After the relative ease of running a schooling show at our own farm a few weeks ago, my team and I decided to brave the first recognized dressage show in Virginia: Dressage At Lexington, a big, long and prestigious show that normally marks the end of our summer competition season. This year it was the beginning, and it meant hot weather and a bit of anxiety about competition rust, not to mention, um, COVID.

But with good judgement, fantastic facility and competition management, and a clear plan in place, we had an extraordinary show. Here’s what we learned.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

Elvis came to me with an incomplete understanding of how to really bridge the hind legs to the bridle while keeping them quick. He also had a fair bit of anxiety about the piaffe. I did my homework, focusing on quickening those beautiful floaty hind legs of his, making him really connect his ends and not getting caught up in the fancy expressive “show trot” that was his particular proclivity. I did such a good job that I absolutely killed his expression. (Naturally, by the way, this process finished up right as I was entering my first CDIs. Oopsie.) I focused so hard on keeping the hind legs quick that I quickened him right into shuffling.

I got some good help in Florida about reintroducing the idea of expression in a more correct way, but then I panicked again when at home on my own and overdid it, creating a lot of loft but too much slowness. I knew I was going askew, and I started letting my own emotions into the training, which did not help.

Enter my assistant trainer Jess Idol, watching quietly from the side, who pulled me aside and, with exceptional politeness, said “So… can I have him for a few days?” Elvis doesn’t belong to her, and she feels no urgency to get it done. She quietly set about re-establishing the rules and Elvis’ understanding. And in two days, she’d done more than I’d done in a month. Does she have superpowers? Am I a bad rider? Of course not. But he doesn’t belong to her. And her perspective isn’t tainted by years of time together.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

Here in Virginia, the governor’s plan had been to release us from the stay-at-home order on June 10. So with bated breath, we all watched to see what would happen to the show local to us scheduled for the weekend of June 13-14. It was canceled. The next available outing within a reasonable driving distance would have been mid-July, and the next one that we could have hauled into would have been weeks after that.

Please understand that my team and I absolutely respect our various organizations’ decisions to run or not run their shows and understand they have to work with state rules and officials. We agree with all of the vital safety requirements put forth by the U.S. Equestrian Federation, by the Commonwealth of Virginia, etc. We love science; we hate the coronavirus; get ‘er done. But we also love showing and hate not having goals. So I looked at my team and said, “Screw it, let’s hold one ourselves.”

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

Barns are reopening their doors, clinics are being scheduled, and shows are starting to creep back onto the calendar. But whether showing is a thing you’re going to participate in or not, and whether you’re a beginner or an international level rider, there’s a huge opportunity to make the most of time out of the show ring and practice basic skills. I had Olivia Lagoy-Weltz, Katherine Bateson-Chandler, Sabine Schut-Kery and Becca Hart on my little Virtual Cocktail Party show recently, and I asked them what they were up to with their horses, with so much up in the air on their Olympic trajectories. The things they talked about resonated not just with me, as someone working towards their level, but also as someone who teaches riders of all levels.

Here are some questions we all should be addressing, from green to Grand Prix.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

It might be June, or it might be July, or it might be 2021, but eventually, horse shows are going to become a thing that we all can resume doing. But how to do so safely, in this new world order? Some day a vaccine will become available to the masses, but it won’t be anytime soon. So we’ve got a while between when the world starts to reopen, and when the world’s citizens are rendered safe from this virus by science. 

“How to reopen” is a question the whole world is asking, not just horse folks. Bowling alleys, football stadiums, clothing boutiques; everyone and everything has a set of challenges ahead. We’re lucky, we in the horse world, that much of our lives, both in practice and in competition, are spent outside.

But not all of it. The U.S. Equestrian Federation’s recent town hall meeting addressed some of the concerns on how to reopen shows, but there’s more ground to cover, as USEF officials pointed out, and they’re crafting rule changes and lists of best practices to guide all of us as we emerge into the world again. I can only speak from the dressage show perspective, but here are a few ways we could address those indoor and close-proximity challenges, to bring horse shows back to the world in as safe a way as possible.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

How do we keep going in these crazy times? Shows are on hold. Many barns have closed. Clinics are canceling. Some things about life are frozen in time, but not all: We want to keep learning, stay inspired and see other humans. So how can we do so? The internet.

A source of so much negativity and nonsense, the internet still rules for its power for good. Here are a few ways to use it wisely:

1. Virtual Lessons

These have been a thing since long before the coronavirus, but the technology is not foolproof. Still, it’s out there, and you can make it work. A few ways to do so:

– If you’re lucky enough to have a Pixem (and it WORKS; they are a little tricky, particularly in indoors), you connect it to your phone, connect to the internet, and connect to your trainer of choice. Boom, done.

