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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I started riding at 11. I took lessons on horses that were only vaguely sound, with ill-fitting tack, who received a bute a day to keep them teaching two lessons a day, six days a week. I rode in arenas where motor oil was used to keep the footing from being dusty, and at barns where horses were kept in standing stalls all day long.

Going to college in New York I went on a hack around Central Park where we rented livery horses who lived on the second and third stories of an apartment building. And now, as a professional, I’ve had clients bring me horses in trailers with holes in the floor, or who share their fields with barbed wire or rusty cars.

I’ve also seen horses in top performance barns, with phenomenal care, get hurt. Get sick. Die. I know of a horse who got cast in his stall, fractured his leg, sent a piece of bone through the femoral artery and bled to death in the middle of the day. I knew a horse who was put on the lunge line to get some exercise on a brutally cold winter day, too cold to ride, only to buck once hard, land just so, and shatter a pastern.

In 20-plus years with horses, if it’s two things I’ve learned, it’s these: 1) that the one Universal Truth in horses is that there are no Universal Truths; and 2) horses are livestock trying to become deadstock. If they can find a creative way to injure or maim themselves, they will.

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The year 2016 and the first few months of 2017 were really professionally, and personally, incredible. Ella and I had a fantastic end to our partnership, culminating in a great relationship with her new owner. Two other significant horse sales let me make a down payment on a house, and put two exciting new young horses in my life. Business is booming.

I’ve got an incredible farm in Florida sewn up for the 2018 season. I’m dating a fantastic guy. I came home from Florida in the beginning of this year knowing it would be a transition from having a finished product to show to focusing on the youngsters and on my clients, but I was ready. I started a new nutrition program, shed some pounds and felt fantastic; and I started running again and working with a personal trainer and just really felt prepared for it all.

But what goes up must come down.

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Get approached to blog about your experience going to the 2009 USEF Festival of Champions, not because you’re all that good a rider, but because you can write well, spell correctly and turn in consistent work.

Start writing. Be excited about how easy the ideas come at first. New boots! How to bathe a big gross gray mare! Go to the show and have your horse colic for the first and only time in her life.

Spend all night at her side, and when she’s out of the woods and you go back to your hotel room to catch a bit of sleep, realize that you have to share the story with others, because you’re a blogger, and you have to Tell The Story. It won’t be the first time where you feel like you owe a piece of your life to your readership. But don’t quit.

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A friend of mine lost her horse recently. He was older, and he died in the way we all dream for those we love—out in the field with his friends on a beautiful day, healthy and sound and full of life. And then gone, in an instant.

That doesn’t make it much better, of course; just because it’s a far cry from the slow decline and the tough choice doesn’t make it easy, just ever so slightly easier.

This horse had had an excellent competition career, but you’d probably never heard of him, or at least not heard much about him. But that wasn’t the thing that made him extraordinary. He’d brought countless young people up the levels. He gave his riders the big horse feeling for the first time. He taught them. He humbled them, often rather a lot. He made them.

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