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 ...

I'm not sure many people followed this blog before, and I'm sure after a year+ hiatus, there is almost no one who will be reading it now. But I've always enjoyed keeping up on Instagram or blogging as my own personal diary to look back on over time anyways, and I think now is a good time to get back into it. That being said, who knows if I'll be able to keep up on it this time, but I really hope I do. Things are different in almost every possible way since I last wrote on this blog.  In early 2020, Banner was still my main mount, Charmer was just barely coming back into work, and covid was just beginning. Early that year, I lost my long time trainer and good friend when she moved back home to Oregon. I still am lucky enough to see her intermittently since then, but seeing her once every few months is definitely vastly different than weekly lessons.  An early XC school in 2021 with Charmer (Training Rolltop) I'm a little mad at myself for not blogging the last half o...

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...

I swear at some point I will actually start blogging more than once a month (if that). What a crazy month that it has been for me though! So crazy, in fact, that I will have to write more than one post on it. To kick off the post, I got to have a really fantastic experience with my barn. They went up to Thunderbird from 6/26-7/2. I have been working at the barn for the last few months and they decided last minute to take me as a groom! I rushed to get my passport together, and make sure that I had everything I would need, and we went off to Canada! This was my first experience at an A-rated jumper show, and just WOW. The atmosphere, people and horses are all fascinating to be around. It took a couple of days for me to adjust to the environment of these shows and exactly how to keep our barn running smoothly, but everyone at the barn was helpful and patient while I got the swing of things. By day 3 I was having a blast! We brought 6 horses on the trip and there just happened...

Wow! I cannot believe it has been over a month since I last posted. This post is going to be a monster, considering I am covering a big month of happenings for Charmer and I, so buckle up! First off, I audited a Karen O'Connor clinic on April 1-2, then Charmer had several weeks of his pro training before having a fun schooling show on April 22nd with one of his trainers, and then I had my first lesson on him after his 3 weeks of pro training, and then I played with Charmer over his very first cross-country jumps!! We will start off with a brief recap of the KOC clinic. This was my first time auditing a clinic from KOC, and while I have definitely heard some brutal stories about her in clinics, everyone walked away from this clinic without any tears. Karen definitely is very up front about her opinions of you, your horse, and well, basically everything. She will tell you if you are royally screwing up, and she won't let you forget it. I ended up jump crewing for her practic...