Congratulations to our newest USDF Silver Medalist, Assistant Trainer Natasha Sprengers-Levine, as well as to all of our students – across several disciplines! – who’ve had great recent competition successes. Read more about it, and about how to lock in lessons at 2015 prices, in our most recent e-newsletter. Check it out here!
Some of them have been in my program for years, and some are new. Some are on horses who we’ve helped bring up the levels from the beginning of their dressage careers, and some are on horses that were already schooled to the middle levels when we met, but all are horses who we’re finishing to the level, which is pretty fun. They are the six students of mine in pursuit of their USDF Silver Medals this year, or, as I like to call them, the Prix St. Georges Club of 2016.
They have come to this place in their respective journeys in different ways—from eventing, from the jumpers, from learning to ride as an adult. And they’re on all sorts of horses—a homebred, a converted driving horse, a hunter/jumper reject, and a few that came up in dressage and have known nothing else. But even though they have different jobs, different budgets, different constraints on their time, they have a few things in common.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!
It’s been a banner season for Team Sprieser Sporthorse, and it’s only May! We’re thrilled with our exceptional show results from the first few outings of 2016, and you can read all about them – and about joining in our joyous successes by becoming part of our team – by reading our most recent e-newsletter. Want it delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up inside!
I tell my clients, and my friends, and my fellow riders, the same thing, a hundred times a day: horses figure “it” out, whatever “it” is, exactly when they are ready to do so, and not a minute sooner, and there’s nothing to do except calmly and coolly soldier on until they get it.
But the same is true of riders, of teenagers in pursuit of maturity, of anyone in pursuit of anything, and it’s the beautiful thing about life, I think: we all trundle along, feeling like we’re stuck in the mud, or feeling like we’ve lost the path, and usually when it’s least expected, there it is. The rise. The jump to the next level.
Ella and I found it.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!
<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-760" src="http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha3-300×300.jpeg" alt="omaha3" width="300" height="300" srcset="http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha3-300×300 acheter cialis avec paypal.jpeg 300w, http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha3-150×150.jpeg 150w, http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha3.jpeg 750w” sizes=”(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px” />Ella’s been in my life for 10 years, and she’s not really a spooky horse. She’s very, very simple minded, not a Rhodes Scholar, and that’s an asset. I tell her what to do, and she does it.
She can heat up, but usually in a very fun and useful way, and while no one can go in the CDI Grand Prix ring and piaffe 15 steps with no whip on a 100-degree day without having a pretty keen horse, Ella usually makes me inspire her, not hold her back.
Also know this: In the course of Ella’s life there has not been one day where she was malicious, wicked or unkind. She’s not wired that way. She’s never been aggressive, vindictive or cheeky.
So when, as we were trying to go around the outside of the arena for our CDI4* Grand Prix in the Omaha International last night, and she stopped and twirled and twirled and stood up and ran backwards and twirled and inched forward and then nope, not doing it and over and over and over again, it was because she was desperately, desperately afraid.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!
<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-757" src="http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha2-300×169.jpg" alt="omaha2" width="300" height="169" srcset="http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha2-300×169.jpg 300w, http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha2-768×432 cialis generique pas cher.jpg 768w, http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha2-150×84.jpg 150w, http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha2.jpg 960w” sizes=”(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px” />We’re here! It’s great! And now we wait.
This is how showing is, with one horse, something I very rarely do. In Wellington I had the rest of the barn to keep myself amused, and at the CDI in Saugerties I went to last fall it was just me caring for Ella, so at least there was barn work to keep me busy. I brought working student Sarah with me to Omaha because I wanted someone with me for the driving, not because I really needed the extra set of hands (but I appreciate it, and Sarah is great, so this is not a complaint!). But it does mean that, between the two of us, we’re done in the barn pretty quick.
So… we wait.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!
<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-754" src="http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha-300×226.jpg" alt="omaha" width="300" height="226" srcset="http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha-300×226.jpg 300w, http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha-150×113 cialis livraison rapide canada.jpg 150w, http://spriesersporthorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/omaha.jpg 640w” sizes=”(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px” />First, I have to apologize to the people of Nebraska.
I was born in Chicago and lived in Northern Illinois, so I am abundantly aware of everything that’s said about the Midwest. It’s flat. It’s empty. It’s the Flyover States. Yeah, yeah. I got it.
But when the FEI announced that they’d be hosting the World Cup Final in Omaha in 2017, I said, “…for real? Omaha?! Why?!?” And in my defense, I wasn’t alone.
Now that I’m here, I get it. And I’m a believer.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!
Meet him at late 3 or early 4 years old. He’s keen-eyed and clever-looking, and he walks, trots and canters under saddle. He goes when you drive and whoas when you gather and mostly steers. He stands on the crossties and gets on the trailer and stands at the mounting block. He’s balanced and shiny and remarkably organized, with nice conformation and clean legs. You love him immediately, which is good, because two weeks later he’ll have kicked the stall and sliced his leg open, and grown an inch behind, and lost the capacity to turn right. Love him anyway.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!
I’d just taken Ella back to the stabling after our last freestyle of Florida 2016 and my phone beeped. It was a message from Thomas Bauer, who is a Big Deal Guy—he’s part of show management not only for the Adequan Global Dressage Festival shows, but also organizer for some major European shows, and a member of the FEI Dressage Committee. He says he needs to speak to me.
And I have a middle-school flashback: what have I done? How much trouble am I about to be in?
Trying to keep my panic inside, I head back to the ring, where Thomas is waiting for me. Thomas is tall and German and not smiling. Oh God. Did I forget to fill out some paperwork? Is Ella’s passport not up to date? Does he hate my blog?
And he asks me this question: “Have you ever heard of Omaha, Nebraska?”
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!
Being a dressage trainer in Northern Virginia means working with lots of riders with a jumping background, whether they’re still actively participating in the hunters, jumpers, eventing or foxhunting, or transitioning from any of those disciplines into being a straight-up dressage rider.
Obviously good position for each of those disciplines is different, but they have a few things in common, and riders I teach coming from those disciplines are predictable in the equitation struggles they have to overcome.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!