I didn’t know Jimmy Wofford long, nor did I know him well. But from our first meeting he dazzled me with his tremendous respect for the horse and for horsemen. He treated me, a nobody dressage trainer from Nowhereland, like a peer. He was quick to help, and earnest in his passion for helping horses be their best. And he was so tremendously proud of his charges.

We’d met a few times before I reached out to him two years ago to talk fitness with Elvis, a horse who’d always felt to me like he would muscularly burn out. Jimmy took time out of his busy life to take me through a conditioning program, and then again through his thoughts on downtime, that changed our lives, and allowed Elvis to become a Grand Prix horse.

I kept Jimmy updated on Elvis’s adventures, and we playfully called him “his dressage horse.” He always had a kind word (even about a sport he claimed to not understand), and I’m so sad they never got to meet.

He was a joyous person, respectful and brilliant, and yet always with a twinkle in his eye. One of our last interactions was this one, after I’d bitten it off a young horse I had in training with a friend who runs out of Fox Covert, the Wofford family farm:

I hope Jimmy’s friends and family find comfort and peace. May we all live a life so highly regarded, and be so universally loved.

‘Tis the season – the season where many people are thinking about holiday gifts for their dedicated barn staff, horsey caretakers, and equine enthusiasts. Here are a few great gifts for the horse person in your life – professionals, amateurs, and youth riders alike.

1. A Ride iQ membership. Ride iQ is a revolutionary app that provides audio lessons on a huge range of subjects – dressage, jump work, ground work, sports psychology for riders, fitness, and more. Members get real-time instruction from some of the best in the business (including me!), plus access to an awesome Facebook group for members, some terrific podcasts, and more.

2. Fir-Tech goodies for horses and riders. Fir-Tech is a ceramic fiber from Catago, and is of similar quality to other similar products from other brands, but at way better pricing. I particularly love Elvis’s Stable Boots at horse shows when he’s not able to get the same amount of turnout as he does at home, and the Neck Brace for me. It’s great for when I’m a little stiff… which never happens, obviously, as a professional rider…

3. Kingsley Boots. Kingsley came to me four years ago and wanted me to try their boots. I’d been a longtime proponent of another prominent German riding boot, but the Kingsleys had me at hello, with their stiff exterior but remarkably short break-in time, their custom fit, and their many many fun options (even though I’m their most boring rider and my boots are rarely all that exciting). I just retired my pair of everyday boots after FOUR YEARS – an incredible run for a pro! I think everything Kingsley makes is wonderful, but I’m a huge fan of their fleece lining, which they can put into any of their boots, including these stunning work boots.

4. Roeckl Gloves. I live in Roeckl Gloves year-round, because they’re hard to kill… and lord knows I try. Much of the year I’m in the Madrid, but my winter favorite is the Winter Roeckl Grip. They’re warm enough for winter riding but thin enough that I’m not burdened by bulk.

5. The Mantra bangle. Everything from Swanky Saddle is gorgeous, but I particularly love these Mantra Bangles, especially the GRIT one – my fav, and based on my cool tattoo! And they’re on clearance right now, so go get ’em.

6. The Neue Schule Turtle Top Snaffle. What I really want everyone to do is bring in my friend Stephanie Brown Beamer for a bit fitting, but she’s one person, and she can’t be everywhere. But riding in a quality bit that fits well is a great start, and this is my workhorse bit. Almost everything in my life is going in a version of it, so it’s as close to a sure thing as exists. By the way, you’re probably riding in a bit that’s too bit as well – even Rowan, the 100% Irish Draught in my life, goes in a M. You just do not need a 6″ bit, friends, it’s not possible.

7. A Pivo. I first bought a Pivo to record my rides for my own review, and it gets a solid B at that job – easy set up, holds a charge well, but every now and then does this Exorcist thing where it spins around and loses me. But the real superpower of the Pivo is its virtual lesson capacity, because the instructor can take over the robot. It’s so easy (I’ve been meaning to make a video for social media on how I do it, and I’ve just been slammed; hopefully this will light a fire under my ass to get it done), the lesson hosting system is free to use, and they’re on sale for 50% off right now.

