OTTB Charm

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 ...

Well I'm nearly 2 weeks late with this post about my little schooling show with Charmer but oh well. Better late than never I suppose. Despite the fact that this show was only 12 days ago, somehow it feels like a lifetime ago as the world seems to continue to get crazier. I know we are all seeing far too many posts about all of that, so I'll try to keep this post a bit happier and away from the craziness of life for the time being. We left off in my last post with me getting Charms back into a bit of a program and jumping some little fences again. Throughout the week leading up to our final winter series show (on March 14th), Charmer and I did some nice little conditioning rides and a lot of work on getting his hind end under him and being softer in the bridle. I did pop him over a couple of fences the night before the schooling show just to make sure  that I didn't have fear of imminent death for taking him out. He popped fences like a civilized creature and remained...

Charmer has been an absolute rockstar this last week or so as I've been slowly easing him back into work. I had to move my lesson from Tuesday last week to Thursday with Banner, and it was just pretty horrendous - think temper tantrums every 5 minutes. I left on Thursday feeling pretty frustrated and discouraged, plus being super exhausted after dealing with Banner's antics for the better part of an hour and a half. After I got home, I wallowed in self pity for a few hours as I did some laundry and watched TV, and after an appropriate amount of time feeling sorry for myself about how miserable our lesson had been, I finally picked myself up and went outside to go play with Charmer. The day was lovely, nearly 50* and super sunny, so I felt guilty if I let the lovely weather pass me by. It was a pretty good thing it was so nice outside, or I would've probably passed up going out. My poor property is still mildly a swamp from having basically a week straight of rain, bu...

Last year, I got a bit swept away with Banner about showing and lessons and moving up and improving my riding. Which don't get me wrong, I love  that we improved so much and accomplished so much last year! But unfortunately time seemed to run away from me last year, and my sweet Charms was put on the back burner. It was really no fault of his own, but I needed to work through some of my riding baggage and Banner helped me do that. I would pull Charmer out for a few days every so often to lunge or ride, and don't get me wrong, he got groomed and I stuffed him full of cookies every day or two. He wasn't ignored by any means, but we just didn't get much of anything done under saddle in 2019. Despite the fact that I know  he didn't care about getting time off, I still felt (and feel) immensely guilty about it. He is very talented and I felt like I just let that go to waste for a year. Starting in 2020, I feel like I have adjusted to have some slightly better time...

Now on to the super fun stuff from the weekend - CROSS COUNTRY!!!  Our ride time again was crazy early but I was kind of happy to beat the heat (I think it hit like 97* or something on Sunday afternoon). I had to be ready to leave the start box at 7:45am. Based on our last few outings I wasn't 100% sure how that was going to work for us. I've been re-evaluating our warmup, as Banner has gotten infinitely more fit than he was last year.  B jumping the heck out of this Novice table! I decided to leave my house around 6:20, which got me at the facility around 6:40am. I was the first one on property, but that worked out totally fine for me (good parking spot!). I let Banner marinate in his new Back on Track sheet for a bit while I brushed off his legs & booted him. Then I started on the process of putting in studs. I retapped his stud holes the night before so it would be easier, but it still took me a good 15 minutes I'm pretty sure! Once we got studded, I...

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...