A Grand Prix rider, a horse mom, a retired jockey and a lesson-barn owner—what do they have in common? All are among the stable of bloggers we’re lucky to have writing for us here at the Chronicle. One of the great strengths of the blogs that appear on coth.com is the diversity of perspectives they represent within the horse industry. Follow us, and you’ll find someone sharing their thoughts on an issue familiar and dear to you. These are some of the best blogs of the year—in no particular order—that, we hope, caused you to stop, contemplate, maybe make you smile and nod, or maybe spur you to fire off a comment on our social media.
Allow Rising Trot On The Path Forward For Dressage
We were lucky to have two dressage mavens, judge Natalie Lamping and trainer Sara Bradley, tackle the hot topic of whether rising trot should be allowed higher up the levels of dressage than it currently is, both for the accessibility of the sport and the good of the horses (and riders). After Lamping tackled the topic in “Permission To Post: A Case For Allowing Rising Trot Through Fourth Level,” regular Chronicle blogger Bradley followed up on the topic from her on-the-ground perspective as trainer of adult amateur riders.
“My mature riders are not looking to make Olympic teams, nor to win national titles,” she wrote. “They simply wish to be allowed to compete up the levels for their own personal satisfaction and enjoyment.
“We should not limit the competitive—or physically comfortable—lifespan of riders such as this adult amateur,” she continued, “particularly when amateurs like her make up a large majority of classes at the lower levels of competitive dressage.”
Bradley’s blog generated hundreds of comments on our social media and a lively debate that drew comments from casual riders and luminaries of the sport alike.
Trainers: We Have To Do Better For Horses And Riders
Judge, former trainer and self-professed horse show mom Hope Glynn, the mother of top equitation rider Avery Glynn, penned this call to action after sitting ringside at one too many shows where she saw underprepared riders, overfaced by the level they were attempting to compete, giving unfair or unsafe rides to their horses.
The show world, she said, revolves around meeting the demands of clients rather than addressing the needs of students, and horses are suffering for it.
“Trainers, stop moving kids up if they aren’t ready—save the horse,” she implored in this piece. “Trainers are supposed to be an advocate for these animals that allow us to be in this sport and make our living because of them.
“Parents, the best thing you can do is find a trainer that tells you NO,” she continued. “Your kid should not jump more at home. Your horse does not need to jump big jumps very often. Your kid needs to come hack on their own sometimes, and they need to take their horses out of the stall and spend time with them.”
Glynn’s piece lit up social media, becoming one of the most-commented upon stories of the year.
Baby On Board: Breeding Is Not For The Faint Of Heart
In the office, our working title for this very popular blog was “You Put Kerosene WHERE?!” But as blogger and mare-owner Camilla Mortensen shares here, sometimes an unusual-sounding treatment at the hands of an experienced veterinarian is just what is needed to get the job done.
After almost a year of various treatments and unsuccessful attempts to get her former eventer, Cairo, to carry a pregnancy, Mortensen wrote, “[W]e did the Hail Mary: Upon the advice of a fertility specialist, my vet infused Cairo’s uterus with kerosene.
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“Yeah, so that’s a thing.”
We’re happy to report that Cairo is now nine months pregnant and scheduled to pop on April 1—which seems fitting after the journey she’s taken Mortensen on.
After a series of fits and starts in her horse life that included injuries, rehabs, sales and purchases, and a cross-country move and job changes, longtime Chronicle blogger Sophie Coffey hit the end of her proverbial rope this spring. In her last column for us, she wrote about how a person like herself—with horses deep in her bones—gets to the point of deciding to walk away from the sport.
“The thought of ever owning a horse again puts a knot in my stomach,” she wrote in this poignant piece. “It now feels like more risk than reward, more stress than joy, and a path to disappointment rather than fulfillment. I never want to be back on that razor’s edge of what to do if the unthinkable happens either to me or to the horse. I’ve been on that ride, and for now, I want to get off.”
I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying: Selling My Daughter’s First Pony
Pennsylvania-based horse mom Jamie Sindell joined our blogging ranks in 2023, and in this first piece talked about buying her daughter’s first pony, successfully navigating training troubles with him, and ultimately dealing with the emotional toll of selling him once her child grew too big.
“The thing I learned is that winning didn’t make my daughter love Pony more,” she wrote. “She already loved him. She loved him when he was naughty, and she loved him when he was easy. She loved him when she rode double bareback with her bestie and when she dressed him up in a neon Halloween costume. She loved him when he was just munching hay. This was not a pony. This was a year and a half of unconditional love.”
