OTTB Charm

Sometimes I notice myself forget why I got into this sport in the first place. That pure, unadulterated love of the horse. The grin you get from ear to ear when you see your favorite horse hang his head over the stall door. Those little things. It is so easy to get caught up on your next big goal or how you want to advance in the sport and not be grateful for how far you've come and what you've accomplished. In September of 2018, I took Charmer to his last show of the year (I was bad and didn't blog it - whoops!). Since I first owned him in July of 2015, he has never gotten very much time off. Usually nothing more than a few weeks here and there. With the entrance of Banner into my life last year I finally had another horse to focus on and compete on, so I decided to give Charmer some time off. I actually gave him the better part of 6 months completely off (I think in the course of that 6 months I rode him maybe 3-4 times total?). He definitely lost some topline over...

For anyone that follows me on Instagram, they probably have already seen this, but unfortunately my farrier passed away suddenly last weekend. Needless to say, I am utterly devastated . I don't have really any great photos of my farrier, but he was one of the kindest people that I have ever met. Someone said it well on his Facebook page, "Mike never met a stranger". And he really didn't! He was the guy that would walk up to your first appointment and just start chatting with you like you'd been friends for years. I know that because that is exactly what he did at my first appointment with him. Mike always walked up with a twinkle in his eye, a never ending smile, and a skip in his step. His joy was infectious & his laughter filled the room. Charmer has typical, crappy thoroughbred feet and Mike always kept him wonderfully sound. Mike looked like the very typical old cowboy when he walked up and he always had this gentle, confident way about him. He...

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...

Yep, it is a full week after Halloween, and about 10 days since this show happened, but I am just now blogging about it because life. And better late than never, right??? So every year, for the final show that my barn puts on, they make it a Halloween show! The highlight of the day is a costume contest and high jump class. I prepared Banner and I's costume at least a month in advance, but we will get to that in a moment! To kick the day off, we just popped around a couple 2'9" courses. With only a week in between our Karen O'Connor clinic, and this show, he was definitely a bit more on the tired side. Not so much so that I felt bad entering him, but he just was ever so slightly less thrilled about everything than his normal self. We had quite a nice warmup and he was feeling pretty forward and solid, so we headed over to the ring and went in. Jump one, two and three felt really smooth, but the line from #3 to #4 was a bending 6 stride into jumps #4 &...

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...

So at the end of my last post, I mentioned giving Banner a few  well deserved days off. I fully intended to give him like 4-5 days off and then launch into some work. LOL. He got nearly 2 weeks off. But we did stay semi-productive in that time - I bribed him into still liking my presence with many, many  cookies, he had a chiropractic adjustment by our vet (and wow did that make a difference!!), and he got his fall vaccines & teeth floated. Phew. I do actually ride sometimes though First: His chiropractor appointment. Banner has this strange tendency under saddle to hold his hindquarters to the right, and fairly significantly to the right at that! Apparently this has been common for him for a very long time, since I mentioned it to a trainer who hadn't ridden him since May of 2017 , and even she was like "oh yeah, he still does that annoying thing with his haunches?". Instantly, when I realized this was an ongoing issue with him (not just a me problem or an ou...