I was a working student for Carol Lavell when I graduated from college. For those who don’t know Carol, not only is she a member of that very elite club of American riders who’ve placed fourth individually at the Olympic Games, but she also studied chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. To say that Carol is brilliant would be a colossal understatement.

That brilliance carries over into her teaching and in the way she thinks about riding. I remember feeling so overwhelmed in my lessons with her back then—she sees everything and asks for a reason behind every aid I apply. Why did I take back on the left rein just there? What effect should it have had? Did it have that effect? Now what are you going to do about it? She operates at an incredible level.

At the time that level of instruction was wasted on me. I couldn’t appreciate that level of precision, didn’t yet realize the level of finesse required to ride at the international Grand Prix level. I’ve trained and shown several horses up the levels since, and each one has made me more subtle, more sophisticated in my approach.

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After nine months of rest, rehab, surgery and lots of anxiety, Danny took a big step forward in his return to work—he was cleared to go back under saddle! He’ll walk for four weeks, to build up the topline muscle that disappeared post-colic surgery, before we begin trotting and cantering as rehab from the leg injury he sustained last spring.

Along this long road, I’ve gotten to play with some great rehab techniques, both old and new, to get Danny to where we are today: happy, healthy, and rebuilding.

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The horses have settled into Florida, and we’re up and running. I have four amateur clients with me, with competition ambitions from training level to Grand Prix. Puck is working beautifully, day by day wrapping his head around the fact that my leg ain’t goin’ nowhere and accepting this as his lot in life. Danny is back under saddle, spending a month walking to rebuild muscle, as well as walking 30 minutes, four days a week on the super-cool water treadmill. Life is getting back to normal.

But Wellington is anything but normal. Thousands of horses come to this little town every year. There are a dozen tack shops, half a dozen feed stores. The art everywhere—on the sidewalks, on the walls of the coffee shops and restaurants, even at the gym—is horses. This is the holy land.

And this has also been my winter home for eight of the last 11 years, so I know my way around a bit. Should you find yourself down Wellington way, here’s a few places to make sure you visit.

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There’s a lexicon to dressage. Connection, suspension, swing: These are words that have a very specific horsey, and dressage-y, context that we dressage trainers throw around and make it sound like we’re speaking Swahili, such that a layman might not grasp our meaning.

And coming to an understanding of those terms, from the beginning of one’s riding career to the point of mastery, takes a long time, a lot of feel and even a constant evolution.

One of my students just yesterday said to me, basically, “Oh my gosh, I thought I understood what you meant by sit down and put your leg on, but it’s so much more than I’d thought!” She’s a lifelong rider, now right on the brink of Grand Prix. We never finish learning Swahili.

But one of the biggest and most important concepts to grasp is that of being “on the bit.” Doesn’t that just mean pulling my horse’s head down? Funnily enough, it’s a little more complicated than that. I don’t think I can nail it, perfectly and succinctly, in one blog. But if you all will allow, let me wax philosophical (because it’s what dressage trainers do) about this oft-used but ill-understood basic tenant of the dressage horse.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!