8. The Pro Lite Multi Riser half pad. Why not wear a shock absorbing saddle pad when you ride, and protect your horse’s back? This is my favorite because the pockets for shims allow me to get creative and extend the fit of my saddles as my young horses develop and change. Every horse, every day!

9. OneK Avance with MIPS. Do me a favor and check the date on your helmet. If it’s older than 3 years, time to get a new one. If you don’t know how old it is, time to get a new one. If you’ve bonked your head in it, it’s REALLY time to get a new one. And frankly, if it’s not a MIPS, it’s time to get a new one. MIPS technology is really worth the investment, because it’s so superior in its protection to a traditional ASTM hat, and the OneKs are such great bang for your buck. I like the Avance for its sun protection, and you can also customize your helmet with some great color pieces.

10. A gift card for a car detailing. Horse girl cars are… something else. A nice detailing is such an incredible gift, and it’s something certainly we horse pros never do for ourselves!

Today, as I write this, Abe Pugh and Alice Drayer’s Trakehner stallion Elfenperfekt placed fifth in the nation at the USEF Festival of Champions in the Grand Prix division, the highest championship division we offer in the United States.

I don’t know exactly how Abe and I met – I think we just said “hi, how are you” at enough horse shows until one day, voila, we were friends. But I do remember watching him ride Elfenperfekt – Pistol to his friends – at a show, noting that no one was there coaching him. I then remembered that, years before, a guy I barely knew named Michael Barisone came up to me and, politely, said that I looked like I needed a coach, and offered help.

So I put on my big girl pants, marched over to Abe, and said that if he wanted, I’d be happy to help him, with the exact same promise that Michael had made to me years before: I’d be there when Abe needed me, I’d be nice to his clients, and I’d never, ever try and take his horse away from him.

That was almost six years ago. Since then, Abe and Pistol have won a World Cup Qualifier, countless regional championships, and many year end titles, as well as top placing at CDIs and USDF Finals. I’ve taught Abe to be more diligent, to take it all a bit more seriously, and about throughness. Abe’s taught me about courage, about balance, and about fighting for your dreams. I make Abe tuck his shirt in, and fuss at him about his rogue elbows; he tells me to ask my horses for more, and to be brave when my baby horses feel wicked. I tell him to wrap better; he tells me to try and chill out when I go on vacation. And I offer to drive and fly all over for him, just as he offers to help me fix the floors in my basement. I don’t have a big brother, but I imagine this is what it’s like.

And then there’s that tremendous horse, Pistol, my goodness. What does one say about such a creature, one who gives his whole heart, every day? Pistol has given us all the incredible gift of his wisdom, his trainability, his kindness. My top Grand Prix horse, Elvis, knows how to piaffe because Pistol showed me what was possible. Every horse that both Abe and I will ever have will be better for having known Pistol.

Thank you, Alice, for making that amazing horse, and for letting all of us go all the places we’ve gone together. Thank you, Pistol, for showing us all what is possible on the back of a great horse. A MASSIVE thank you to Ali Brock for pinch hitting for me on Freestyle day – I had to fly home after the first two days of the Championships to coach one of my international level eventer students AND then show myself, along with some clients, at a local show here – as well as to everyone at Virginia Equine Imaging for all they’ve done for all of us to keep that tremendous beast performing his best.

Lastly, to Abe, my friend, my big brother, thank you for letting me help you. It’s been a remarkable ride! (Now get back to work on those elbows.)

Hi everyone. I’m here, I’m alive, I’m doing fine. You haven’t heard from me via blog or Snippet in a while, and whenever that happens, I inevitably get a few sweet messages about “are you ok?! what’s going on?!” So: yes, I’m ok. The horses are great. 

I’ve been radio silent for a few reasons. One is that nothing’s going on; our show season is set up such that we get a big long break from mid-July to the end of August, and so my horses get to go on Summer Vacation. Puck and Elvis are both on light work, doing lots of walking, letting their bodies have a break before the Autumn push. The babies are going, but the babies are just that – babies – so their day to day experience just isn’t all that exciting. 

Which doesn’t mean that I’m not focused, nor does it mean they’re not making progress. Puck and I are on a bending jihad. I always think about self-carriage with Elvis, but I had a little epiphany last week about trying to ride him 3-and-1, where both curb reins end up in one hand, and then I just have the one snaffle rein in the other; its really let me think about how he answers the half halt in a cool way.

