OTTB Charm

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...

Banner and I are gearing up for our last local HT of the year! If I'm being totally honest, I was 100% going to wimp out on doing the dressage/XC part of this show, and just do the show jumping. Since B was so tightly wound at our last outing, I felt like we needed some more schooling in order to make XC a positive experience for us. But Trainer sent me a text a few days after our last lesson and asked if I wanted to go cross country for our next lesson instead of another show jumping lesson (I had told her my thoughts on likely not doing cross country at this show), and I thought about it for a moment before deciding why not! I'd like to end the year on a more positive note than our last experience was (tense dressage, wild XC, lost shoe in SJ). In order to make for a (hopefully) nice, civil outing tomorrow, I have been doing lots of schooling rides at home this week focusing on brakes and reminding him he has a brain and he has to use it! He has been checking in really w...

After our little shoe incident at the last show (9/22), Banner got some time off. The first day because obviously he didn't have a shoe, the next few days because I was waiting for a brewing abscess (which fortunately never came), and then he had a scheduled vet appointment last week (10/1) for us to do his dental & then I ended up having some chiro done on him too because of the weird shoe thing. All of these things together made for a bunch of time off. I managed to fit in a couple short lunges over the weekend and one ride on Monday, before we headed to our regularly scheduled lesson on Tuesday. I didn't have high hopes for this lesson considering he had basically 2 weeks off and a chiro session in the middle. You might think mentioning the chiro seems weird, but he always gets super... spunky  after chiro. The last 2 times, we have had to spend half of our lesson reminding him he doesn't have to show us exactly how athletic he can be with his hind end over ever...

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...

At the end of my last post , we left off with Banner having ripped off his shoe, and while it is now back on, we definitely could not do our lesson on Tuesday. Originally, I was planning to just cancel that lesson, since B was clearly out of commission. But with my work schedule preventing my lesson last week, and ponies need dentals next week, so cancelling this lesson would have put me out for 3 weeks. Not the end of the world, but I also was a bit sad about missing lessons for that long. I wavered back and forth for a while on Sunday night about whether or not to cancel, and finally decided, what the heck, lets do the lesson & I'll bring Charmer! So I texted Trainer C, letting her know I would actually come, and that I was bringing Charms. He has been in off and on work for a little while, but my schedule has not been super flexible to keeping him in a program. And honestly, I tend to ride him better when I actually have a lesson or two with someone on the ground yelling a...

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 ...