– If you don’t, you’ll need a cameraman and an app like Skype or FaceTime. Your camera holder “calls” your instructor, and off you go.

When I’ve tried it, I’ve found that it works best if the rider wears a Bluetooth headphone of some sort, so they can hear me rather than trying to crank up the volume on the cameraphone. And that means that your camera probably needs to be in the middle of your arena, so you’re not too far from it, lest said Bluetooth headphones disconnect (a dressage arena is quite a bit longer than the average Bluetooth range!). If you’re shopping for headphones, look for something with “Class 1” Bluetooth, which goes farther than the typical “Class 2.” And if you’re really stuck or really need to have the whole arena, use a second phone: one for video and one in your pocket to call.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

I’m home, in (mostly) one piece. Longtime readers will be shocked, shocked I say!, to learn that I had two tires go boom on the trailer on my way home from Florida, turning a 17-hour drive, one I normally take in two days anyway, into a 19-hour one. But we made it, and the horses were absolute troupers, and the van with the other nine arrived the next day with everyone safe and sound. And now… well, yeah. What about now?

My barn is closed for a little while longer. I’m one of the gazillions of small business owners who applied for a PPP loan only to find the program has run out of money. I’ve had to cancel three clinics, to the tune of thousands of dollars in revenue. And my partner is furloughed, taking us from a two-income household to a one-plus-unemployment-income household.

This is not a whine. I’m abundantly aware of how lucky I am that I can work at all, and that my work is relatively—RELATIVELY—easy to keep clean and safe. And I’m not dealing with anything that is unique in this world. But lest there was anyone thinking of raking their barn owner over the coals for doing what they can to keep you all safe, just don’t.

The closure means my staff and I are riding everything, but since the return from Florida is a great time to do very little, the timing of the pandemic is, oddly, terrific. And before reopening, I brought in our fantastic sports medicine veterinarian for a round of exams and “tune-ups” on all the horses, so they will be fresh, fit and healthy before we bring the clients back.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

A few of my friends have been posting “Gratitude Lists” online, to remind them of all the good that is out there, particularly in times where it’s easy to see the bad.

I’ve seen these before, in less hideous times, and I’d always thought they were a little fluffy. But the whole world is upside down, and I think that maybe a little fluffy is just what the doctor ordered (alongside hand washing, mask wearing, and staying the heck at home). So here are 10 things I’m grateful for this week.

1. The people I’m near. I know, social distancing is making “near” a relative term. But my staff is being amazing right now (as they always are, but I’m particularly grateful now). The end of the Florida season is always a time of senioritis avoidance because we’re all burned out from three-plus months of constantly running, and we normally finish showing and then have 10-or-so days to kill before we head home. The coronavirus has made it more like five WEEKS to kill, and between that and not being able to leave the farm for social interaction, we should all want to kill one another. The fact that we don’t is remarkable and says a tremendous amount about the gastrointestinal fortitude of these amazing women: assistant trainer Jess and working students Emily and Caitlin.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

On Tuesday, after watching the numbers rise, after seeing the growing numbers of states restrict movement, and after listening to recommendations from the CDC and other medical experts, I felt I had no choice but to close my barns in Florida and Virginia to all but critical staff in order to do our part to flatten the curve and reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus. Almost all of my clients were incredibly gracious and supportive. But I know that many of my trainer friends have experienced clients who are not so understanding.

It wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I hated thinking about their lost rides, about the time and the money they’d invested to come to Florida. But at the end of the day, the case to close was so much more compelling than that to stay open. The risk of illness to them, the risk of illness to my staff and me, the best interests for the caretaking of the horses.

And so there was no one at the farm besides my two working students when a horse I was riding slipped, went down and landed on me.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

The Dressage Foundation was kind enough to honor me with a Major Lindgren Instructor Education grant to allow me to ride with Olympic bronze medalist and living legend Mike Poulin. I have a fair bit of experience bringing lunatics up the levels, but I don’t have a lot of mileage doing it with more reasonable horses, and as I currently have two polite animals in my life—Elvis and Swagger—as well as a bunch of students on young horses that aren’t wild things, I was excited to expand my toolbox with Mike this winter, adding new tips and tricks I can use to help my students develop their FEI horses more wisely.

Annoyingly, the schedule this winter has had other plans. Mike’s travel schedule seemed to only accommodate weeks that Elvis was at a CDI—not the time to be talking about piaffe strategy, which is my primary focus on him for the year once we’re done showing. The handful of other times we’ve been able to make it work, it’s rained. But I’ve finally gotten in a few lessons, on all of my horses, and I’ve learned a ton.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!