The babies are doing their thing. Maddie went to two horse shows this summer, and behaved splendidly both times, so now I get to put my energy into training; however, she’s 17.3, so I’m not feeling in an overwhelming hurry to accomplish anything. We work on throughness, and she has graduated in my esteem to earning her own equipment, so she sees my wonderful bit fitter friend Stephanie Brown-Beamer of Horse by Horse, to maximize her comfort. (The rule at my house is that you don’t your own gear until I’m sure you’re staying.)

One who’s still in hand-me-downs is four-year-old Velcro, though I must say, I don’t think he’s going anywhere either; he’s endlessly kind but man, he has a mind at work! He’s super smart, very easy to engage with, and is doing great. He had a minor medical procedure this Spring – why I could afford him – and he’s doing great, but between the time off for that and the long trip from Kansas and growing to be an absolutely giant four year old, he arrived on my doorstep quite thin, and it took a long time to add enough calories to him to even think about getting to work. So we’ve just introduced exciting things like turning, but he’s going to be wicked, wicked cool.

Baby Lala, the one I’ve owned from a foal, is now 3, and is working smartly under saddle in Pennsylvania with my wonderful friend and student Abe Pugh. She is also giant, at least 17.1 at 3 years old, so none of us are feeling a burning desire to push on her any harder (honestly, what is there to do except walk, trot, canter, and steer a 3-year-old anyway?), so she trundles along, and will do so all winter, with the idea of coming home to me Spring of next year, when we’re home from FL.

I’m riding some wonderful horses for clients too, including Rowan, a 7-year-old Irish Draught owned by Mary Ewing. I’ve not experienced many drafts, but if they’re all like Rowan, then we should all ride drafts. He’s remarkably agile, he’s terribly smart, and he smoked around at his first horse show, including beating Maddie one day, which is hard to do!

I’m also in that time of year where I’m teaching clinics like a madman, at least two a month if not three, and I’m very VERY excited that we have Starlink internet access now at the farm, so I am teaching virtual lessons all across the country (and even internationally!), with easy sign up via our e-scheduling website, instead of my having to sprint back to my house in town in order to teach them. You can sign up for one here, if you’d like!

I tried my hand at taking a family vacation, and I’m predictably terrible at them. My garden is going gangbusters. Nike, the world’s best Pibble, had surgery in the spring to fix yet another busted cruciate ligament, but he’s recovered well; Georgia, NOT the world’s best Pibble, was a remarkably gentle nursemaid, which was actually quite cute, and maybe earned her a few points in my book (though she pooped in the car the other day, so net-net…)

My knee is feeling great after having it injected with PRP, so I am now all the more a fan of good veterinary care. Summer vegetables are wonderful, but summer cocktails are even better. I am still waiting on my wedding photos. And that’s all the news from the home front! I hope you all are staying cool and making progress. Thanks for checking on me!

We are still waiting on the major dump of our wedding photos, but at least we finally have a few to share.

Technology is all over the horse world now – new and better vet diagnostics and treatments, virtual lessons, wearables; you name it, and someone’s trying to make it, or improve it, with modern tech. Here at Sprieser Sporthorse we use all sorts of great tech to make our lives run easier, and here are a few of my favorite things this year.

In The Barn: Horse Report System 

We run a HUGE program, with as many as 24 horses in full training at any particular time, some long term and some short, and in two locations – Virginia and Florida. It’s a huge amount of cats to herd, and so having all our horse health records in one spot, accessible from anywhere in the world, is critical. But we’ve used every barn management system in existence and found them all to have problems and challenges.

Then we were introduced last year to Horse Report System. Initial set up of each horse takes time, of course, but not nearly as much time as other systems have taken us. And once the horse is in the system, it’s a breeze. We can bulk-add appointments like vaccines and dewormer, make notes about what vet work was done to each horse and when with just a few clicks, and not only upload receipts and vet notes but also search them by keyword.

And there’s SO many functionalities, way more than we use in our program. Users can make notes on each horse’s workouts, upload test or show results, even see a horse or stable’s activity in calendar form (a great way for looking at the big picture!)

