It’s been more than 500 entries and almost nine years since I started this blog. I think I had about 12 readers in the beginning; the last one logged more than 150,000 views in just a few days. That is AMAZING. I am so touched!

But that means I’m getting lots of new readers, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to introduce myself again. Hi! I’m Lauren. My last name is spelled SprIEser, and pronounced SPRY-zer. I’m a Libra, which allegedly means I’m well balanced, which is hilarious. And I’m a September Libra, which is apparently a thing, though I have no idea what it means.

I grew up outside Chicago to non-horsey parents, and while I’d ridden horses at summer camp and on family trips, I got serious about it at age 11, after a football accident left me with a broken femur. My football and figure skating careers over (lol), I started taking dressage lessons. As a kid I’d ride my bike from home to the public library, where I had a job putting covers on books, then pedal to the barn for my lessons, and then head home.

The book thing stuck too, because I went to college in New York to pursue a degree in Writing And Reading Stuff. While there I had the great joy of riding with Lendon Gray, going to three NAYRCs, and taking a semester to work in Germany with the late George Theodorescu. I graduated and taught freelance for a bit, then was a working student for Carol Lavell and Pam Goodrich before moving to northern Virginia to run my own facility about 50 miles west of Washington, D.C., in the heart of Horse Country.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

We’re down to the last few weeks in Florida, and my horses are humming along. The best thing is that nothing interesting is happening with any of them, and that’s more than could be said for really the last 10 months! It’s business as usual, and I love it.

For Puck, “usual” means that he finally decided I was in charge about six weeks ago, and he’s been an absolute joy to ride. There’s no amazing capital-D Dressage going on, but the fact that I can just get on and close my leg and my hand and get to work is a huge, huge deal.

In the last two weeks or so, he’s let me open up another gear in the trot. I don’t get it consistently, but it’s accessible now, whereas in August he’d lock into this big floaty trot with tension in his back and use it as a means of resistance. The trot he offers me now has some expression, which is neat, but more importantly has tremendous swing. It’s pretty fun, and I can imagine what a blast it’ll be two years from now when there is strength and capacity behind it.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

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.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!