Greetings from Virginia. My team, the horses and I are settled back in after a productive Florida season, and I’m ramping back into the mayhem of spring horse shows, teaching clinics and generally running all over the place at Mach 2 with my hair on fire. It’s not left time for … well, anything else, really, but certainly not for a lot of contemplation. But there’s also not been a lot to contemplate. I’m an ambitious rider trying to make the Big Time, but where I currently am on that path with the group of horses I have right now is a place that is well within my comfort zone. The boys are ages 6, 7 and 9, and I have done those years a LOT. 

Even with all that mileage (and just ask my SI joint, because boy oh boy, has there been a lot of mileage), sometimes I still step back in awe of how cool dressage is, and how well the basic concepts of horse training work just about every single time. Horses are always teaching us something, and at the moment, mine are teaching me things I already know, all over again. Here’s a few of the “duh” realizations I’ve had in the past few weeks.

1. The things we work on tend to improve. The things we don’t, don’t. 

Tjornelys Solution, a 7-year-old Danish Warmblood (Revolution—Heslegaard’s Rosanna, Rubin) owned by Clearwater Farm Partners, is a Certified Good Boy who isn’t weird at shows. “Beaker” is really ready to show third level from an “I can do all the things required in the test” perspective. He’s also huge, and he’s a horse trainer’s kid, which means he’s at the mercy of my schedule when it comes to how his life runs. While the movements are well in-hand, the self-carriage, the balance, and the ability to hold up his unbelievable gaits are all still cooking. But I wanted him qualified for the regional championships in the fall, which requires I actually get out there and do a few shows, and there’s only room for so many on my trailer, and so the focus of his last month in Florida was gearing up for two horse shows, one in April, one in May. It’s been movements and test prep for a few weeks.

Off we went to the April, and he got crazy good scores and won all the things, and then we got home and I said, OK, you’re done for a minute, so let’s shift back to prioritizing all the things that aren’t so easy. I spent two weeks just focusing on hind legs to bit, which seems so rudimentary, but when you’re a big, strapping boy with gaits for a 12, that’s not so straightforward. And, lo and behold, on Day 1, I couldn’t put my horse on the bit without holding him together. I’d inadvertently let some things slide in order to get the test done. 

But after two weeks, at the beginning of the week of his second (and last, for probably the rest of the summer) show, and the basic work is so much better—like freaky night and day better. Working on Beaker’s ability to carry himself for two weeks improved his ability to carry himself. Go figure. (By the way, the movements are now also easier, duh.)

2. Big horses need more time.

Speaking of Beaker, he’s just shy of 18 hands. Last fall, considering the movements of the 7-year-old test aren’t a crazy step up from the movements of the third level tests, I had this wild hair that maybe I’d try it. As I practiced them, I realized that I was helping him out a lot in order to get them done—holding him together, carrying him around—and ending up more exhausted myself at the end of our ride than he was. We were getting it done, but not to the international standard, and so instead I backed off to a third level expectation. In one particular week that I was feeling nowhere, I mentioned it to my brilliant osteopath, who looked at me (very sweetly) like I was a moron and said, “…you know he’s not done growing yet, right? And that he’s a different shape every time I see him?”

When you stare at them every day, you don’t necessarily notice those things, but I stepped back and looked and, duh, of course he is. The warmbloods take a minute. Some of them take more than a minute. And this all is a marathon, not a sprint. 

3. Turnout and good equipment will cure a heck of a lot.

I do my best to keep my horses’ lives in Florida as wonderful as their lives in Virginia, but the logistics are difficult. Wellington, Florida, has sand for soil, a million microbes that will eat you alive, and not a lot of terrain. Compare that to my 85 rolling acres in Virginia, where we do night turnout and hacking in the woods, and it’s not hard to see why all the horses are reeeeeally happy to come home in April. In particular, 6-year-old Original JP (Hennessey—Infinity JP, Wynton) was just a little fried. He was being a good sport, and he’s the happiest creature on earth, but his heart was struggling a bit.

Home we went, to turnout he went, and suddenly I had a whole new horse. He wasn’t as mouthy in the bridle, and he found a whole new trot gear in the first week we were home.

C. Cadeau, a 9-year-old Danish Warmblood (St. Schufro—C. Chanel, Richman) owned by The Elvis Syndicate, is a keen, sharp horse with energy forever, and I’m doing the things I do, but it was bubbling over in the changes. Getting him back to Virginia and having more turnout access helped, but it wasn’t the silver bullet for “Cadeau” that it was for “OJ.” My saddle fitter was in town, and the saddle I was using on him fits great—balanced, stable, everything you could ask for—but the company has a new model that they wanted me to crash test, so on him it went.

OMG.

He’s a stellar horse, but suddenly there was this shoulder in front of me. I’d not yet tried to connect passage to piaffe and back before, but in that saddle it was just right there. And the changes were straight, emotionless and uncomplicated. There was nothing wrong with what I had on him before, but this was so, so much better, and from no effort at all. (And then I had to buy a new saddle. Thanks, Cadeau.)

4. Test mathematics are cool.

That horse show where Beaker took his sexy self and won everything? The test math was kinda neat. That ongoing work on self-carriage, etc., means that sometimes in the trot (his hardest gait at present), he’s a smidge too round. If I try and pick him up and keep poll the highest point nose at the vertical, he gets unsteady and mouthy; slightly lower he’s organized and mouth beautifully closed from no effort. (And—yes, yes, yes, internet—I know that a smidge behind the vertical is not ideal.) I am, in fact, working on it. But I needed to get around the test, and imperfect balance is less of a capital crime at third level than it is at Grand Prix, so his trot tour was largely 6.5s and a handful of 7s. 

But the canter. The canter is where Beaker shines. The shape is spectacular, the balance is sublime, and he’s just unbelievably expressive and easy there. Other than the transition to canter, in which I got a 4 for picking up the wrong lead like the international Grand Prix trainer I am, the movements scored 9, 9, 10 (!), 9 and 8.5. 

The end result was about a 75%, and if certain experts on the internet would have seen a photo of him in the trot juxtaposed with that score, they would have lost their collective shirts, screeching that the judges are rewarding bad and bloviate-bloviate-bloviate. The reality was that the judge was spot on, and that’s just how math works.

Lastly. 5. Everything breaks in the spring.

Not a horse realization but an equipment realization. You know when would be a good time to get the tractor serviced and the mower repaired? February. You know when I think to do it every year? April. Do I change this behavior? Well, I didn’t this year. Maybe next year … or maybe next year I’ll learn yet another thing I already know, all over again.

Lauren Sprieser is a USDF gold, silver and bronze medalist with distinction making horses and riders to FEI from her farm in Marshall, Virginia. She’s currently developing The Elvis Syndicate’s C. Cadeau, Clearwater Farm Partners’ Tjornelys Solution, as well as her own string of young horses, with hopes of one day representing the United States in team competition. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram, and read her book on horse syndication, “Strength In Numbers.”