flower smelling champions

Spring is well and truly here in Maryland. Trees are blossoming, horses are naked and shedding like crazy, blankets are getting sent off for cleaning, and allergies are intense, yo.

the tiniest most perfect little violets. that charlie totally ate haha

Per my typical habits, I had a metric ton of plans going into the weekend. All more or less intended to help preparations for our planned season opener next weekend. And basically zip zero of them actually ended up happening, also per my typical ways.

I don't know if it was just the last day of cold, wet 40* weather or what, but Charlie felt quite a bit more stiff and creaky at the end of last week than I'd like. Which meant that I had an absolute meltdown ugly cry and convinced myself that my beloved dream horse would never be truly healthy adjusted all our plans to focus on getting him back to 100%.

 charlie is definitely the type B personality of our partnership haha....

This decision was helped along by discovering that my godforsaken truck battery died again. Ugh wtf. I swear I was super diligent about running the thing every week, especially during the coldest weather. But now that it's warmer I guess I missed a week or two, and boom. It's dead as a doornail.

Here's hoping I can get it jumped sometime this week, bc theoretically that battery is only a year old (bc, uh, remember last year when this happened?!? if not you should totally go back and read this bc it's pretty funny / tragic...). We'll see, I guess. It's on my to-do list for the week.

charlie loves practicing his #mountaingoatskillz

Anyway, tho. Realistically, Charlie's kinda a creaky sorta horse. Being high mileage and what have you. And considering he had basically 4 full weeks off in recent memory, it's just going to take some time to get him back to full fighting form.

But note to self: he is *not* dying. He is fine. Calm the F down, mkay?

"mmmmmm schpring flowersh"

Luckily the return of yet another 20* temperature swing brought back the warm sunshine. And everything always feels better when it's sunny and 65* haha. That, combined with a little chemical assistance (#bute4president), helped Charlie loosen right up. Thank goodness!

Tho I still opted to sit out our normal weekly jump lesson, in exchange for another magna wave session for Sir. Possibly a little overprotective haha. But whatever. If circumstances require that we sit back, be patient, and sniff the flowers.... Well, goddammit we're gonna sniff the ever loving crap out of those flowers, right?

that dandelion is totally gonna get it

Obviously I don't love feeling like we haven't had much recent practice over show jumps knowing that there's an event looming on the calendar... But.... Priorities, yo.

At this point, Charlie seems to know the game well enough to be pretty reliable over a course of jumps. It's more important that he feels good, ya know? Which, again, thankfully he does.

da-dun-da-dun-da-dun-DA-DUN

Our first event of the season (if it ever actually happens -- I make zero promises until we've actually made it to the start box haha!) is really just intended to be glorified schooling anyway. I would like to produce a reasonably representative dressage test.... but honestly am not super optimistic, ya know?

Mostly I just want to get out there and go through the motions. Do the things. Strap on a pinny and ride across a full xc course without dissolving into a full blown panic attack, or doing anything to majorly screw my horse up. The bar, I am setting it low haha.

So we'll see how the week goes. The forecast looks really promising and the ground is good, so hopefully there will still be time to jump a couple things at some point this week. And maybe squeeze in a lesson or two, lol.

whew! crisis averted, that was a close call!

For the magna wave session, I was happy to at least talk through some conditioning and wellness type details with the practitioner, who also events, rides dressage, and breaks and trains race horses. She's kinda actually a badass haha.

She didn't really see any of the stiffness I had been worried about, but gave Charlie a really thorough treatment anyway. Which, obvi, he loved. And, also obvi, I'm excited to get to finally ride through the effects of the treatment, since he was still lame from the nail last time he got it.

speaking of growing things, it's kinda funny to me to see the little baby hairs growing through the alushield on charlie's latest shark bite haha

In particular, she walked me through some of the stretches I've been doing with Charlie, and helped me fine-tune them a little bit. Like explaining in more detail how she does the SI palpations and flexions you can see her do in this video.

For carrot stretches, she encouraged me to continue looking for lower stretches, vs twisting Charlie's neck around high. I already am pretty gentle and progressive about warming up his neck stretches bc that's a big freakin neck and I'm extremely paranoid about keeping it healthy... But it was useful to get the tip that aiming for lower points like his stifle vs his hip will actually help flex his atlas and poll better.

bc yea. it's a tough life for chuck!

She also pointed out out that his belly lifts are kinda nonexistant more bc he's a bit frozen, not bc I'm "doing it wrong." So I should just keep working on them, but make sure he's standing square when I do.

Actually, overall I should aim to keep Charlie standing square the entire time I do anything with him. He's a pretty lazy horse behind, and is almost always resting one hind or the other. And was very peeved when she persisted in making him stand up for the whole magna wave treatment.

But ya know. Her point was: he's got 23 hours a day to stand however he pleases. But for the 1 hour or whatever that I have influence over his posture? I should take advantage of helping him be straighter.

suffering beastie haha

That makes a lot of sense to me, and is an easily actionable nugget of wisdom haha. So yea. Stretching was the name of the game for this weekend. On the ground and under saddle in our post-treatment rides (in which he felt like one million dollars, btw).

Not quiiiiiite as cool as xc schooling or jumping all the things. But quite possibly more productive for Charlie's purposes haha. All the rest will probably come later, right? At least, if I can get that godforsaken chevy running again lol....

Did anyone else have plans go awry this weekend, for whatever reasons?