I had to share with you all what I did this past weekend. I spent the last three days in Bozeman, Montana teaching a clinic. After doing clinics for the last forty years all over the world I am pretty sure that this is the best one I have ever done.

No, it wasn't because I stayed in a beautiful home where I ate lobster, steak, and shrimp; where I lay in bed at night and woke up in the morning looking out over the most glorious view of the mountains, the trout jumping in the pond, the hordes of pheasant families, the magpies, the hawks, the deer grazing, the groundhogs, and even a badger, and the impressive cloud formations. Well, OK, that may have kept me in a good state of mind.

I worked with 7 riders on 9 horses -- thoroughbreds, warmbloods, an Andalusian, a percheron cross, Morgan -- 4 years old to Grand Prix schoolmaster. That isn't unusual. What was unusual was that there wasn't one horse/rider combination that I had to go back and fix things with. In every case I said, "you can do more -- challenge yourself and your horse more!." They had lovely positions (yeah, there was a tweak needed here and there). What a pleasure to work with horses and riders with really sound basics who haven't pushed and shoved their horses, jammed then together, tried to do things before they were ready. Perhaps it's because there is very little competition available so they are truly riding for the love of it. 

The horses were really so well schooled, so comfortable in their work, and so ready for a challenge. What a pleasure. I can't wait to go back in October.

The other thing I loved was that the riders I had worked with 6 months ago were able to tell me what I had worked on with them then and what was working or not quite working now from the previous lessons. My favorite kinds of students.