For all intents and purposes, there’s three reasons I show a horse. One is to win, or at least to do as well as I possibly can. This is the end goal, when I’m ready, when the horse is ready, when we together as a pair have the experience to do what I want to do, and an end game in mind. The second is to increase the value of the horse—horses need competition scores to prove their worth, or for sport predicates or breeding achievements. And the third is to help a horse (or me!) gain experience. I take my baby horses to shows as kids not because I’m expecting to be World Champion of Training Level, but to give them a taste of their future. And I take them out later, when they’re more finished but not yet Finished, so that I know what they’re like to ride in the ring as adults.

As a trainer of horses, I’m always thinking about The Plan for any of the horses in my care that I’m developing. Of course I want them all to become the best they can be in the long run, short run achievements be damned, so I don’t tend to compete them much at First and Second and Third and Fourth Levels. But I also know that the reality of this business is that I might need to sell something at any time, and so when they’re ready to do so, I build them upper-level show records, so they’re as valuable as I can make them.

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A lot goes into a winning competition ride. Years of great training for the horse and for the rider; smart preparation leading up to the show, including conditioning and fitness work; tack and equipment that helps both horse and human perform their best; and a great strategy to manage two brains—and lots of emotions—on the day.

And the cherry on top is a beautiful grooming protocol. At my farm, the secret to a glowing horse begins internally, with a world-class feeding program supervised by the brilliant Lindsey Williamson of Tribute Equine Nutrition. We feed Essential K, Kalm Performer, Kalm Ultra and Kalm N EZ, depending on any given horse’s nutritional needs. All have a terrific balance of healthy fats to promote a glowing coat, and amino acids to support a healthy topline. We work our horses well, and give them lots of turnout and quality forage as well.

Our day-to-day grooming protocol is simple, and it helps keep our horses’ coats, manes and tails in good condition, so buffing them up on show day is a much simpler task. Our barn is full of Shapley’s grooming products, and at home we use their Magic Sheen daily in our horses’ tails, and then shake out, rather than brush daily; a few shavings never killed anyone, and the Magic Sheen keeps the tails detangled without risking pulling out precious hairs. We use Hi Shine shampoo on the really dirty and/or sweaty ones, because it’s gentle for daily use, even on fickle-skinned creatures like Princess Ellegria, whose hair and skin really enjoy parting ways with her body, particularly in the summertime. But we also love their new Medi-Care shampoo for the sensitive, balding creatures too, as we also love apple cider vinegar, to help adjust the pH levels on the skin and cut down on crud.

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With the official naming of my wonderful, brilliant friend Ali Brock to the U.S. Olympic Dressage Team for the Rio Games (along with Steffen Peters, Laura Graves and Kasey Perry-Glass), our mutual coach, Michael Barisone, joins a very small club: Olympians themselves who’ve coached a rider to the Olympics as well. It’s a huge achievement, and I’m just bursting with joy for Ali, Michael, and the rest of the wonderful folks involved in this exceptional team.

But there’s another player in this story, one whose name probably won’t get mentioned in any of the press. His name is Michael Poulin, and he needs mention because Ali’s achievement makes Mr. Poulin a two-time member of an even smaller club: Olympians who’ve produced Olympians who’ve produced Olympians. Michael Poulin was a longtime coach to both Michael Barisone, Ali’s coach, as well as Lendon Gray, who coached Courtney King-Dye, member of the 2008 Olympic Dressage Team. If there are others out there in American dressage who’ve achieved such a tremendous honor, I don’t know them.

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I’ve been on the road for several consecutive weeks, between clinics and horse shows and the general chaos of spring and summer, and I love it, truly. If I didn’t, this would have burned me out long ago. But I’m staring down two—TWO!—consecutive weekends at home with not much on my dance card except the normal things, and I’m quite excited. But that’s why you haven’t heard much from me.

But my radio silence doesn’t mean nothing’s happening; in fact, life at Casa Sprieser has been going gangbusters. After Omaha, I tried to give Ella a quiet few weeks, which didn’t last very long, because when not challenged, Ella becomes about as supple and elastic as a hippopotamus, and nearly as nice to ride. So back to work she went, admittedly for shorter bursts of work instead of the full-throttle fitness building work I have to do to produce Grand Prix tests. She’s got another week or two of this before she goes back to “real” work, in preparation for a horse show in July, and then I have to figure out how to entertain ourselves until her next show after that: September.

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At the end of the day, dressage competition is done in a 20×60 arena, with perfectly manicured footing, and as such that’s where we spend a fair amount of our training time. But staying within the confines of the Little White Box is a great way to make a rider crazy, and forget what it does to the horse, a creature evolved from wandering grazers, although admittedly every time one of my fancy Dutch things goes catapulting through the air because he’s spotted a leaf or a bird, I am reminded of how much smart the domestication process has apparently taken out.

Terrifying birds and leaves aside, cross training is, in my opinion, crucial for the proper development of the dressage horse, not to mention a welcome breath of fresh air in a training process that, even done by the best, is inevitably full of periods of tedious repetition. And I am so lucky as to work out of 135 acres of gorgeous Virginia countryside that allows my horses, my students and I to play with lots of fun options. Here are some of the things we do to think outside the box.

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Some of them have been in my program for years, and some are new. Some are on horses who we’ve helped bring up the levels from the beginning of their dressage careers, and some are on horses that were already schooled to the middle levels when we met, but all are horses who we’re finishing to the level, which is pretty fun. They are the six students of mine in pursuit of their USDF Silver Medals this year, or, as I like to call them, the Prix St. Georges Club of 2016.

They have come to this place in their respective journeys in different ways—from eventing, from the jumpers, from learning to ride as an adult. And they’re on all sorts of horses—a homebred, a converted driving horse, a hunter/jumper reject, and a few that came up in dressage and have known nothing else. But even though they have different jobs, different budgets, different constraints on their time, they have a few things in common.

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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.

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