We just love it, and there’s a 30-day free trial you can take advantage of. We use HRS all the time, especially because it’s a great way to organize our documents, like our before and after photos, as well as the docs we need at horse shows like coggins and vaccination reports. Speaking of…

At The Shows: Horse Show Office

COVID made us all turn to online-only show entry systems. That’s great, but the systems that are unwieldy or, even worse, charge a substantial fee to use them? Utter nonsense. Kevin Bradbury’s Horse Show Office is by far the best option I’ve used to enter recognized shows. I don’t need to have an account set up; I can just enter my horse’s USDF number and I’m halfway home. Uploading coggins, signature pages, etc is a breeze. And I’ve yet to pay a fee, probably because I can pay by e-check or PayPal rather than having to use a credit card (and forcing a 3% fee on someone).

From show management’s perspective, I’m told by the best organizers in the business that HSO is also vastly superior to anything else out there, and I’m sure it’s a relief for organizers to be able to just use one company, rather than accept entries on one system and then put out show results on another.

I hope that all our local shows (hint hint) consider switching over to HSO. It’s a much, MUCH easier experience for everyone around, and I’m sure they’d appreciate more complete entries… wink wink, nudge nudge.

In The Arena: Pivo

COVID also made me get serious about virtual lessons, both offering them and taking them. We’re challenged in the more rural parts of the world by the speed of our internet access, but that wasn’t my initial problem: I’d put a thousand bucks into a certain VERY expensive French system that I couldn’t get to work in my arena, with beacons and watches and all sorts of moving parts that didn’t seem to want to reliably talk to one another. I tried FaceTime, which is easy enough, but just not designed for that purpose, so the quality can get janky.

I’d owned a Pivo for a while to try and record my rides, and sometimes it’s a champion and sometimes it’s not (my Pivo was obsessed with a palm tree in Florida that really does not look anything like a horse, and sometimes it would pull an Exorcist in front of the arena mirrors and spin around). But I had someone ask to be taught a virtual lesson via their Pivo… and a love affair was born.

Bang for your buck-wise, it’s the superior system. The compression algorithm of the video quality is just as good as the more expensive systems, but set up is SO much easier (just put the thing on your tripod, click in your phone, press a few buttons and you’re good to go). And whereas sometimes in just recording a video the Pivo can get lost in the woods (or the mirrors, or the palm trees), when teaching a lesson via Pivo, the instructor can take over the robot and control it. I had a lesson with Ali at the last show, in the warmup arena, with multiple horses in the space, and she just took over the robot so she could follow me with it herself. Amazing! And it’s just $150 – WAY better than anything else on the market doing the same thing.

Now if only we could invent some tech to remind me to half halt more and to stop doing that weird thing I do with my right foot!

When even the bartender says your wedding is the most fun he’s ever worked, your wedding was really, really fun. And I’m leaving glowing Google reviews for all of our stellar cast of vendors, but that didn’t feel like enough. So here’s the whole scoop on everyone who made our day so magical!

When Ravi proposed in December 2020, our first action item was to hire a wedding planner. We interviewed several, but Jessica Maskell endeared herself to me with the following two lines. First, “Lauren, you’re a dressage trainer, Ravi’s an engineer, and you have 18 months to do this. You’ll be fine.” Second, “My job is to make sure everything gets done and that the groom and his groomsmen don’t get too drunk too early.” She was the (wo)man for the job.

Even better, Jessica came with a +1: her husband, Mark, is a DJ. Mark handled our needs with aplomb, including some great Indian music picked by Ravi’s family, and lit the space beautifully.

Speaking of the space: next up was picking our venue. I really liked 6 Pastures from the photos, but Ravi – bless him – was in charge of the search, because I was already in Florida. But then my distinctly indoorsy fella called and said that hands down, no questions asked, beautiful pastoral 6 Pastures was our space. Their reclaimed hay barn was both exquisite AND sufficiently large to hold both our ceremony and our reception, so we were safe from foul weather AND with great airflow for COVID safety. And the bridal suite, where my bridesmaids and I got ready for the day, is stunning.

