I’ve ridden extensively with three of Michael Poulin’s most accomplished students—I rode with Lendon Gray all through college; I was a working student for and have an ongoing friendship with Carol Lavell, and now for almost a decade I’ve trained with Michael Barisone—but somehow I’d never ridden with Michael Poulin himself. So when the team at Barisone Dressage invited me to ride with him in a clinic, I popped Elvis on the trailer and schlepped on up, though with some trepidation.

This is a HUGELY accomplished person, and while he’s also in my educational family tree, it’s also been a long time since I’ve ridden with someone besides my regular coach. What if he’s a mean, old dinosaur? What if he’s tough on my wonderful horse, who’s going brilliantly? What if he wants to change my plan and takes the train off the tracks?

I needn’t have worried. My lessons were vastly respectful of my way with my horse, and he didn’t try and reinvent the wheel for me. He adored Elvis (let’s be real, who doesn’t?) and was tremendously kind to him and considerate of his needs and his welfare. And he was just the right amount of tough on me, with a light heart and a twinkle in his eye.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

Lauren wrote a deeply personal piece for NoelleFloyd.com, a leading equestrian lifestyle magazine, about the ups and downs of being a professional rider, and how social media can both make it seem much sunnier, and communicate truth. For more information on the Red White & Blue (Ribbon) Club, click here.

I was hiking with a friend and student of mine, an amateur rider who brought her last horse up to the FEI-level in dressage. Her next project is a young, athletic Warmblood mare who was, at the time, hissing and spitting about the application of leg, as the young and athletic Warmblood mares of the world have been known to do.

“I’d be a little panicked,” she said as we scrambled over hill and dale, “if I hadn’t known you for a decade and watched you suffer through Midge and Ella and Fender and Danny and Dorian’s five-, six-, and seven-year-old years when they were teenage dirtbags. And they all worked out. So I have faith.”

It’s a sentiment I hear often. I’ve been writing a blog for the “Chronicle of the Horse” for 10 years, a decade that has seen many a young horse come into my life, behave like a doofus for a while, then finally accept the rules of life and grow up to be a perfectly delightful international horse either for myself, an amateur, or a kid. I’ve also brought their stories out into the world through my personal blog, and at least once a week I get an email from someone who tells me that the stories of my idiot young horses growing up gives them hope for their rogue youngster. I love writing, and I’ve used the medium to share both the ups and downs of life as a dressage trainer, of which there are many.

In these internet-fueled times, where much of our time and energy is spent on social media, it’s easy to get caught in Wonderland, taking everyone’s Facebook and Instagram lives as reality. I can’t imagine how it must feel to be the average amateur rider, dealing with the frustrations and plateaus of training with their one horse on whom they focus their attention (and, accordingly, base their happiness), only to see on Facebook a pretty picture of me frolicking on Elvis in the field. That moment I posted for the world to see is a sunny view of my life, but I promise you, things are not always as rosy as they appear. What they don’t see is Puck had a fat leg that day, Swagger is two inches taller behind at the moment, and I’m dealing with having gained 10 pounds since I hurt my back this winter. On the flipside, I’m thrilled to death because I have two new working students, which brings an end to me running my barn at 50% staff. And that’s just this month.

Read the rest at Noelle Floyd.

Photo by SusanJStickle.com.

Lauren wrote a blog for NoelleFloyd.com on how to put your trainer out of a job… for the best reasons! Click here to read it (and shorten your reins already!).

Serious riders, particularly those of us riding either older horses or horses we hope to get to a Big Level and then enjoy at that level for many years, spend a lot of time thinking about the fine balance between working our horses hard enough to achieve fitness and strength to minimize the risk of injury and not working them so hard that they get hurt along the way. And all of us, at every level, should spend some time thinking about keeping our horses’ minds fresh so they enjoy the work and can approach it with focus and energy without fizzling out.

But as a professional rider, I stink at those two balancing acts for myself. I, and so many of my professional rider friends, will push through the pain of injury because we have to keep going, or are too stubborn/poor/busy to address problems when they’re small. I know I should be doing things like yoga and stretching to keep my back limber, but that would require slowing my mind for five minutes, which is something I have such a terribly hard time doing. And along those lines, the constant fear of any self-employed person is where the next paycheck is going to come from, so I hustle to the point of exhaustion and am maybe operating at par when it comes to taking time to do fun things and have a life outside of the barn, but I’m certainly not exceeding the norm.

I spent my 20s working myself to the bone, ignoring aches and pains, and having a  crappy work-life balance. It took a combination of things—the incredible personal and professional disasters of 2017 and 2018, and this recent back scare—to get me thinking about taking care of myself, both in mind and body. To say that I’m the poster girl for self-care would be a grand overstatement, as I still think that a) resting, and b) feeling my feelings, are both stupid, and I don’t have time for that nonsense. But I’m getting at least a little bit better at it. Here are a few of the things in my tool kit.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

Remember how I wrote last time about Swagger, and how he was perfect, and I was having to restrain myself from pressing on too hard? Well, I came home from three days of teaching a clinic in Florida to a horse that was about 2 inches taller behind, with absolutely no ability to lift his back and reach for the bit at the trot, and who is only capable of cantering at about 100 miles an hour while ripping my arms out.

So … life with young horses comes atcha fast, Ferris Bueller.

There was no real show plan for Swagger this year anyway, but were I trying for something, much less something of significance like a Young Horse Championship, it would be like threading a very fine needle over and over again, trying to keep him fit enough to do the work, happy enough in the work, and consistent within the work at multiple qualifying shows over a multiple-week, if not multiple-month, period of time. It feels like hitting a moving target.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!