I like the quiet moments at the shows. I like the mornings especially, when I come to feed Ella and clean her stall before heading out to the farm to work the rest of the horses. I like the stable compound before the masses descend, when it’s just quietly eating and breathing horses and a handful of riders or grooms going about their morning chores.

And while of course I don’t begrudge anyone for having a groom—I have help when I show too, and I don’t have a spouse or kids or a life who demand my attention in the morning—I like seeing Big Time riders doing their own morning or evening chores, laying their hands on their horses legs, checking in with their horse, their partner, their friend.

And I really like it when those Big Time riders stop by to chat, say hello, ask how my ride went. These folks don’t know me from Adam, and I’m nobody, but there’s a few in particular who always make a little time, and I find that lovely and gracious. We hear so often about the ugliness of high performance sport, the drugs and the double commissions and the highest of stakes. Little moments like that give me faith in it all again.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

I was making my list of goals for 2017, and on the list (along with “eat like an adult,” “sleep past 4 am” and “take a cooking class to improve my knife skills”) is to get a 7 or better on the canter half pass zig zag in a CDI Grand Prix. I understand the movement, I teach others how to ride the movement… and I myself, on Ella, can’t seem to ride the movement in the ring. I get the count right, I get 6 or 6.5, and it’s fine, it just can be so much better, and it really needs to be better, to get the scores I want.

I get a lesson on Ella almost every day, and I mentioned this to Michael in the middle of last week. He told me to go show him what I was doing. I did. And then he said, “You’re straightening on step 3, and that’s too early. It’s taking too long. Don’t straighten until step 5. Now go do it again.”

So I did. And it was lovely. And at the end, I stopped, dropped the reins, threw up my hands, and cried out: “I am SO DUMB!”

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December 1: It’s official! Nine horses will be going to Florida, to a brand-new barn that we’ll have all to ourselves. Awesome. I’ll bring down one working student—conveniently also named Lauren—and hire someone local to do stalls for us. It’ll be a lot of work, but it’ll be OK.

December 5: Well, now there are only seven stalls available. Thankfully, a farm just down the road has two available, so while it’s a bummer to have horses in two places, we’ll make it work.

December 10: Just kidding, it’s now 10 horses. Whatever, we’ll make it work.

December 20: Um, now it’s 11 horses. Way too much for one working student. PANIC.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

Danny is 8 this year. He’s always been wildly talented; I bought him in June of his 6-year-old year, by which time he could do big clean changes, a few half steps and a passagey trot that, while all will be handy one day, I had to basically sit down and take out of him because he’d learned a mechanism that wasn’t what I wanted at Grand Prix, one where he pushed his big powerful hind legs out behind and made them slow, instead of really sitting and being snappy. But more importantly, what I loved about him at 6 was that I could take a hold of the reins, clamp my legs on, pester him a bit with a stick, and not get dumped.

Well… mostly not get dumped.

The first time was about the whip. It was early fall of last year, and I’d been spending more time on the canter than on the trot because, at that time, the trot was more developed, and I wanted to make some progress on his weakness. I felt I had, that he’d plateaued a little bit, and I wanted to go back to the trot for a while to feel like I was making progress.

I was playing with the half steps, not even thinking about AND NOW WE PIAFFE but more just that I could compress and expand the trot in a really boring way, and he backed off and kicked out a bit, and I sat down and said hey, c’mon, and he double-barrel kicked out behind, ducked left, and plopped me on the ground.

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I’m terribly careful with my horses and their schedules. I’m a little bit of a nut about making sure they get down time, not just for their bodies, but also for their brains. They’re all individuals, of course, and some can handle more shows and more work than others. But in my time with Ella I’ve learned that while she’s a good girl and she’ll work hard for me, she’s at her best when she shows about once a month, and also only for a few months at a time.

I’ve also learned that she’s a nuisance in her down time—she stays polite for about five days, and then gets antsy, romping around in turnout, biting my staff, and then terribly lazy to ride. Average time I give her off? Two to three weeks. (That’s a lot of biting.)