Then it was on to catering. We tried one caterer – perfectly reasonable rubber-chicken party food – and Ravi, a guy who eats to live, declared them satisfactory. “Lauren,” he said, “when have you ever been to a wedding where you remembered the food after?” But I live to eat, and we already had an appointment with Downtown Catering on the books, so off we went. And thank goodness, because Therese makes meals that aren’t just checking a box – it was a restaurant-quality experience. Fresh ingredients, beautifully prepared. The food was a joy, and their organization of all our other reception related details like rentals and bartenders was swift and easy.

Not to be outdone, Smiley’s Ice Cream capped the night. Ravi is an ice cream devotee, and the look on our guests faces when the ice cream truck pulled up… gold. Plus, let me tell you, taste testing ice cream to narrow down which flavors we wanted Smiley’s to bring? Not the worst hour of my life!

Makeup artist Elzi Camacho came highly recommended by our venue, and did not disappoint. She was exceptionally organized, communicated with me beautifully, and made my entire bridal party feel like a collection of princesses. My Maid of Honor said it best – it was a little devastating to take the makeup off at the end of the night!

Our hair was done by my long-suffering friend Chelsea of Scarlett and Sage. Chelsea has been cutting my hair for almost 15 years, and in that I am perhaps not the girliest of girls, she’s had to endure a lot of dumb questions, including memorably “Can you teach me how to use a round brush?” when I was just shy of 30 years old. Chelsea did a stunning job on a range of hair lengths and types, and made us all feel amazing.

We did most of our own decor, picking up bits and pieces from online wedding resale groups. Out of a desire to be both thrifty and environmentally friendly, we used sola wood flowers from Southern Blooms Co., sola wood being a fast-growing marshy tree. Our bouquets will last a lifetime, and were also as beautiful at my wedding as they were the day they arrived (months in advance, so I could cross them off my list of worries early on!). Here’s a cool review of their environmental impact. And I was also thrifty with my jewelry, picking up some fun costume pieces at a craft fair in Palm Beach.

Last, but far from least, on the list: dresses. Our color theme was purple, and Azazie offered an incredible range of dresses all made from the same color, so I picked Regency and turned my bridesmaids loose to pick their own style, with ties and pocket squares for the groomsmen to match. But for my own dress, after visiting a few bridal boutiques to try on the traditional big fluffy white dress, I was feeling a little uninspired by it all.

Which is when I saw a post on a wedding resale group on Facebook by a bride who’d had her dress made by a woman looking to break into the bespoke dress business, and her rates were unbelievably comparable to store-bought designs. What caught my eye about this bride’s dress was that it was pink, and an idea was born: I wanted a lavender dress. Kirah of Mrs. Jones Bridal and I met first online, to talk about what I wanted, and then a few times in person while she made my dress first out of muslin material, to get the size and shape perfect. It took time (which was fine, we had it), but that was a comfort; I remember that in one of our early appointments, Kirah spent about 20 minutes completely rebuilding one shoulder of the muslin mockup, to make sure she got it right.

The end result was so much more stunning that I could ever have imagined, an honest-to-god show stopper, and certainly unlike anything I could have bought in a store. And for an extra bit of fun, Kirah asked me to do a photo shoot in it for marketing purposes, and let me say that if you ever have the opportunity to have your hair and your makeup done for a photo shoot in an item of clothing made for you, do it do it do it. I’ve never felt more beautiful in my life – and as someone with a lifetime of body image issues, that is really, truly saying something!

This top-shelf team of vendors, led by Jessica, made for a day that – please don’t mistake this for hyperbole – was truly seamless, beyond my wildest dreams. Ravi and I had the great joy of just being able to kick back and relax, and enjoy the company of our fantastic families and friends. If you’ve got some impending nuptials, I wish you an equally glorious day!

We don’t make a ton of warmblood foals in this country. We breed a lot of horses, and it’s a big country, but unlike our European counterparts, our amazingly diverse number of disciplines and equine interests means that we breed lots of different type of horses – Thoroughbreds and Saddlebreds and Arabians and Quarter Horses, stock breeds and rail class breeds and race horses – while Germany and Holland and Sweden and Denmark basically make Olympic-discipline sport horses and not a whole lot else. 

