livin' the dream

Since my time in Rochester during college, I have loved OTTBs deeply. We had a barn full of them up there, and since the lesson horses topped out at 2'6 as a rule, my trainer A kept it interesting for me (I was braver back then haha) by giving me "project" horses to get going in the program. The jumps stayed the same but the horses were greener and more complicated.

we can look v serious with 2' jumps

After two OTTB projects (Lad and Ellie Mae) I was hooked. Those two were each very different creatures, sure, but I felt like I understood them both and enjoyed the work with them very much.

bc jumping is fun!

So I became fairly convinced my first horse should be off the track. And I kinda figured I'd get something that had already been re-started. When the day finally came last fall where I could actually commence shopping for my first horse ever, I shopped accordingly.

But I also stayed open-minded to doing the re-starting myself with the right horse. And as you all already know, I found that horse in Charlie.

tho since green horses will be green, sometimes it's a different ride every time haha

And I am just having so much fun with him in this whole re-starting process. Really truly. He actually reminds me a lot of Lad in some ways* (follow the above link for photographic evidence, which makes me happy bc I seriously <3'd that horse), and he's just a genuine good boy.

(*tho Lad was all heart, whereas Charlie is much more cerebral. Charlie's got heart for sure, but he's a thinker first and foremost)

wheeeeee canter <3

Of course anyone who has been reading along for any length of time also knows that I suffer from faltering confidence on occasion. It's been an ongoing issue since getting back into the saddle after taking 4 years off post college. And it's why this blog is titled 'Fraidy Cat Eventing, vs anything like "Totally Got My Shit Together Eventing."

and sometimes we make it into AND out of a line all in one piece. #learning

The lack of confidence has nothing to do with the latest horse to be featured on this blog, Charlie (Who will hopefully be the headlining star for a long time to come!). But it remains ever present.

he's a good horse, guys

I remind myself of this often, by looking back at old (and very old) blog posts where I write about this same topic. Who remembers the jump of doom? Or my flimsy bravado going into Isabel's and my first ever cross country in a three phase event?

Or when I wrote at the onset of the following 2015 season about how the tides were finally turning? And of course that year eventually proved to be our swan song in many ways, but I digress...

can we take a moment to appreciate this tail tho? it's very different from izzy's, but it truly has a character and flow of its own. and is goddamn majestic. also i maybe bought this horse for his hair.... #justsayin

The point here, if there is one, is that confidence just kinda ebbs and flows. For me, it is highly dependent on routine. I'm at my best when things feel normal. Mundane. Run of the mill. I know what's up, and I know what to expect. If I can make a thing feel like it's no big deal, eventually it becomes self fulfilling prophecy.

As such, I flourished in a routine that included two jump lessons a week. My hope is to return to that, tho logistics are still an issue. We'll see.

i also appreciate his heart

For now, my weekly dose of Trainer P is a shot in the arm, every time. Charlie is BEGGING to do bigger and badder and better things with his time, and she's more than willing to set up some fun stuff for him. He's got this jump thing figured out and is Gung Ho!

and generally he's just pretty darn fun. we are very uneven right now.... but we are feeling it out. he's gonna be really good.

I'm..... still playing catch up a little bit. And found myself a couple times in our recent lesson with trainer P, an unexpected but coveted(!) private, begging her not to "scare me" by putting the jumps up. She only kinda acquiesced by making her oxers swedish instead of putting them up as much as she (and Charlie) would have liked.

homeboy finds this stuff pretty easy, even when he's still learning the footwork

And she took me to task a fair bit for not riding like I know how. I'm still struggling to find that balance between "allowing" and "guiding" such that I'm riding the horse forward, but not goosing him. The issue is that the horse is quiet...... sure.... but he also has an EASY 14' stride. I've.... never consistently ridden something like this before.

And my cues for opening him up are in serious need of calibration haha, bc he does not need the volume I'm giving him. When I think I'm asking for an inch of go, he hears me asking for a foot. So.... ya know. I need to chill a little bit lol.

extensive warm up video here

So all of our lessons right now focus on getting me to simmer down, relax, and ride the horse. And the horse is just SO GOOD. We struggled a fair bit (you're going to see a LOT of missed distances and a couple knocked rails in both of these videos) but it just feels like growing pains.

Often I felt like the horse was making mistakes when trainer P (who is very honest about who needs to learn which lesson) attributed the mistake to my riding. So I just gotta keep working.

ahhhhh <3 him

We started with a typical warm up by figure-8-ing around the outside line jumps, then practiced over each of the lines in the arena (two 42' diagonals for 3; an outside in 5-6; and another diagonal in 4-5, plus an end jump and inside single). That's all in the warm up video above, which felt like it went pretty well.

schooling all the elements together in courses included in this video

Things fell apart a little bit when we put it all together into courses, so we ended up running through the course twice then each individual element again after, just to really solidify each piece. And it was good. Tough. Mostly rider issues. But good.

Plus trainer P had threatened to add in the barrels at the end, and when we absolutely nailed the outside line on our last attempt, I said "I think we ought to be finished on that!"

Haha. Hahaha. No. Trainer P said no to that noise. Obviously. Her point being: the horse is a little bored with this height. He's got it figured out. He's 17h+ and the jumps are 2'3. That's not exactly calculus. He wants something to jump and trainer P was determined to give it to him.

the greenest packer there ever was

So we practiced the barrels, which topped out at 2'5, our biggest height together so far. Obvi the horse was fine. Casual, even, haha.

Charlie can't yet exactly be described as a "packer" -- no he's a little green for that yet -- but if I play my cards right, he's gonna get there. Yesssss. I'm already excited haha.

Do you like your horses to be packers? Or have you always gravitated toward the green or complicated? Or some combination thereof, depending on the whens whys and whats? Do you bond with your horse's personality and figure out the skills later, or do you look for a skills player that you'll ultimately get to know in time?