But it’s worth it, because she’s so much better after her down time. She’s fresher through her body and looser through her back, but mostly she’s fresher in her mind. Ella’s at her best when she’s feisty.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

I’m sitting in my PJs recovering from a terrific trip to Kentucky for the U.S. Dressage Finals, sipping coffee, listening to my mountains of laundry churn away, packing up my show clothes for the trip to Florida in January, and looking back on a wonderful year.

I couldn’t have been more excited to put 2015 behind me anyway, but my students made 2016 amazing, as well as my own group of horses. Normally by this point in the year I’m a pile of quivering exhaustion, and while you’re certainly not hearing me complain about the prospect of six weeks with virtually nothing to do except teach and ride and breathe, I’m not nearly as fried this year as I’ve been in the past. Having a great village, wonderful horses and a few big goals checked off the list will do that!

We had a seamless trip both to and from Kentucky. The horses travelled beautifully, we got mostly good ride times, the weather held, and we didn’t have any flat tires—miraculous! Two amateur students travelled with me, and both had super rides throughout the weekend, applying what they’ve learned throughout the year to make the most of their trips. Congratulations to Cathy and Torrey on a great year!

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I get asked some form of this question 50 times a year, in lessons, at clinics, via email or Facebook: how do I rise up the levels? What’s the best plan to get from being a lower-level rider to FEI? What path should I follow?

There are, for all intents and purposes, two options: to find a schoolmaster, a horse trained to the upper levels, from whom to learn; or to bring along a green horse, to teach him and yourself together along the way.

There’s some variety in those two paths, and neither option is perfect. Here’s a look at what I feel are the pros and cons to both situations.

If you go the schoolmaster route, you’ve got yourself a horse that knows the work, and can teach you. This is very cool, and certainly on the right schoolmaster, I’ve seen riders make tremendous progress in a short period of time, not just in learning how to execute the upper level movements, but also in riding with an honest connection from hind legs to bridle, truly sitting the trot instead of trying to figure out how on a horse who’s not always through, and so on, and so on. A horse that’s trained to do not just the things but to do the things right is an incredible teacher.

However, they have their challenges. In any horse purchase, but particularly purchasing an older horse who’s been managed in one fashion, chemistry is a crucial factor, and sometimes hard to gauge in just a few trial rides. More than once have I gone shopping with clients, tried a horse several times, brought it home and had it be a mess because the chemistry just isn’t there. Trying horses for sale is like speed dating, but with a wedding at the end, for better or worse.

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Between Michael giving a clinic at my place a few weeks ago, our Regional Finals two weeks after that, and Devon two weeks after that, I am really inspired right now. All the horses in my program are going to be FORWARD, they are going to be ELASTIC, they are going to be CONNECTED, they are going to go in SELF-CARRIAGE, and they are going to do all those things NOW!

Johnny is thriving. Danny not so much.

Ella is on a post-horse-show vacation, partially aided by my being in Michigan this weekend teaching a clinic, and at our BLM Championships much of next week; she’s doing light work in the snaffle, hacking in the field, and eating grass.

Hurricane is continuing to make progress towards being a Good Citizen with my Assistant Trainers/Baby Wranglers Natasha and Lisa, and he’s mostly getting it together and not doing anything all that interesting.

Dorian, who has been on an absolute roll, horse shows next week, and as such I’m focused mostly on test prep and stringing movements together and less on the capital-W Work. Which leaves Johnny and Danny as the focus of my enthusiasm. Poor dears.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

Devon and I, we go way back.

We go back to 2005, where I did win the Young Rider freestyle on a very, very big score, after nearly getting my rear end dumped in the ring at least once in the Team and Individual Tests. Then there was 2006, when Billy ran backwards almost all the way from X to the ingate at A (comment at the end of the test from Anne Gribbons: that I was “tactful, brave, and not influential.” Love it.)

In 2009, Ella completely froze and shut down in a fourth level test, earning a whopping 48 percent, and Cleo bit her lip panicking in her stall when I took Ella out to show her and I scratched. And in 2010, Fender’s stall flooded to the point of standing in fetlock-deep water, and the footing was so horrendous due to weather that I took him home without ever even riding.

So Devon and I have not always been friends.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!