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.

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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.

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Jan. 1: It’s 2018! Good riddance 2017, you unmitigated disaster, you complete dumpster fire, you. This is going to be a great year. It’s all turning around from here!

Jan. 2: In the course of unloading hay into our Florida barn, I slip, land on a wheelbarrow handle, and break my nose.

Nevertheless, things are looking up.

I made it to Florida without anything blowing up. The farm I’m renting this year is gorgeous, private, and QUIET. And the horses all settled in beautifully. (Award for Best Behaved on Day 1: Fiero. Award for Biggest Asshat on Day 1: Helio, my mom’s delightful palomino Lusitano, who is NOT allowed to behave like an asshat, but it was minor and he apologized and was a peach on Day 2.) As this is year eight for me coming to Florida in some capacity, I know my way around, and I’ve got the unpacking down to a science, so it was swift and relatively painless (though my nose begs to differ), and we got up and running quickly.

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Fall has become wintertime, and wintertime is about to become Florida-time. It’s t-minus four days from my own departure, with the horses to follow a few days behind. This year I have a record number going—10—as well as it being my first year at my own farm, or at least at a farm I’m renting the entirety of. I’m a good sharer, but it does sound nice to have the run of the place.

This is, however, the first year I don’t really have a big competitive goal, at least the first in a really long time. If 2017 had gone according to plan, Danny would be thinking about his Grand Prix debut this January, and Puck would be schooling the changes. But 2017 did not, under any circumstances, go according to plan. And such is plans with horses: they’re to be written in pencil, and should have about 892 contingencies.

That isn’t to say I’m not looking forward to going. I have a fantastic group of clients going, all with exciting competitive goals. It’s a wonderful group of horses, and that is always great fun. And my own horses are moving forward, if not towards the goals I had in mind, at least off this summer’s plateau.

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I hate the process of buying and selling horses. It’s like speed dating but with a marriage proposal at the end; every horse is imperfect in some way; and even when done perfectly right, with adequate trial time, complete honesty on behalf of both buyer and seller and everything above board, you’re still buying a sentient being who is susceptible to change.

But it’s an inevitability. While I don’t take horses in to sell, I sometimes need to sell my own; I get my horses young and take them as far as they can go, or as far as I can justify taking them before rededicating my limited resources to the next one. My clients outgrow horses, and need new ones. It’s the nature of the business that, even when sales isn’t your business, you’re going to have to do a little bit of buying and selling.

When I’m selling a horse, the first thing I do is a pretty comprehensive veterinary exam. Depending on the price, age and level of the horse I’ll have x-rays taken in advance, but no matter what I have a basic physical exam done, including flexions of all the major joints. You can find something physically wrong with every horse, and training leaves evidence.

As such, whether I’m selling or helping a client buy something, I make sure that I consider any veterinary findings in context. When Ella was on the market, I can’t tell you the number of people who were shocked by the things I did for her prophylactically—joint injections, Adequan and Legend before there was a problem, rather than after. So many said something along the lines of, “Well, I’m looking for a confirmed Grand Prix horse with an extensive show record that doesn’t need maintenance.” Good luck and Godspeed to them! And sure enough, the veterinarian who preformed her pre-purchase exam said that not only did Ella have phenomenal X-rays for a 16-year-old horse; she had phenomenal X-rays for an 8-year-old horse.

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