OTTB Charm

This weekend, our local barn hosted their first ever true schooling HT. It was a 2-day show, with dressage & SJ on Saturday, and XC on Sunday. Banner and I signed up to do the Beginner Novice! Our dressage test was mid-morning, and there was a storm threatening all day on Saturday. It was definitely brisk, and it was getting to a few of the horses, but Banner came out true to his unicorn status and warmed up like a champ. We are working on improving his transitions, and he gave me some of his best yet to date. His downwards tend to be a bit abrupt, and his upwards tend to start in the front with his back legs struggling to catch up, but on Saturday we got most of our transitions in great form - fluid and smooth! He stayed relaxed and rhythmic in our test and gave me some great work. Our upward canter transitions could have been better, and our free walk could have been stretchier, but I was pleased with our test, and excited about the fact that I still think we have so mu...

Charmer has officially been in this world for an entire 8 years today! In order to celebrate a very happy birthday to my favorite hunk of a horse, I decided to share 8 of my favorite photos with him! This horse has been such an incredible blessing in my life. He makes me laugh and smile on both my best and my worst days. He makes my life so much better, and I can only hope I do the same for him. Happy 8th Birthday, Charmer! Here's to many, many more together!! 💓

If that isn't the cutest photo you've ever seen, then you are lying. This is a picture of Charmer packing around an adorable little 2 year old girl. What you can't see in this photo is the giant smile on her face (and mine). This last weekend, I invited a few families from my church over to the house for dinner, and I expanded it to be an evening with "pony" rides for the kids. Charmer had almost 2 weeks off prior to this (stupid busy schedule!), and all I had the chance to do that afternoon was a quick 10 minute lunge session. He came out great for the lunge, and was super respectful and stretchy on the line. Since he was being so good and my schedule was jam packed, I threw him back out in the pasture. Fast forward to about 3 hours later, the families began to arrive and so I pulled out Charmer & his tack and gave him a quick brush and tacked him up super fast. He was great for that. I then pulled out a bunch of small carrot chunks that I had chopped...

This weekend, I got the pleasure of my Aunt coming into town. She was coming to see the family, but she also loves horses. Oh and she is an awesome photographer. I hope you see where this is going. I was thrilled to have her in town to begin with, but doubly thrilled when I realized she brought her fancy camera! Finally some new media! The timing was perfect, because I also got Charmer clipped this weekend and it made him look a lot nicer in the photos! Clearly we are both a little out of shape, but I loved getting some media anyways! He warmed up the best he has in a long time - soft, relaxed, pleasantly forward, and he was moving off of my right leg really well (we have been struggling with this for a while now). Knocked his laterals out of the park, and didn't go to pull on me or buck more than one time. I even got to pull out a bunch of new outfit stuff for both of us! Our OTTB Identity shirt, newest Piper breeches, new Majyk Equipe boots & new Nunn Finer fig...

Charmer has lived at my house for about a month now, and it has been absolutely amazing. He loves living on a nearly 2 acre pasture for most of the time, and is more than happy to be ridden in our arena, or climb on the trailer for lessons and shows. I gave him nearly 3 weeks off when he first moved to our property because we were working on making the arena ready to be ridden in - pulling weeds, getting a drag, etc. Once the arena was finally done, I climbed up on my horse (which was a little comical, as we don't have a mounting block yet, so I wandered around trying to find something tall enough to use as a mounting block for the day). As we were walking around the arena, the horses in our pasture come galloping  over, and I was sure Charmer was going to have a full blown meltdown. Wrong. He lazily flicked an ear in their direction and went right back to work. Even halfway through our ride, the neighbors' horses decided to start screaming and running because ohmygosh there ...