I’ve made the decision to offer my phenomenal 6-year-old, Johnny Road, up for syndication. Johnny’s always been one of my favorites, not just because he’s got freaky talented legs and a wonderful mind that takes pressure better than any horse I’ve owned at that age, but because he’s my kind of nerdy—he’s smart and clever and more than a little obnoxious, and I find that combination tremendously endearing (which probably explains why I’m still single.)

I’ve owned Johnny two years, since he was 4, and at 4 his job was to go to shows at training level until he didn’t try and kill me.

The first show, he spent a lot of time trying to kill me. The second show, he was a rockstar by Day 3, earning high score training level for the show. And so I checked off that box, took him back home, and let him grow and develop and didn’t really freak out about what he was or wasn’t doing.

At 5, I went to one more show, just to make sure the Dirtbag instinct was still dead. It was. High score first level of the show. And I kept him home the rest of the year, where he grew almost a hand, sprouted this unreal topline from very little hard work, and proceeded to just generally be a pleasure and not keep me up at night.

His path mirrors another big red horse in my life: Midgey, to whom Johnny is most often compared, mostly because they ride very similarly, but also because they’re equally big, red and annoying to live with. And at 6, Midgey also found bending through his body really difficult, just like Johnny does. At 6, Midgey also had no medium trot to speak of, and his freaky Dutch hind leg that had been amazing (and uncontrollable) at 4 and at 5 became controllable, and also extremely boring to watch.

Johnny’s going through the same thing. Midgey had his changes, but they were terrifying and explosive; Johnny’s got one good change and one he hasn’t quite figured out yet. Midgey was in the double bridle every day because he was such a big, strong hippopotamus I couldn’t stop him without it; Johnny’s been in the double a time or two for decoration, and does all his work in a simple snaffle.

When Midgey was 6, I did not panic. And at 10, he was the most amazing and delightful Grand Prix horse.

When Fender and Ella were 6, they weren’t perfect, and I didn’t panic. Dorian and Danny came into my life at 6, and weren’t perfect either.

So why is this stage of development for Johnny keeping me up at night?

My frontal lobe knows that I’m being insane. Of COURSE he’s not finished yet, you dunce; he’s 6 years old. It’s a miracle he can find his hind legs with both hands and a map. If any student or peer of yours started fretting about why their 6-year-old wasn’t World Champion of the World, you’d tell them to get a grip, that the last thing you want as a trainer of 10+ year old Grand Prix horses is a World Champion of the World 6-year-old. 

But my reptilian brain, as I was looking at the video I’ve done for his syndication pitch, was freaking out. How do I convince others of all that I believe about this wonderful creature? Lord knows the video doesn’t look anything like the untapped potential that I feel.

I think it’s that word that’s the problem—untapped. A young horse is not a maple tree in the woods, just waiting for you to come along with your hammer and your spile and voila! They learn at whatever rate they learn. They come along whenever they come along.

I’ve realized that it’s the pitch that had me foaming at the mouth about Johnny’s progress. As we approach the final days of the qualifying season for the Young and Developing Horse Championships, and as I head with my wunderkind student Kristin to the NAJYRC, I’m caught up in deadlines, of all the things that we’re told a horse should be doing in order to be considered special.

I know better. I know that those programs are just one path. I know that I’ve made many FEI horses without setting foot in one of those classes, and that they’re healthy and successful and happy all the same. But to make Johnny stand out, it feels like we should be doing more.

That is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Of course, we have to do the homework. We have to build the foundation. And there’s a window that closes on things like this. If you don’t teach them the changes until counter canter is really solid and confirmed, most horses will struggle with the change. If you don’t make round-neck-on-the-bit a normal piece of their life pretty early on in the process, most horses will make you chase it for the rest of their lives.

They have to learn to accept the aids. They have to learn to accept pressure, from the leg, from the bit, from outside stimuli. And of course there are miraculous stories of riders who pluck horses from fields, from the range, from other disciplines, and work a little magic and turn them around, but those are miracles, and miracles are rare.

Most horses are the products of their development, of the day-to-day drudgery that, for Johnny, is what 6 is all about. By taking the long way, I address all the holes, and I don’t leave until they’re filled in. I rejoice in the fun days—they day the get their changes for the first time, the first time they piaffe—as much as the long, slow progress, the six months spent teaching a horse to really carry, the year spent addressing straightness, the endless pursuit of an invisible and powerful half-halt: all the stuff that, even with the best horses and riders in the history of humanity paired together simply cannot be built overnight.

I help a fantastic amateur rider from Maryland with her horse from time to time. She’s done a brilliant job of bringing her horse up the levels, but they’ve been stuck at Intermediate One-And-A-Half for a few years now, with progress hindered by annoying niggling injuries to both horse and human.

Now they’re healthy and rolling along and struggling to get the ones. She left the horse here with me for two weeks. I spent the first 10 days picking away at the canter, which had been getting super scores through I1, and could easily clock off fours and threes and twos, but was just a smidge not-right for the ones.

I could do three ones, and no more, with consistency until about Day 12, when he easily lobbed off seven a few times. And today (in front of his owner; good timing, Fro!), he banged out 15 gorgeous, uncomplicated, and unemotional changes, for the first time in his life.

He is 13 years old. And if that’s how long it took, then that’s how long it took. 

It’s so easy, in the shadow of the Young and Developing Horse Championships and of the NAJYRC, to see only the end dates, the deadlines. If they’re not doing third level by 6; if they’re not doing Prix St. Georges by 9, Grand Prix by 10; if a rider isn’t riding at Prix St. Georges by 21 or Grand Prix by 25; they are behind the curve. 

But what curve is that? Damon Hill, World Champion at 5 and 6, didn’t cross 80% at Grand Prix until he was 13. Charlotte Dujardin never went to the European Young Riders Championships. For every rider or horse who has had success from beginning of career to end, there are a hundred more that were feral as baby horses, or dabbling in the jumpers or going to college instead of going to the NAJYRC.

And so, with each student, both two-legged and four-legged, we have to see the long view, that there’s a time in the life of everything that works when it doesn’t work. Young Riders is a really cool, really fun, and really unimportant important show. The Young Horse Championships are one of many paths one can take a young horse going up the levels. And there’s many different definitions of success.

Mine is sound, healthy, happy and fun FEI horses. If yours is too, and you’re interested in joining the Johnny Road Group and helping me with my journey on my currently-not-all-that-impressive 6-year-old, shoot me an email. One way or the other, give me a few years. He’ll show us all what fine stuff he’s made of, at whatever time it all works out.

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