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.

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<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.

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<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.

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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.

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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.

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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!