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Oct 29, 2024 | 
chronofhorse.com | Armand Leone |Justine Griffin |Lauren Sprieser |Brit Vegas
“Mom, how could you have scheduled the dentist today, so I can’t ride!” My teen daughter glared at me. “You know this is my last few weeks to ride her.” At first, I was angry at the disrespect, and then anger morphed into melancholy. My daughter was in her last days with a beautiful mare she had leased for a year. It was the closing of yet another horse-related chapter in her young life. Another life lesson in the art of letting go and grappling with loss.
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Oct 25, 2024 | 
chronofhorse.com | Laura Lemon |Justine Griffin |Lauren Sprieser |Brit Vegas
It wasn’t all that long ago that a prospective buyer would try a horse once, maybe pop a few fences, and then decide whether to buy it. Sometimes they’d come back the next day for a second ride to finalize their decision and call their veterinarian. But the landscape of what buyers expect before they part with their money has shifted enormously, with many now wanting multiple trial rides.
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
chronofhorse.com | Lauren Sprieser |Brit Vegas |Sarah K. Susa |Jamie Sindell
With less than 48 hours before Hurricane Milton would barrel toward my home as a major Category 4 hurricane, I sat in a rural gas station outside of Ocala, Florida, and bawled my eyes out. My truck had just 22 miles of gas left in the tank when I pulled into a long line of cars and trucks filling their tanks, generators and gas cans in a frenzy that sadly felt too familiar to me as a lifelong Floridian.
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Sep 23, 2024 | 
chronofhorse.com | Sarah K. Susa |Lauren Sprieser |Camilla Mortensen |Brit Vegas
In early July of this year, I decided to write a post on Facebook explaining my decision to radically change my business. I had already told my clients, family, and friends, but I figured I would let everyone know. I tried to decide if a short, upbeat post was the best way to go—no intimate details, just a perky announcement about my new life. But that felt a bit disingenuous. I was excited about my plans, but I was also feeling many other things.
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Sep 19, 2024 | 
chronofhorse.com | Camilla Mortensen |Kimberly Loushin |Rose Keller |Brit Vegas
My last blog was about our triumphant 2024 Paris Paralympic Games for American dressage enthusiasts. Gold after gold, a brilliant week of consistent and extraordinary excellence. It was a contrast to the Olympic Games, where our team suffered the two most inconveniently timed hiccups ever, following a team selection process that required the throwing of a lot of Hail Marys.
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Sep 13, 2024 | 
chronofhorse.com | Nicole Mandracchia |Brit Vegas |Lauren Sprieser |Sarah K. Susa
I sat huddled in the straw on the floor of Cairo’s stall on a rainy early April night. The Predict-A-Foal kit was telling me that based on Cairo’s milk, she could be due in the next 24 hours. Unfortunately, what was also due was the story I needed to write about how the weekly newspaper I work for in Oregon had been embezzled, and why we went out of business for six weeks before being brought back to print by the support of our readers. It just happened to be the same week Cairo’s foal was due.
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Aug 20, 2024 | 
chronofhorse.com | Sarah K. Susa |Sara Lieser |Brit Vegas |Jamie Sindell
My oldest child is 14. No longer the little girl who needed and wanted me so much, now she’s a teenager jockeying for her independence. She’s an incredible human, but at times it feels difficult to connect with her, to reel her back in when she’s pushing me away. Thankfully, our mutual love for horses—a passion we’ve shared since she was a toddler—remains unchanged.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
chronofhorse.com | Sara Lieser |Brit Vegas |Jamie Sindell |Laura Adriaanse
It’s horse camp season again, that time of year when so many equestrian programs ask our already saintly lesson horses to go even more above and beyond. Many of us rely on our summer camp income to financially carry our businesses through the slower winter season, so it’s vital that our camps remain successful and profitable. That can only happen if our horses also remain amiable to the experience. Summer camps are a lot on lesson horses.
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Aug 7, 2024 | 
chronofhorse.com | Brit Vegas |Sara Lieser |Jamie Sindell |Laura Adriaanse
Five days; 117,379 steps taken; 47 miles walked. Countless pastries consumed but not enough glasses of wine drunk because almost no alcohol was allowed inside the Palace of Versailles Olympic equestrian venue. I thought I was tired when I worked the press, but it turns out spectating the Olympic Games offers even less time for sleep. While my too-short time in Paris was a blast, it left me pondering the place and purpose of horse sports in these Games.
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Jul 17, 2024 | 
chronofhorse.com | Sara Bradley |Lauren Sprieser |Brit Vegas |Jamie Sindell
I thought I knew what to expect: Middle-aged women dragging wheelbarrows of plastic horses behind them. Cutthroat shows pitting plastic model versus plastic model. Groupies donning horse tails and horse ears and customized T-shirts, chasing down autographs for the models they’d waited in seemingly endless lines to purchase. For the very first time, I was attending BreyerFest.
