The end is, alas, nigh. This holiday weekend was the last of a three weekend tour of relative tranquility, a glorious quiet period after our insanity-inducing Spring tour of showing. I worked, of course, teaching lessons and riding like I normally do, but it was lovely to be at home on the weekends, to see my friends, to run a triathlon last weekend (faster on all three phases, especially my weakness, the bike; nailed it), to have the teensiest weeniest bit of a life.

That's about to go back out the window.

I had dinner with three fellow young trainers one night at Gladstone. One of those trainers was Jeremy Steinberg, who recently resigned from his job as USEF Youth Coach. The four of us chatted about the trials and tribulations of being a young trainer, about horses, about our clients, about the things we struggle with. The conversation got around to the state of U.S. dressage, and our role in it. 

Experience is the thing you get thirty seconds after you needed it. In order to get experience, you have to have experiences. We learn best from our mistakes. There are so many clever, witty and true quips about living life, about the process of going from here to There, wherever that is.

But there is no witticism that alleviates the frustration of having to watch kids go through it.

I was terribly excited for this year's Festival of Champions, the USEF National Dressage Championships. I was excited mostly because they're inherently exciting, but also because my team qualified four horses, with their three riders, for the various Youth championships, not to mention Michael's qualifying Ella for the WEG Selection Trials. I was also excited because I was taking advantage of being 20 minutes from Michael's to bring Fiero along for training, to get some lessons and have something to do.

It's that time of year again, when the heat indexes hit triple digits, when we switch to night turnout, when we start waking earlier and earlier to get the horses ridden before it's a kajillion degrees. But there's no rest for the weary, so we press on, with a few important hot weather essentials. Here's the products we at Sprieser Sporthorse can't live without as we approach summertime.