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.

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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.

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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.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!