OTTB Charm

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...

We had our final show of our local barn series this weekend! Saturday was supposed to be Dressage & Cross Country. The forecast for the week had not been boding well for Saturday all week, so on Thursday, they decided to call off the activities on Saturday. They didn't want to tear up the nice footing that we have the pleasure of having at the cross country field. I have never in my life been so happy to have a show called off as I was when I woke up on Saturday morning. It was pouring  rain, with an  intense  windstorm, and we even got some hail! I could not imagine having attempted to ride in that weather. Especially not running XC on a fit thoroughbred with 30+mph winds. That is the stuff of nightmares people. Sunday was still show jumping day! Unfortunately the massive amount of rain that came down the day before made for lots of slop in the rings, but a large percentage of the riders that attend these shows are eventers of various levels, so we braved the mucky...

Back in July, my husband and I picked up a dog! A super cute 4 month old GSD. He was supposed to get picked up by a family who ended up not being able to come pick him up, so he sat around while his breeders planned to market him (but didn't really, which worked out for us). Husband fell head over heels for this dog before we even met him. I kept a more level head until I met him and then promptly fell hard for him! Meet Radar! He was definitely underweight when we first got him (he was in a home with 5 other dogs and I think was getting pushed out of his food), but we have definitely fixed that. He went from about 25lbs when we first bought him to over 50lbs now! I have only ever owned little dogs during my lifetime, and the last 2 were Dachshunds at that (they both live with my parents). If you've never met a Dachshund, let me just tell you - they are stubborn little suckers. LOVE my little dogs, but their obedience is always contingent on whether or not they  fee...

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 Banner & I participated in another one of our local schooling shows! We decided to enter the Novice HT round + a couple of 3'0" show jump rounds. Saturday morning bright and early, we pulled out of our driveway (sometime around 6:30am?) and headed off to the show. Our ride time for dressage was around 7:45am, so I managed to get tacked up & on him by 7:10am. We got some good warmup time in the nice arena which is technically the jump ring warmup, but the footing is better there, so I wanted to spend more time there than in the dressage area. We headed over to dressage at 7:30 and of course we were already a couple of minutes behind schedule, but it kicked off pretty well after that. I forgot to fly spray his ears and there were a lot of gnats, so I lost some focus once we got over to the dressage arena unfortunately, but Banner was still mostly a good boy. I forgot how stupid deep the footing is in that dressage arena and so I decided to just...

After our April show, showing 3' for the first time ever as a pair, Trainer and I decided to set up a cross country schooling day! Banner is consistently brave, bold and smart over fences now, so we wanted to take him out XC and see how he felt! The weather had been lovely around this time - a gorgeous 70-75* with just the right amount of breeze and sun. Absolute perfect  riding weather. And then our cross country schooling was coming up... Two days before it was a beautiful, sunny 75*. The day before it was about 63* and a little breezy, but mostly comfortable. The day of? 55* and 15mph winds. Awesome   weather for bringing a super fit, bold TB out on their first XC school in 6 months, right??? NOPE . We did an impressive amount of airs above ground while out that day. It was fairly disheartening for me. I knew there were a LOT of factors that went into that being a less than stellar schooling (no studs, horrible weather, firey horses around us, etc), but man I scho...

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...