OTTB Charm

On top of the incredible turmoil of the world in general right now, I am heartbroken to learn that my trainer is moving away at the end of the month. She is moving back to her hometown to be closer to her family, as her young son grows up. And I absolutely understand her reasoning and it makes sense, but I am quite saddened by the news. Photos are from the last lesson I had with Trainer C I've had a relationship with her as a Trainer for nearly 3 years now, and she has inside knowledge of Banner (as she rode him weekly for months before I owned him). She has always been patient and kind with Charmer as well, and keeps a good sense of humor about his antics. Lately, Banner has really been kind of a pill and I was definitely planning to lean heavily on Trainer C to try to get us back to "normal", but now this has rocked my world just a bit. There's another trainer at the barn that I train at that I am also familiar with & who I love, but she is more expensi...

After our April show, showing 3' for the first time ever as a pair, Trainer and I decided to set up a cross country schooling day! Banner is consistently brave, bold and smart over fences now, so we wanted to take him out XC and see how he felt! The weather had been lovely around this time - a gorgeous 70-75* with just the right amount of breeze and sun. Absolute perfect  riding weather. And then our cross country schooling was coming up... Two days before it was a beautiful, sunny 75*. The day before it was about 63* and a little breezy, but mostly comfortable. The day of? 55* and 15mph winds. Awesome   weather for bringing a super fit, bold TB out on their first XC school in 6 months, right??? NOPE . We did an impressive amount of airs above ground while out that day. It was fairly disheartening for me. I knew there were a LOT of factors that went into that being a less than stellar schooling (no studs, horrible weather, firey horses around us, etc), but man I scho...

Well hello again blogland. I sort of dropped off the face of the earth there for a little while, but I did continue stalking blogs and keeping up with a lot of other people's journeys. I've been intending to come back on here for months now - so many fun things have been happening in my life & I have been super excited to sit down and write about them all, but for some reason I kept getting distracted. Finally, now is the time. My last post was about our Halloween show - approximately 8 months ago! Whoops. I guess time got away from me a little bit there. Lots has happened since then, and I'm excited to relive all of the memories through this post & then actually return to a semi-regular blogging schedule! Following the KOC Clinic & our Halloween show, we didn't have any big show plans on our radar, with it headed into winter, so we buckled down and got into a regular lesson program with Trainer C. Banner has this tendency to have a flat, long jum...

So, as you may have gathered from the title, I did in fact make it to the Karen O'Connor clinic this past weekend (yes I'm very late on this post...we just won't talk about that). Spoiler alert, it was amazing . Epic water shot (I've always wanted one of these) Day one was SJ work. We were in the BN group, and Banner was wonderfully bored with everything we did. Karen honed in really quickly on what everyone needed to work on, and we were no exception. Her first, and biggest note for me was that I need to get the impulsion from Banner sooner, but be a better manager, because he can quickly go from impulsion to impulsive.  Banner and I only did each exercise once, which can easily feel like you got overlooked, but I know from watching Karen several other times, that if you only do it one time, that means you did it right. I felt like we got some good notes and work, and I honestly felt awfully proud & happy that she didn't feel the need to dril...

So at the end of my last post, I mentioned giving Banner a few  well deserved days off. I fully intended to give him like 4-5 days off and then launch into some work. LOL. He got nearly 2 weeks off. But we did stay semi-productive in that time - I bribed him into still liking my presence with many, many  cookies, he had a chiropractic adjustment by our vet (and wow did that make a difference!!), and he got his fall vaccines & teeth floated. Phew. I do actually ride sometimes though First: His chiropractor appointment. Banner has this strange tendency under saddle to hold his hindquarters to the right, and fairly significantly to the right at that! Apparently this has been common for him for a very long time, since I mentioned it to a trainer who hadn't ridden him since May of 2017 , and even she was like "oh yeah, he still does that annoying thing with his haunches?". Instantly, when I realized this was an ongoing issue with him (not just a me problem or an ou...

Banner has been mine for almost a full 2 months now, and I have been loving every single moment with him. He is incredibly versatile, but so gentle at the same time. He is bringing a joy to riding that I haven't felt in years , if ever. He is easily the most trained horse out of my 3 and is always game for trying new things. Like riding tackless for the first time. And then letting me stand up on him - no big deal. I am definitely still learning how to ride him though. He is a big, huge tattletale on me when I shift or change. He will cruise along at the canter as long as I ask him to, but if I take my leg off, he breaks. We are working on our counter canter (with trainer help), and he swaps leads if I shift my weight by an ounce. He is forgiving and awesome over fences and is teaching me a lot, but he requires a correct ride! *photos are just from a random home ride, not our lesson* In order to try to improve my own riding and give him the ride that he deserves, ...

Last weekend, I went to a local schooling show for the first time this year! I missed several of them with the excuse "it's early in the year, I'll hit the next one". Then all of a sudden we were halfway through the year and I still hadn't gotten out at all! I decided to take Charmer and Banner to the show. Poor Wonder got left at home, but he ended up not seeming too bothered by it. When I signed up for the show, I put Banner in a 2' class & Training 2 dressage test and stuck Charmer in a 2'6" and 2'9" jump rounds, along with a 2'6" derby round on the grass. When the show schedule came out a few days prior to the show I noticed that Banner's dressage test was 8 minutes before we were supposed to do our 2' jump round. I decided that I didn't want to do that, so I texted Trainer and switched our 2' jump round to the morning 2'9" round. The way these shows work is they start at 2'9" in the mor...