How Being a Professional Groom Helped Me in My Academic and Professional Career
The alarm goes off at four in the morning. What two years of Norman stables built in me, no classroom ever could.
Writing on horse care, competition, and the culture of the sport — shaped by two years in Normandy, Europe's heartland of equestrian excellence.
Care guides, competition dispatches, and personal essays on what it means to ride in the European tradition.
The alarm goes off at four in the morning. What two years of Norman stables built in me, no classroom ever could.
I felt at home in Normandy the moment the landscape changed. It took me a while to understand why.
The French galop system gives every rider a shared, honest measure of competency. The American system largely doesn't.
I grew up in the American equestrian tradition — trail rides, hunter-jumper circuits, and a deep, uncomplicated love of horses. But it was two years living and working in Deauville, Normandy, that fundamentally changed how I see the sport.
Normandy is horse country in the way Kentucky can only aspire to be. The haras, the polo fields, the long history with Thoroughbreds — I absorbed it all. I also learned French, which opened doors to a side of the European equestrian world most English-speaking writers simply never reach.
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