Get Creative: Real Talk About Affording Horse Show Life—Or Not
Former Chronicle staffer turned attorney Ann Glavan submitted this frank piece, spurred by an interview she did with an Olympic show jumper in which the rider talked about how young people hoping to get into the sport need to “get creative” and “not make excuses.” That talk, she wrote, doesn’t reflect the reality of life for most riders coming from a middle-income background. And from there, she talked about what being priced out of the sport does to those riders:
“Something clicked when I took that step back during law school, and I realized I simply no longer had any interest in living on a financial razor’s edge and working like a dog just to be allowed to occasionally compete in the sport I love,” she wrote
As a result, Glavan has found new, less expensive ways to enjoy her former show horse outside the show ring, keeping both her bank account and her connection to the animals she loves healthy.
Let’s Make Horsemanship The Cornerstone Of Lesson Programs
Blogger Sarah Susa hit on the same theme of horsemanship as Glynn, but came at it from a very different space in the horse world. Susa, an English teacher by profession, doesn’t spend her weekends at the glossiest shows in the country. Instead, she runs a beginner lesson program from her farm near Pittsburgh.
Her voice, representing the critical legion of trainers out there working with new riders to inspire love of horses and build a proper foundation from which they can progress, is one of the most important we’ve added to our group of bloggers this year.
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“We are doing a disservice to today’s riding students if we just teach riding—if they leave our barn knowing only what to do once their feet settle in the stirrups,” she wrote in this blog about her tips for incorporating horsemanship education into weekly one-hour lessons. “And more than that, we’re setting the industry up for failure if we don’t interest our students in horsemanship as a whole: things like enjoying the time hand-grazing a horse after a ride, or taking pride in a clean and well-oiled saddle, or knowing with confidence that a foreleg is puffy or a horse has symptoms of colic.”
Finding The Young Horse Line Between Too Much And Not Enough
Grand Prix dressage rider and trainer Lauren Sprieser, a longtime Chronicle blogger, submitted this thoughtful piece about her approach to the development of young horses at a timely moment, as some of the country’s best young horses were strutting their stuff at the annual U.S. Dressage Festival of Champions (Illinois).
“It’s such a tough judgement call to know where the line is between Too Much, Not Enough and Just Right,” she wrote. “There’s a window for instilling work ethic, the ability to take pressure and manners that gets harder to bust open the longer you wait to do so.
“But we also all know the horror stories of the horses that are at every show at 4 and 5 and 6, earning mountains of rosettes and trophies and accolades, only to be done at a young age.”
Sprieser’s piece was a reminder that there a many roads to Rome and no one right path, but for her at least, a “middle path,” she strives for in developing youngsters.
Road To The Makeover: Take The Time It Takes
There are few people with a resume more perfectly suited than Rosie Napravnik’s to writing about retraining Thoroughbreds after the track. The former champion jockey, who now runs a Thoroughbred rehab and retraining facility, generously shared her expertise this year in her “Road to the Makeover” series of blogs. Each included gems of wisdom for anyone considering taking on the challenge on opportunity of transitioning a horse from track to sport.
“While we enjoy the excitement of taking baby Thoroughbreds to their first horse shows and celebrate their progress at this point in the ‘Road to the Makeover,’ there’s one factor just about anybody training a horse knows is crucial, and that is the value of going slow,” Napravnik wrote in this entry in the series. “In one way or another, if you’re training baby Thoroughbreds, they will teach you patience. The time since my last blog has been much less ‘how to teach a baby horse to jump’ and a bit more ‘let’s just be thorough.’ ”
How Do You Ride When Its 110 Every Day? Sparingly
One of the great things about having such a diversity of bloggers is the opportunity to learn from them and their world of horses things that might be totally foreign to your own. Take Phoenix-based dressage trainer (and ultramarathoner) Cyndi Jackson, who shared how horse people carry on when the mercury is in the triple digits and holding.
“We’re used to extreme heat here, but this was extreme even for us,” she wrote. “And yet, we’ve got a thriving equestrian community that carries on. It carries on even when it’s so hot that people are getting third-degree burns from pavement, the water coming out of a garden hose is hot enough to scald you, and when experts are warning people not to go outside unless it’s absolutely necessary. We’re still riding and working outdoors.”
Exactly how they do that, with the health of their horses in mind, was an interesting and informative read for all of us who only deal with extreme heat occasionally through the summer.
Check out the rest of our Best Of 2023 coverage, and make sure you follow @chronofhorse on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay up to date with everything happening in the horse world in the new year.
