Jennifer Burger

This year, my equitation-obsessed, 14-year-old-daughter, Quinn, embarked on her journey in the “Big Eq.” Instead of spending hours caught up in my own mental class warfare of “how much more can your parents provide for you,” I discovered an astounding concept: Stats for the classes shown in—the actual number of times kids get to hone their skills with an audience watching. The ring time stats are mind-blowing. They completely changed my perspective on the top end of this discipline.

Do you know how you get really, really good in a horse sport? There are some truisms: Just keep doing it; take lessons; hopefully have your coach help with your horse occasionally. But here’s the thing a lot of people miss: Even if you’re a novice dressage rider, getting basics from a coach who genuinely feels the training scale in their bones will change the trajectory of your riding.

On any given day in Kern County, more than a thousand animals are available for adoption. While many are overfilling city and county shelters, many more are temporarily housed by rescue organizations and volunteer fosterers. “If we didn’t have nonprofit rescues pulling animals out of our shelters, thousands of animals would meet untimely fates,” said Nick Cullen, director of Kern County Animal Services. Local rescue organizations alleviate the choked capacity of the municipal shelters.