Blogger Lauren Sprieser

I can't really be self-righteous, since my first feelings towards Midge were not so magnanimous. But the list of people who told me that Midge would never amount to anything is long. A "project horse," one said. "He'll top out at first level. Get rid of him," said another.

Even Michael was skeptical in the beginning: "He's so cart-y. I don't know if the judges will buy it," he said.

But Midge did his first Grand Prix level test yesterday, on a 73.25 percent, with a 10 on gaits. How 'bout them apples?

Greetings from a Jet Blue Airbus 320, from Dulles to Fort Lauderdale. I am returning to the Sunshine State from my first weekend home to teach, and I am seated next to a child with no volume control. I am blogging so I don't throttle the little beast.

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!!

This weekend was the first show of 2012 in White Fences, the subdivision in which I keep the horses. So I decided to hack Midge over on Saturday to school on the grounds. Naturally, that meant that between Friday and Saturday, the temperature dropped like whoa, and the winds picked up, and because he'd thrown a shoe he didn't get ridden Friday, and things were generally not conducive to good Dutch horse behavior. 

And Midge was a STAR.

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.

The first handful of days in Florida are always a little crazy. It's runs to the store because you've forgotten to pack a grain scoop, white board markers and work gloves. It's figuring out which wash stall has the best hose nozzles and the best configuration for your stuff on the shelves of the tack room. And then it's horses that vacillate from nutcase to dog tired in no time flat. 

"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.

The first seven hours of my drive to Florida were great. I got up early, drove the truck and trailer, fully loaded, to the Warrenton, Va., indoor aquatic center so I could get in a swim, and hit the road. No traffic. No accidents. No explodey tires (though I had both a lug nut wrench and a Trailer Aid, plus I got a year's subscription to USRider for Christmas, so I was feeling pretty good about being prepared for such things).

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.