OTTB Charm

Yesterday, I said goodbye to Wonder. I haven't had enough time for 3 horses, and something had to give. I had been toying with the idea of selling him for a little while, but hadn't really fully committed. I lightly marketed him on ISO Facebook posts, but didn't really expect much, if anything, to come out of it. Luckily, I was wrong! The perfect home just happened to come up within a week of me beginning to market him. My all-time favorite photo with him A family reached out to me, interested in him for their 15yo daughter. She loves thoroughbreds, but their current horse is needing to be retired. She can get anxious over fences, so she needs a horse that doesn't feed off of her anxiety. I was happy to have them out to see Wonder, but I really wasn't sure how he would be with someone that young, and with some anxiety when jumping. It turns out that he is a perfect  match for her. He is steady and quiet in all the ways she needs him to be, but he listens and ...

I've been so consistently busy and stressed out lately, that I just keep putting off my rides. Finally this week, I told myself to stop . I pulled out my tack, set it out and was determined to fit in a ride. First, on Wednesday, I pulled Charmer out. I spent a while grooming, because he is starting to shed. Then we got all tacked up and headed into the arena. I forgot about the fact that we haven't ridden since before I got jumps & a harrow and they live outside the far end of the arena. Charmer practically had a meltdown about them. This horse is never  spooky, so I don't know if it was him trying to get out of work or being legitimately concerned, but we spent most of our ride on that end making him deal with it. Love that fresh arena Once he settled, we got some good work in. But I can definitely feel how out of shape he is, mostly because he was on the forehand for most of our ride on Wednesday. Since we are both dreadfully unfit, we kept our ride to a pretty ...

Well, I am still basically doing nothing with my horses as of right now. Mostly because I am consistently working 5/6 days a week, and still finding time for school & sleep. Somehow. I barely have time to think, let alone ride. Hopefully that will change in the very  near future. Otherwise, if you don't hear from me for a few weeks, it will probably be because I died. #stressoverload Casually running away from my problems Anyways, because I am doing basically nothing with my lovely creatures, I have like 0 blog content, so I'm jumping on the Blog Hop train, and I'm going to do the two blog hops that are floating around right now. Both of them seem really fun, so I'm excited to do them! Today, I am going to do the three words blog hop, started by  Nadia . I was pretty fascinated by this topic. I use a lot of words to describe my ponies, but boiling it down to just three was really difficult. Charmer Maybe handsome should be one of my words. Intuiti...

So first off, I would like to throw out there, that Saturday was freaking 62*. Sixty-two, y'all. It's February. Apparently Idaho missed the memo that we are supposed to have 6 more weeks of winter (not that I'm complaining)! It was so warm that even my clipped pony got to hang out without a blanket all afternoon. And everyone basked in the warm sunlight for a while (including me!). Enjoying his new life! Charmer is looking SO GOOD - look at that shine I spent most of the afternoon just hanging out in the pasture, snapping some photos and just enjoying life with my ponies.  So back to other news, I have put the first 3 rides on Wonder! Each ride has quickly gotten better and I ask just a little bit more from him each time. Nothing out of his ability for sure, but just one little bit more. He fits in all of Charmer's tack, except his bridle/bit. Charmer has a huge face, and Wonder has a petite face, so Wonder has kind of a Frankenbridle put together of ...

To me, the most fascinating thing about working with, or getting, a new horse is all the "firsts" you get with them. Everything is new, and you are constantly learning more about your horse with every interaction. Over the last handful of days, I have gotten some really fun insight into how Wonder works, and how he thinks. The #1 thing that I have noticed, is that he always seems to want to do the right thing. He seems to have very minimal training though, so he doesn't know what the right thing is. And he has the attention span of a gnat. However, he is friendly, and always wants to come over to you in the pasture. He is less of a fan of getting caught, but is always game for a scratch and cuddle. He leads well, but tends to be a little pushy about wanting to go where he wants to go, and as fast as he wants to get there. Poor kid was a little miffed that I shut that down really quick. Also, I have found that Wonder will do anything   for a peppermint. I mean an...

So for any of you that follow me on Instagram, you have probably seen the new face that has graced my feed. Yep, I picked up another horse. Apparently I'm crazy (although I believe that was already established...). Anyways, I have been looking for a second horse to be a buddy to Charmer for a little while now. I made a very casual ISO post in some local forums, and got tons of responses. I pursued a couple of them halfheartedly, one I was very interested in but didn't work out, and then finally a cute little OTTB. I wanted to find something that was in my area, and cheap. Since Charmer is my main horse, and I have no intention of changing that anytime soon, I had minimal requirements for a second horse. I went through lots and lots of Facebook messages, but most of the horses just weren't right. I pursued one pretty eagerly, but it just didn't end up working out. For about a week, I was conversing with a really nice lady who lived about 5.5 hours away from me. She h...