sunday feel goods

Whew, happy weekend everyone. Hope it's been relaxing and fun!! I figured I'd take this chance to scroll through my recent pictures for all those sweet nice sorta in-between moments that have been happening in Charlieland lately.

the window into charlie's subterranean bank barn stall makes it perfect for introducing tiny kiddos to the big pony

I already mentioned I withdrew from Jenny Camp last month after the dressage, since I just wasn't feeling it for jumping. A friend was coming to watch with her young son, so we decided to just play ponies instead.

Which worked out well bc it was hot as blazes and I don't think the 5yo would have tolerated standing out in the oppressive midday sun while I stressed my way through the jumping phases lol.

so then said kiddos feel brave enough to pop up for a sit!!

Since I wasn't jumping tho, we got to hang around in the cooler barns introducing little R to all the horses! And obviously he wanted to climb aboard one of them too ;)

talk about a tall pony ride!!

Guys, Charlie is such a saint haha. He LOVES children - is honestly like a heat seeking missile whenever he sees the tiny little humans. It's adorable. Well, let's be real, it's adorable bc he's a horse. If he had a mustache and drove a van, you'd probably call the cops LOL. But he IS a horse, so it IS very cute.

charlie was concentrating so hard on his kiddo, he takes this job very seriously <3

The pony ride didn't really advance more than a step or two beyond the mounting block bc it is a pretty high seat up there lol, and the kid got a little nervous when Charlie shifted his weight to cock a hind leg. Still tho. So cute, omg. 

he's obsessed with ponies and kiddos

Sometimes I seriously believe Charlie was born into the wrong body haha. Like, he would LOVE to be a camp pony, having kids climbing all over him, body painting him and ooh-ing and ahh-ing over his mane and tail. Bc let's be real, this is Charlie's world and we're all just put here to entertain and adore him, right?? Lol.... <3

this is why we can't have nice things

Anyway. We've been checking off other fun little boxes lately. Like my beloved One-K defender turned 5 this year so I somewhat begrudgingly replaced it, taking advantage of the #mindyourmelon helmet awareness weekend sales recently. This time I opted for the matte finish instead of the suede, with the hope that it won't get to musty dusty looking.

what happens when you go careening through the woods spiderwebs 

Tho... uh, within like its first few rides I already messed up that "brand new" finish haha. Not even sure how I managed to get the spiderwebs from a recent trail ride to transfer to perfectly to the helmet. Maybe it's my secret superpower? Anyway, it looks like it should wipe off pretty easily but still.... womp womp lol.

charlie likes to stop to smell the flowers while i set our cavaletti exercises lol

Charlie, for his part, has been doing well. In my schooling rides lately I've been trying to do more ground pole and cavaletti work. For the last 3ish weeks I've had at least one ride per week where we set up loonnnngggg lines of trot and canter poles.

These exercises are so useful for Charlie bc he understands the poles well, and can tell if he got through them nicely or poorly without me needing to translate. So he tends to turn on his own engine and click into gear with way less nagging from me.

ground pole exercise from L Williams! blue = lines for trot AND canter, green = lines for just trot

Another bonus is that it's proving to be really useful to set the lines on diagonals or shorter turns, since it forces us to address our straightness issues.

Most recently, I set up a variation of something L Williams recently posted. It called for 10' poles so I had to overlap the edges of these 12' poles a little bit, but actually the distances still worked out just fine. Tho it meant I didn't take advantage of all the available lines.

And actually, it turned out that I placed the thing in a very poor location considering almost all of the most interesting approaches were blocked by other jumps set up in the arena. So it wasn't as versatile as I'd hoped. But was a good exercise!

where did the water go???

Mostly tho we've just kinda been chipping away at things. There's still a backlog of lessons I need to write about lol (like our latest Hilltop dressage lesson!) plus a few more coming up on the schedule. Charlie's still not feeling as keen as I'd like in the jumping tho.

Actually, part of me is starting to wonder if it's partly due to the cumulative effect of just how hard and dry the ground has been for months now. It's hard to tell, bc he's not lame in any obvious sort of way, but then again he's a big heavy horse to be pounding the ground all the time. So it's possible.

For now, tho, I'm not worrying about it (tho rain would be appreciated LOL) and instead am sorta shifting gears and expectations. We'll just cruise through the end of summer and hopefully regroup for a couple fun fall outings.

Or. Ya know. Maybe we'll just do pony rides and trail gallops instead haha. Sounds good to me, right? What about y'all, been up to anything fun and relaxing lately?