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!

Now that the winter season is nearing its end, I feel like I’m finally ready for it to start.

The best thing for me, as far as motivation and diligence is concerned, is to get my butt kicked. I never fight harder, focus better, or dig in deeper than when I’ve had my teeth kicked in, and man, did I get my teeth kicked in in January and February. Virtually everything that could go wrong did, including a few 0s and an elimination, a brief financial crisis, a family calamity, an Achilles tendon strain, and my boyfriend breaking up with me.

I cried, I drank a few beers (ok, maybe more than a few), and then I picked myself up off the mat and dug in. I trusted my coach when he changed my training plan. I pushed myself into running and biking farther and farther. I ate a lot of salad. At my last CDI of the season, Ella and I had our best Grand Prix ever—on nearly 66%—and had a totally solid freestyle ride. And after that freestyle, I received one of only 10 invitations to ride at the CDI 4* in Omaha, Nebraska, the test event for next year’s World Cup Final.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

Baby Hurricane will be the eighth horse to enter my life as a youngster and, barring calamity, stay with me until he’s developed into whatever he’ll finish up as—an FEI horse, we certainly hope. Of those eight, H and four more are still too young to know how good they’ll be (Johnny, age 7 and third level-ish; Danny and Dorian, both age 8 and Prix St. Georges-ish; and Beverley Thomas’s Fiero, age 9 and solid PSG, schooling I1), one made a fantastic amateur’s small tour professor (Fender, now 10), and two became Grand Prix horses (Midge, now 14 and, had he not gotten hurt, could have been a very cool CDI horse; and Ella, 15, and all kinds of fabulous in the big ring, except when she’s hindered by yours truly).

Midge came to me at 3; Hurricane, Johnny and Fender at 4; Ella at 5; and Danny, Dorian and Fiero all at 6. I didn’t pick Fiero out (but I wish I could have, because he’s perfect, and then I’d look very smart), but both he and Dorian were bought for amateurs, so I’m going to take them out of the story here, because they weren’t bought with the idea of “maybe I can develop this into something amazing.”

But the other six were ones I sought out for myself, and as I’m often asked what I look for when I look for a young horse for myself, here’s what I saw in each of them at the time and, where I can, some photos of what they looked like as kids.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

Hey everyone. Long time, no see. I’ve been radio-silent for a few weeks because nothing all that compelling has happened in the last few weeks. I ride, I teach, I work out in some capacity, I go home, I go to the shows, I make teensy increments of improvement, I repeat.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not learning. It’s just that the wheels of progress were moving at a snail’s pace. A plateau at worst, a tiny smudge of an upward grade at best. And that’s how it goes, sometimes.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

Ella and I kicked off 2016 in the first CDI-W of the year. She felt absolutely amazing in the warm-up, so energetic and keen to my aids, the best I’ve ever had her. I feel great about the amount of fitness work we did in the fall—we even got an award for the fittest and healthiest horse, so it’s not just me that thinks she looks incredible!—and I feel frustrated that we didn’t do very well.

I’m still learning how to keep all the pieces together, and still learning what contact I need to show in the ring to make her look her best; and the sound system at Global needs some serious work, with the installation of a new VIP tent that makes riding in there like riding in a fishbowl, with bad echoing that made my freestyle a bit of a hot mess.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

As usual, we’ve arrived in Florida, and everything has gone a little sideways.

Everyone is fine, no calamities. But between a few Naughty Baby Squirrel moments and some rogue skin crud, it’s been a colorful week. My Young Rider student, Kristin, is here taking part in Robert Dover’s Horsemastership Week, and I’ve gotten to watch a little, as well as be in the presence of a large collection of teenage girls. It’s reminding me that a) I’m getting old, fast; but also b) kids have their own way of working through, and describing, their world.

Read the (hilarious) rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!