. The last week or so of January, our outdoor finally thawed enough to ride out there (yay!). We got one simple w/t/c flatwork session outside, and then our first outdoor jump school of the year! It was actually our first real jump school outside ever, since my injury forced a long delay from jumping, and by the time we started, it was too frozen to do anything outside. With February , came more thawed ground and outside rides, but a very fresh and forward pony. Around this time is when he began to learn he had this fun move called a "buck". I pushed through lots of physical issues and mental blocks and really tried to better myself as a rider, and teach...

The other day, I worked on creating our 2017 Goals . One of those goals for me is to get Charmer to be a nice horse, while bridleless, at the walk, trot and canter. Good ol' bridleless fun with Pancho I am a firm believer that you always need to find something fun to do with your horse in order to break up the monotony of consistently practicing for your sport, or you and your horse will both get burned out or bored. For a lot of people, that takes the shape of trail riding. That one time I took Charmer on a trail ride For me, trail rides are definitely not my idea of fun. Too much space, and I overthink the things that could go wrong. I am not one of the people that can calmly drop the buckle and let my horse wander around on a loose rein on a trail ride. I have done it before with certain horses, but on Charmer. They are no fun. Do not be fooled by the smile Especially because Charmer also does not  enjoy trail rides. He gets overwhelmed by the amount of...