And because the American market also wants warmbloods bred to be hunters – a sport that prizes flatter gaits – it means that every sporthorse foal with suspension and power and ability that takes its first breath on US soil is precious, precious, precious to those of us in dressage land. Of course some are going to break, or limp, or die. But the loss to sport is when they end up in hands that don’t maximize their potential. And there’s a breakdown somewhere in the communication lines, because there are plenty of us out there capable of developing a horse to the Big Levels who’ve never gotten a phone call from a breeder or young horse starter to say “Hey, I have something interesting you should see,” just as too many of us riders bypass American breeders and young horse starters and instead go right to Europe when shopping. 

I want to hear from those who have my next Fender, Midge and Lala, all sport horses bred here in the States. Sue Stickle photo.

Those lines of communication need to be more open. I want to be able to bridge that gap, find a way for us trainers and riders to be able to easily look under every American nook and cranny to find the top shelf horses that we’re producing here, and use our buying power to incentivize the breeding for the gaits and ability needed to succeed in the Big Ring.

And as such, I want the owners of interesting young talent to call me when they have something for sale. If it’s the right time for me to snatch it up, groovy. If it’s not, then I might know someone who is. And let me be clear on this: I’m not saying that breeders or young horse owners should be giving away their stock, sponsoring riders with a horse. If you want to do that, cool. But I expect to pay for quality horses, whether it’s money of my own or the sponsorship of an owner who believes in me. And every professional rider I know agrees with me. Good things cost money, and we know that. Wouldn’t we all rather it be spent here?

I hope my next Midge was bred here. Sue Stickle photo.

I don’t have a brilliant idea for a sweeping change to make, a better way to bridge the communication lines between breeders and riders. All I really know is what I personally want. So here’s my standing offer. I’m tall, so I need something that matures over 17h. Stallions will be gelded, unless you want to partner on them. I’m not a mare person at heart so if it’s a mare she needs to be more of the warrior woman mare and less of the pins-her-ears-for-fun mare. I prefer short coupled, and I tend to not like horses with Sandro Hit up close. And the pony-loving 12-year-old girl in me loves chestnuts and grays. If you have it, and you think it’s showing potential, I want you to call me. I’ll need to see X-rays, so if you don’t have recent ones – within 6 months – then I expect that the price reflect that. I tend to look for horses 3-4 and already under saddle, but if it’s a little younger or not yet broke, or if it’s a little older and behind in its training (but isn’t a wing nut), I want to know about it, too.

Here’s what you’ll get from me in exchange, if it’s the right horse at the right time. A fair price, first and foremost. You’ll also get a whole lot of promotion of your program. And your horse will be developed tactfully, correctly and well, in a tremendous environment that holistically cares for horses like they’re horses, not like they’re equipment. 

I’m starting to sniff around for what’s next for me, but this is an offer that isn’t time related. A year from now, three years from now, next Thursday, anytime. And if you have something special but it doesn’t sound like it’ll work for me, don’t hesitate to reach out to professionals you like. You never know!

Reach me via email!

I have a hypothesis. And it’s only a hypothesis and not a theory because I have 0 data to back this up. But bear with me.

Everyone is always looking for some version of this horse: 8-15 years old, amateur temperament, easy to ride, trained to Prix St. Georges. We’ve never, ever had enough of them to satisfy the market. But man oh man, lately it’s like… where are they?

I could sell ten Fenders a day, if I had them to sell. Sue Stickle photo.

Now to the math part, and a trip on the Wayback Machine. Remember when the bottom fell out of the economy between 2008 and 2010? Horse breeders and horse trainers were affected, just like everyone else, so breeders made fewer babies between 2009 and 2011, and fewer quality trainers could afford to give the horses born in the few years before the the right start. Great horses are made between ages 3-6; from there, even if they’re waylaid for a few years, they can still make it up the levels, but if they don’t get pressure applied in the right way, and learn how to learn in those formative years, it makes the journey up the levels really hard.

So that economic downturn would have affected horses, roughly, born between 2003 and 2011. And in 2022, those horses would be between 11 and 19 years old, particularly at the bottom of that range. 

There’s a million other factors about why good horses are so hard to find right now, and the demand for youngstock is wild too. But the trickle down effect of that economic downturn might be a factor as well (and, unfortunately, one I don’t know how to solve!)

