The International Omaha, Day 3.5: Making The Most Of What You’ve Got
<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.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!
url: “http://spriesersporthorse.com/international-omaha-day-3-5-making-youve-got/”,
title: “The International Omaha, Day 3.5: Making The Most Of What You’ve Got”
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Meet him at late 3 or early 4 years old. He’s keen-eyed and clever-looking, and he walks, trots and canters under saddle. He goes when you drive and whoas when you gather and mostly steers. He stands on the crossties and gets on the trailer and stands at the mounting block. He’s balanced and shiny and remarkably organized, with nice conformation and clean legs. You love him immediately, which is good, because two weeks later he’ll have kicked the stall and sliced his leg open, and grown an inch behind, and lost the capacity to turn right. Love him anyway.
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.
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.
Now that the winter season is nearing its end, I feel like I’m finally ready for it to start.
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).
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.
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.