Author Archives: Gretchen Lida

Much of my life with horses has been defined by the dirt in my fingernails and the hay bits in my socks. It is a life punctuated by weather reports...

Horse husbands have been all over my social media lately.  On a Facebook group, one horse owner left a desperate plea about how her boyfriend tried to sell her horse...

The best part of the 2019 Midwest Horse Fair’s dressage competition was the variety in the ring. In the strangely plush seats of the Coliseum, I watched fancy purebreds and...

I was swing dancing one night, and the concept of tension kept spinning around in my brain. Not chick-flick tension, but the rubber-band-like feeling between partners that lets them communicate...

For my 24th birthday, my friend Katie bought me three riding lessons with a hunter-jumper trainer she trusted named Cayla Stone. On the third lesson, I flew headfirst over my...

Right now, I am greeted in the barn by a pair cream-colored ears perked through the bars of a stall. The ears belong to Flower, a Gypsy Horse from Feathered...

A vote on a proposed ban on carriage horses in Chicago was postponed earlier in October. The Committee on License and Consumer Protection chairwoman said she believed that there needed...

“What if what we experience close up is real, and what we hear on the news from the mouths of those jockeying for power needs to be questioned? It is...

The day before Poetry sold she broke my phone. I asked her to transition up to a canter, and instead, I hit the hard-packed dirt. The phone made a crunching...

On Sunday, season three of Masterpiece’s Swashbuckling series, Poldark, thunders back onto tiny screens across the United States. This 18th-century drama stars Aiden Turner as Ross Poldark, a roguishly handsome,...

Almost everything I've ever posted, I published under a pen name. Gretchen is my real first name, and Lida is the first name of my great-grandmother. I am a big...

When I teach horse riding to friends and family, I use like and as like trailer hitches: they pull my students into different concepts while they are in the saddle. “Hold...

If you ever wanted to read a corruption case turned equestrian themed soap opera, look no further than the recent impeachment of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye. And this...

On Friday June 30, 2017, just a half a day before suspensions were set to go into effect, the US Equestrian Federation issued a formal statement standing by their judgment...

Dear Single Horsewomen, If you are like me, you slightly dread those dinners with all the other equestrians. The ones where everyone sits in a circle and swaps stories about...

My thoughts about my body and outward appearance and that appearance’s connection to my self-worth is kind of like one of those dangerous see-saws made from old tractor parts. One...

Dear Clinton, I have been a fan of yours for years now. As a horseman, your consistency, and the way you teach the importance of pressure and release is something...