I remember this one day. It was the summer of 2010. Midge was 8. And I got on, and I picked up the reins, and there he was. He was connected to my hand, hind legs, withers, bridle. He was balanced and organized. He was just THERE. He felt like an expensive FEI horse, and while he still made mistakes, still needed to develop in his strength and timing and coordination, still wouldn't do his first Grand Prix for two years, all of a sudden, he was there.

As a dressage trainer in Northern Virginia, I teach a lot of event riders. And I mean a LOT. Like my strictly dressage students, they run the gamut—from the grassroots to the international levels, beginner novice at the local combined test to Rolex. Some of them are better at hiding it, and some of them don't even try, but without fail, they have one thing in common: before they start riding with me, virtually all of them think that dressage is that thing that they have to suffer through before they get to the fun stuff.

They were ready. I'd run through the test with both of them at least once. But it's one thing to move your own horses up a level of competition. It's another thing to do it with someone else's horse.

The textbooks all say that we sit on the horse, we half halt, we soften, and voila! They make their way up the levels, learning the work. Here on planet earth, sometimes we have to get 'er done. Maybe we have to dig in and drive like hell for a few strides; maybe we have to hold a horse up for a while, until they can hold themselves up.

Our lives are busy, we equestrians. Whether we ride professionally or as amateurs, it's a sport that can't be played at our convenience, whenever we find a few minutes. A soccer ball we can just pick up when we can. We can go for a run anytime. Our tennis rackets don't need to be fed three times a day, nor does it cost much of anything at all to keep our bowling balls or surfboards healthy, trained and well cared for.