OTTB Charm

Here's the post about my main man, Charmer, from the weekend with my trainer!! I'll go ahead and spoil the ending right now - he is perfect and I don't deserve him.  After where I left off with V (end of yesterday's post) I felt really disheartened when I climbed into the tack on Charmer. He's not exactly known for being the easiest  ride on XC and I sort of mentally was beating myself into a pulp for no good reason. After a good number of comments regarding my leg/balance on V, I was just really feeling like I sucked and had no business being out there. It didn't help that this year has been a complete crapshoot for me and XC and this was only my third time out on Charmer all year.  I halfheartedly warmed him up while thinking we might just not even jump anything. He came out his good ol' dragon self and I was thinking "I don't even have the energy to manage him right now, and I don't deserve to be here anyways". It wasn't a great head...

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 ...

Well over the weekend we did a couple of exciting things that I had mentioned were coming up! V & I had a lovely jump school at home on Saturday morning, before a horrendous windstorm blew in. Charms & I also flatted, but no media from that and it was a pretty boring ride overall, so this is mostly about V's adventures. And on Sunday Verge & I had our first "real" cross country school together! V is starting to feel really  confident with the 2'/2'3" stuff, which is super exciting. Of course there are still sticky moments and bumps in the road, but her natural ability and steadily increasing confidence are so much fun. She's typically not much of an over-jumper, which I actually don't mind since it means she's not typically super phased or scared of the fences, but it has made it difficult to actually determine how much scope she really has! Pretty safe to say that she's got some springs in there I think. The oxers definitely can b...

Last week, I had an opportunity to go out cross country schooling! Banner and I had a show jumping lesson earlier in the day, so I decided to bring Charmer! Its been over two years since I've brought him out, so I didn't expect much of anything for the schooling, but appreciated the opportunity to get out with him in a low pressure, mellow environment.  We arrived long before all of the others joining our group lesson, giving Charmer a fair amount of time to settle into the surroundings and let me get him all ready at my own pace. Once some of the other riders arrived, I threw Charmer on the lunge and worked on transitions and just taking in the sights at first. We moved on to roping him over a few of the smaller fences & playing in the water and popped him up and down the banks a bit! He was distracted and a touch wild but listened well for the most part and was at least jumping nicely! We got to a place where I felt like he was as focused as I could make him on the lunge ...

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...