But certainly if you’ve got the time and the funds to invest in a quality young horse and park it under someone competent to make it, now’s a heck of a good time. Well trained horses will always be marketable!

Hello from Florida. We’re here. We’re set up. We’re riding, I’m teaching, I’m occasionally running out to grab something from Target or Lowe’s or the tack shops that we forgot. I’m exercising, I’m clawing my way out of my inbox, I’m making food and walking my dogs. I’m living my life. And I’m happy and healthy and well.

But man oh man, I am not writing.

At least I’m not writing well. I’m working on three different blogs, and I’m happy with none of them. The secret to my writing success over the years has been to never have a deadline, never be assigned a subject, and hardly ever take a second pass at anything. It’s why I can’t do it for a living, by the way, because that’s a pretty poor recipe for reliable job performance. But there’s a trope I like: my approach to writing is like a fart. If I have to force it, it’s probably shit.

And here I am, forcing it. 

I’ve had three different people ask me if I was ok because I hadn’t published a blog lately. And it’s funny, because I am, truly, fine. It’s also funny because, sometimes, I do my best writing when I’m really distraught. And it’s not like I haven’t had things to be distraught about – staffing challenges, financial challenges, the normal chaos of running one’s own business. But the longer I do this, the thicker the crust I’ve built to keep these things from really making me nutsy. The awfulness of 2016-2018 for me made me tougher, for sure! That which does not kill us and all, bla bla bla. It’s not like 2020 and 2021 haven’t been horribly wretched for a whole lot of people on a whole lot of fronts. I’ve just gotten better at handling it. And as such, apparently, I’ve had less to write about.

(Yes, I recognize the scary universe-tempting that I’m doing. I lean into chaos.)

So don’t worry about me. I’m here, going about my business, living the safest life I can (get your boosters and wear a mask, ya filthy animals!), and just also writing very, very poorly. When I get my writing mojo back, you’ll know it, because these pieces have the potential to be really quite good. They’re just definitely not right now. 

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year! The time where you have to figure out how to not go into debt while also showing your love and appreciation for those you care about, and also where here in Virginia it’s 40* during the day but 20* at night so the ground is a shoe-sucking quagmire. (Ok, so maybe it’s the Second Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Or the Third. Whatever.)

I can’t solve the shoe sucking problem, but I can make some recommendations on what the horse professionals in your world would appreciate if you’re working on your holiday gift list.

1. New gloves. I can basically guarantee that your trainer and/or her working students needs new gloves. In our line of work even the best of the best don’t last all that terribly long, and we try and squeak as much time out of each pair as possible. I ride in Roeckls myself, and if you live in a place that experiences a cold winter, I can’t say enough nice things about the Roeckl-Grip Winter glove, which is on sale at Tack of The Day. They’re not so bulky that you can’t still feel the reins while riding. Love ’em.

2. A MIPS helmet. The science on MIPS technology is amazing – it is HUGELY better at protecting your brain in a fall than even the best of the ASTM approved helmets, and OneK makes one that’s not wild expensive (plus it comes with the fun CCS system so you can swap out the colors on the center details and make your hat your own).

3. New boots from Kingsley. Want to splurge on your favorite horse professional? Kingsley boots are my favorite, because they wear like iron, AND you can be as garish (or not) in your footwear choices because there’s colors and styles galore, at a range of price points. Plus, hypothetically speaking, playing with the Boot Configurator after a couple of cocktails is a barrel of fun. Not that I would know, of course.

4. Some self care. Book a session to care for your favorite rider (or favorite rider’s horse’s) body with an expert bodyworker like Meghan Brady, or their brain with an expert professional coach like Jen Verharen. Both of these amazing women keep me going, in more ways than one.

5. A custom saddle plate from Swanky Saddlery. I LOVE my fancy little logo plates, and they set my black saddles apart in a sea of black saddles. And it’s something that we professionals would never treat ourselves to.

6. Cash and gift cards are never the wrong answer, and I love shopping small whenever I can. Don’t forget that it’s possible to get gift cards to your trainer’s feed store, which we probably spend more money at than our local tack shop. And most veterinary practices will let you make a payment on your trainer’s account as well. And for the working students of the world, think about helping in the direction of the grocery store or gas station, especially in this tricky world we’re living in now. They’d be very grateful for the help!