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 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...

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 ...

Sunday morning brought show jumping day! We arrived nice & early so I could give him a long warmup if he still was a bit spicy. We got tacked up quickly and wandered over to the warmup. Only 2 other people were in there, so it was pretty quiet! Banner was forward and happy to play! Not the slightly insane forward we had the day before, but a lovely, quiet forward that was so fun to ride and we got some fantastic warmup jumps with great distances! I decided to quit while it all felt awesome, so I headed over to the main ring and went over my course a few more times. It was a nice, loopy course that gave us a good amount of challenge without being too crazy. We ended up going 3rd (I wanted to watch a couple other people go around just to be able to watch the course and learn it a bit more). I gave myself a mini pep talk "do NOT micromanage him, just let him do his job!". We picked up a lovely canter and headed to the first fence, and I stuck to my plan. Square turn...

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 ...