Not one to settle for competing at the top of one sport… or two sports… Doug Payne has his sights set on competing in Grand Prix dressage with the fancy-footed Starr Witness (affectionately known as the Ginja Ninja) some time next year (TBD in conjunction with her eventing schedule!)

We’re quite familiar with Doug competing at the 5-star level of eventing as well as his routine ventures into the world of show jumping where he’ll casually jump around a Grand Prix class on a couple of horses. The next logical step is to add a third FEI discipline to his repertoire, of course!

Starr Witness, an 11-year-old Dutch Warmblood owned by Doug and Jessica Payne in partnership with Catherine Winter, has competed in eventing through the 4*-L level herself and sets hoof in the pure show jumping ring with Doug from time to time too, but with a dressage average of 28.2 throughout her FEI eventing career she’s a shoe-in for having a side hustle in pure dressage as well.

Tempi changes, canter pirouettes, passage and piaffe — they’ve got it all, complete with sassy tail flicks! Enjoy this video of their Grand Prix practice.

The winter season often means two things for pro riders: 1) it’s clinic season, and 2) it’s time to focus on the youngsters. In today’s video, we get a little bit of both as we get to audit a Boyd Martin clinic!

Emily Scott, who manages an Area I eventing barn and vlogs on her Ride & Roam YouTube channel, recently brought four-year-old Thoroughbred “Richard” out for just his second off-property experience. Piloted here by five-star rider Booli Selmayer, we get to observe a couple of exercises that Boyd uses to school youngsters and his feedback on young Richard.

The whole EN team was really impressed by the educational offerings at the Peterson Smith BarnStaple Educational Three Day, a USEA registered educational activity, over the weekend. Not only did competitors enjoy a riding a classic long format event, but they also participated in a host of lectures and demonstrations to set them up for success that weekend and beyond.

EN’s own Shelby Allen was lucky enough to participate with her loverly horse (and she’ll be writing more about her experience later), but anybody who couldn’t be on site in Florida still had a whole livestream of the educational sessions at their disposal via RNS Videomedia. Also lucky for the rest of us, all the of sessions are available on replay on YouTube!

I’ve embedded Kyle Carter’s steeplechase demonstration above, which is both entertaining and insightful (we knew Kyle was a great speaker from our EN x Ride iQ course walks at Kentucky and Maryland — and this is just another example!) but there’s so much more to watch:

• Everything you need to know about horse inspections from Peter Gray and Daniela Moguel.
• You can listen into the Debbie Adams’ commentary for the fix-a-tests here and here.
• Building your horse’s cross country confidence in-hand with Tim Maynard.
• A cross country demo with Buck Davidson and Lauren Nicolson.
• Show jumping the three-day horse with Sara Kozumplik and Brody Robertson

And that’s just a handful of the seminars! Check them all out here and enjoy digging into these during your offseason.

Let’s take a moment on this fine Monday afternoon to flashback just a couple weekends ago to the USEA Area VI Championships, which took place at Ram Tap Horse Park from October 21-23. Nine area champions were crowned that weekend from Preliminary through Intro divisions.

Let’s talk about the Intro championship division for a minute. Ram Tap treated their Intro riders to dressage judges seated at both C and B — how’s that’s for a high-pressure championship test? Janet Nelson and Ava Chase’s 19-year old Pony of the Americas, Phantom Spanish Pants (Yes, Phantom Spanish Pants — I don’t know what that means, but I love it), sat in second place after the dressage and then went on to jump double clear in the next to phases to finish on their dressage score and clinch the championship. Enjoy their cross country round above! Congratulations, Janet!

It’s a spooky scary skeleton edition of Amelia Newcomb Dressage‘s training videos!

Well, really, it’s a very biomechanical edition that just so happens to coincide with nicely with Halloween! This week, Amelia address a common struggle among riders: feeling where their horse’s hind legs are. With the help of a skeleton onesie and a physiotherapist named Stephanie, Amelia shows an easy exercise to help you feel where your horse’s feet are and gives us a physiological explanation for why the exercise helps.