It felt a bit like pushing a wet noodle up a hill. He's a terribly ghastly color, between his old icky winter coat and his new shiny black one. When he was body clipped, we missed and took off a thin strip of mane, which has grown in at a very irritating and useless length. He was a bit impressed by the environment on Day 1, and a bit exhausted on Day 2.

But damnit, Fender made his FEI debut this weekend, and put in two perfectly presentable Prix St. Georges tests, making him the third (of three) of my own horses that I trained myself to go from baby to FEI. How 'bout dem apples?

I lived in New Hampshire for a summer, a working student for Pam Goodrich, 21 years old and having the time of my life. New Hampshire is the one state in the union where seatbelts are not law, and I always just found it odd, the adamance and passion people would use to defend their choice not to wear one.

"They don't guarantee my safety!"

"There are lots of accidents where seatbelts leave you worse off. They can even kill!"

"No one gets to tell me what to do!"

I have been so lucky as to have some phenomenal horses in my life, including the three that I've trained up the levels from youngsters—Ella, Midgey and, on his way up, Fender. I often get asked what I'm looking for when I pick a young horse. How do I "know" what they'll become?

Why do we go to shows? There are four reasons.

Why we show horses in general is a subject for much deeper study. Why do we want to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars taking a 1200-pound prey animal to a scary environment all so that someone in a little box can tell us why we're not perfect at it, and maybe earn a few bucks' worth of ribbon and, maybe, if we're lucky, some delightful GMO glassware? An excellent question, and certainly one that proves the Equestrian Psychosis.

There was a bit of a black cloud over my head by the end of last year. It was just one of those years, where nothing really worked out the way I'd planned, much less hoped, and to top it all off a bunch of my closest friends had funk-inducing years, so we were all collectively a bit mopey.