OTTB Charm

It's been a busy last couple of months in the circus my life. The boys and I have gotten into a routine again - a solid 4+ rides per week schedule for both of them. And I finally dragged our sorry butts out to lessons. Wonder has had two lessons, one with each one of our trainers. He won them both over with his brave, cute little movement and good brain. I was a little rusty, and suffering from "rogue left hand syndrome" at first, but I'm getting back to the rhythm of things. Charmer and I had a lesson with S and she changed some of our tack and absolutely revolutionized  our ride. We got back to jumping 2'6"/2'9" comfortably with her help. Good trainers are life changing! The week after all of our lessons, I put all of our training to use at home. Wonder is learning to accept and seek the contact while staying forward on the flat. In the moments where he gets it, I get a fantastic glimpse into the horse he will become in time! I worked with Cha...

I have like 4 blog posts that I should be writing, but finals weeks and life got the better of me, and so I have been totally slacking on the blog front. Ponies are both doing great though, and Charmer just got a well-deserved and much-needed chiropractic appointment, following a brief lameness on his RF (now fine). The semester is over, finally! And with it ending, comes a little more time for riding and pony things. In the meantime, I ended up upgrading my boys' ride. Say hello to my new trailer! I've been wanting to upgrade for a while now, but had some pretty specific parameters, and could not for the life of me find what fit. Then I just happened to be driving through the Home Depot parking lot and saw this trailer hooked up, with a for sale sign on it! I couldn't believe my luck! Checked it out and sure enough it is perfect. It just got delivered last night! It is a 2002 Charmac, 3H gooseneck, max height & width, with a small sleeping quarters up front an...

Charmer has officially been in this world for an entire 8 years today! In order to celebrate a very happy birthday to my favorite hunk of a horse, I decided to share 8 of my favorite photos with him! This horse has been such an incredible blessing in my life. He makes me laugh and smile on both my best and my worst days. He makes my life so much better, and I can only hope I do the same for him. Happy 8th Birthday, Charmer! Here's to many, many more together!! 💓

If that isn't the cutest photo you've ever seen, then you are lying. This is a picture of Charmer packing around an adorable little 2 year old girl. What you can't see in this photo is the giant smile on her face (and mine). This last weekend, I invited a few families from my church over to the house for dinner, and I expanded it to be an evening with "pony" rides for the kids. Charmer had almost 2 weeks off prior to this (stupid busy schedule!), and all I had the chance to do that afternoon was a quick 10 minute lunge session. He came out great for the lunge, and was super respectful and stretchy on the line. Since he was being so good and my schedule was jam packed, I threw him back out in the pasture. Fast forward to about 3 hours later, the families began to arrive and so I pulled out Charmer & his tack and gave him a quick brush and tacked him up super fast. He was great for that. I then pulled out a bunch of small carrot chunks that I had chopped...

This weekend, I got the pleasure of my Aunt coming into town. She was coming to see the family, but she also loves horses. Oh and she is an awesome photographer. I hope you see where this is going. I was thrilled to have her in town to begin with, but doubly thrilled when I realized she brought her fancy camera! Finally some new media! The timing was perfect, because I also got Charmer clipped this weekend and it made him look a lot nicer in the photos! Clearly we are both a little out of shape, but I loved getting some media anyways! He warmed up the best he has in a long time - soft, relaxed, pleasantly forward, and he was moving off of my right leg really well (we have been struggling with this for a while now). Knocked his laterals out of the park, and didn't go to pull on me or buck more than one time. I even got to pull out a bunch of new outfit stuff for both of us! Our OTTB Identity shirt, newest Piper breeches, new Majyk Equipe boots & new Nunn Finer fig...

I've been so consistently busy and stressed out lately, that I just keep putting off my rides. Finally this week, I told myself to stop . I pulled out my tack, set it out and was determined to fit in a ride. First, on Wednesday, I pulled Charmer out. I spent a while grooming, because he is starting to shed. Then we got all tacked up and headed into the arena. I forgot about the fact that we haven't ridden since before I got jumps & a harrow and they live outside the far end of the arena. Charmer practically had a meltdown about them. This horse is never  spooky, so I don't know if it was him trying to get out of work or being legitimately concerned, but we spent most of our ride on that end making him deal with it. Love that fresh arena Once he settled, we got some good work in. But I can definitely feel how out of shape he is, mostly because he was on the forehand for most of our ride on Wednesday. Since we are both dreadfully unfit, we kept our ride to a pretty ...

Those freshly groomed arena feels 😍😍😍