friday foto finish

TGIF everybody!! It's chilly wet and gray around these parts right now, so let's liven things up by reliving some fun events from the last week or so, yes?

And sure... I probably could have broken this up into like three separate posts. Buuuuut.... I didn't, so, eh, enjoy lol.


Let's start with Carolina International!! I drove down to Durham last week to meet a friend, then we hustled over to Raeford to catch the Saturday and Sunday happenings at the Horse Park!


Guys..... I've been to a LOT of horse shows, and in particular a LOT of FEI events. But the Carolina Horse Park kinda stole my heart, not gonna lie.


It's super beautiful and easy to navigate, and all the jumps were wonderfully presented and decorated. Obviously, there's a ton of video if you're into that sort of thing!

Clips from the 4*, filmed on my 'good' camera lol (4:15min)

3* Clips from my cell phone (1:53min)

super short clip of Tim Bourke beasting the Modified water with Electric Quality

Also, there was live streaming --- and naturally we kinda stalked all the videos afterwards trying to spot ourselves in the background. Like normal people do.


Anyway, one of my favorite things about the horse park was that everything felt... Close. It was nbd to get back and forth to the car for snacks and refreshments throughout the day. So it was easy to stick around longer than we might have otherwise without spending a ton of cash.


All told, we saw the 3* and 4* cross country and Training show jumping on Saturday, then watched the Advanced show jumping and a bit of Modified xc on Sunday. Then headed back to Durham, where we checked out an absolutely charming new winery and did normal people things like take pictures of each other taking pictures of our wine #meta


"cool story, bro"


Anyways, tho, after all that it was a return to Charlie Mikey Land.


Wherein I yet again impulsively went at my poor beautiful horse's luscious mane with scissors, after seeing all those impeccably groomed horses at Carolina. Obvi, I missed a few spots.


"Fight me." - Charlie, probably


Oooooh I also got to try out some bargain bin QHP tendon boots I picked up at the show too!! Aren't they cute?? Definitely cheaply produced, but I like how soft and flexible they are, and the proportions are perfect for Charlie's tree trunks.


Speaking of Charlie --- it's been great to be back on a normal riding schedule. Tho, uh, the horse is fresh. As evidenced by the decidedly whacky hack I attempted the other night. Spooky shenanigans ensued -- thus the blur.


We lived to tell the tale, tho. Plus omg spring is coming!!


And obvi it's necessary to post pictures like this as proof that, yes indeed, we do go walking on hills. Often haha.


"Good angles only, please!"


But omg we also started reintroducing jumping again, too!! The last time we jumped was that fun arena xc schooling day at Loch Moy back in December, so it's been a while. Charlie feels great tho. Obvi super unfit (again, plz see actual literal photo of walking on hills as proof that we are working on it!), but pretty sound and rarin' to go.

We just dabbled with trotting this little exercise (poles set at 9' on takeoff and landing, ridden in both directions), first as a cross rail and then as a little vertical. It's simple, but good footwork stuff. Charlie was perfect, obvi. Then we cantered another little vertical off both leads a couple times and called it a day <3


So I'm feeling pretty excited and optimistic about where Charlie is right now. We've got a lot of rebuilding work ahead of us, but honestly that's part of the fun for me anyway.


We've got a few more lessons on the books with dressage trainer C in the near future (like, tomorrow omg! don't tell Charlie!), and I'm still working out what sort of jumping solutions might be available to us. We'll see. In the meantime, hope you all have a great weekend too!