I have continued my learning since getting home. I ended up doing a combined test at Morven because Storm had an old cut that had grown down in his foot and and it really bothered him. He was quite lame when I got home from Florida so my farrier, Zeb Foltz, put a cross bar on Storm’s foot for more support. I decided not to do the cross-country because he was so lame earlier in the week, and even though by the event he was sound, I worried about him compensating on that foot. My goal is to do the 3-star long at Bromont, so I didn’t want to take a chance. He was good in both the phases I did do, and I thought the dressage was better than his score, but I wasn’t the judge. He was also good in show jumping with just one down.

I was lucky that my friend, Chris Talley, asked me a month ago if I wanted to ride with Julia Krajewski and her partner, Pietro Roman, at his and Hannah Heritage’s Zaragoza Acres. The timing was perfect because I was able to do a day of flat after Morven and learned some great, simple exercises (even though Storm was very fresh!). Everything was easy to execute and the exercises were good for getting the horses more engaged. For instance, we did square serpentines with ten-meter circles added over the centerline, then walked six or eight steps, went back to trot and then back to the square serpentine with ten-meter circles. This really helped to get Storm better connected.

Julia and Pietro both helped me with my show jumping with a great exercise of verticals with placement rails in three and four strides, working on ridability and the jump itself. After that we did a course, and I found the prior work set my horse up super for that.

I was able to do the cross-country as well, and it was great to put pressure on myself and Storm. He was a bit fresh, making it hard to keep a rhythm, but the exercises were definitely helpful. We started with the bank, making sure we could trot up and down, so that the horses had to think about putting their feet down rather than jumping out. Then we jumped off the bank and turned to another jump, and it was clear that Storm figured out that he only needed to do as much as he had to off the bank, making it easy to jump the next jump. The clinic came at the perfect time—thank you Chris and Hannah! 

Here are some great videos from the clinic that I reposted on my page from Chris' Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/jan.byyny

Next up for Surefire Eventing will be the 3-star at Fair Hill for Storm, and some clients will be there with their horses, too, which should be fun. After that, I can’t wait to head to Kentucky as a selector and to spectate. 

I thought you would appreciate this article I did for the USEA. There are two things I want to add: I ended my Florida season with two wins—at the WEC I won my second level test, and at Ocala I won a division of Intermediate with Mr. Storm! I was super proud of him for putting in his best show jump to date (thanks to my trusty friend Lynn Symansky for setting jumps for me) over a quite challenging and technical course. Storm was fast out on cross-country without me even meaning to be, and the win was a nice way to finish our time in Florida .

One of my passions is continuing to be a good student, because I think no matter how old I get, there are multiple reasons learning new things inspires me. First and foremost, it helps me be a better rider and trainer, so my horses benefit. Second, it helps me be a better teacher by exposing me to different ways to have a relationship with a horse or a student. 

I always bring down horses to Florida that have recently come from the track that I’m restarting to a new career. With any horse I have, whether in training or restarting, I’m big on groundwork. David O’Connor impressed this idea on me over 20 years ago because it allows me to see how a horse handles pressure and their reactions to new things in their environment and to new concepts in their education. I’ve been fortunate this winter to meet Lauren Barwick and her husband, Fabian Brandt, from Bridging the Gap Horsemanship. I’d heard a lot about them from a friend and her daughter who had had them work with their horse. Not only is Lauren a 4-Star Senior Parelli instructor, she is a five-time Paralympian in dressage and five-time World Para-Reining Championships team member for Canada!
 
I decided to call Lauren and have her work with two of my babies. One I have is named Charm, so I’ve been joking that Charm has been going to Charm School. It’s been a really great education because their approach is a little different than mine, and I’ve learned more about right- and left-brained and introverted and extroverted horses and how you approach them differently. It turns out I have a left-brained extrovert in Charm, who is quite confident in herself and her surroundings but tends to say, "I won’t," not, "I can’t."

Working with Charm is a little like administering a Meyers-Briggs personality test and then learning how to interpret the results. I thought I knew these things, but having her behavior explained in a different way has been super helpful. You don’t want to have a horse say, "I won’t." You have to figure out a way to have them be on your side. If they need to move their feet, let them. Or, if they are gate-sweet, find a way to make them work at the gate until they want to work somewhere else. 

I’ve benefitted from being exposed to a different thought process, which improves my approach to all my horses, and interestingly, my clients. I already knew some of this—different pressure points, when to put your leg forward or back to address yielding haunches or moving shoulders, etc.—but having someone explain their system in a new way to add to my system and using the things I like that mesh with my own program ups my game. If you’re in Ocala, Florida, I highly recommend Lauren and Fabian. 
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This time of year, one of my other passions is having time to work on pure dressage and pure show jumping. In March, I’m all about show jumping, and my clients and I go to HITS Ocala regularly. This year, I was also lucky enough to do the hunters with Claudia Sarnoff’s horse, Helloway. If that’s not a specialty unto itself, I’m not sure what is.