Blogs - Lauren Sprieser

It's official! Midge is incredible. (That's been official for years, actually.) But what's really official is that he's going to be a Big Tour horse—we've entered his first I2 in mid-February, and he'll do the Developing Horse Grand Prix test at a schooling show two weekends before. Wahoo!!

I'm up between 4:30 and 5:30, depending on the morning. Good mornings, it's 5:30. Bad mornings, I get a lot of office work done. I've never been a good sleeper.

Breakfast, brush my teeth, out the door. My Haygain is on a timer, so it starts and stops itself. Brilliant. At 6, I feed my delicious smelling, warm, steamy hay, which everyone promptly inhales. Grain's at 6:30. I clean stalls, fill water buckets and get ready to ride Fender at about 7:30.

"Auld Lang Syne" is Scots, translating loosely to "days gone by." I don't know how one says "good riddance" in Scots, so auld lang syne will have to do. 

In the last year—really, the last 18 months—I've faced some challenges, personally, professionally, on and off the horse. But no more. I'm determined to make 2012 the best year of my life, and even better, even if I fall short of every goal I set, I'm way better equipped to deal with that possibility.

Every trainer has their soundbites, their one-, or two-, or three-liners about training, about how to think about an element of riding or an exercise. Some of our lines are borrowed from the trainers who made us; some we come up with on our own.

One of my students suggested I assemble a book of "Laurenisms." I don't think there are quite enough for a book, but there are certainly enough for a blog post. So here's an abbreviated list of Laurenisms, some of my own mind, some stolen (and credited when I can), all regular fixtures in my lessons.