“Give a girl the right pair of shoes and she can conquer the world.” Atta girl, Marilyn Monroe. My quest to find world-conquering shoes is very specific. This blog is for anyone with walking difficulty who is incessantly looking for a shoe they feel secure and comfortable in. It took a long time to figure out why some shoes were easier to walk in than others, but I finally cracked the code: zero lift shoes and shoes that snugly fit to the bottoms of my feet. Like many people with multiple sclerosis, I have weak tibialis muscles, which makes flexing the ankle difficult (also called dorsiflexio ..read more

Para equestrians, like many adaptive athletes, use specialized equipment, which has to neutralize the detracting ways the body works so para riders can ride effectively and safely. In para dressage, there are standard, profile-specific, and non standard compensating aids. Work with professionals to ensure any equipment you use is safe for you and your horse. Make sure to review the current para dressage rules before using any modified equipment in competition. As a grade II rider, soft and hard hand holds are profile-specific compensating aids for me. Hand holds are for riders to grab to ..read more

It’s a big year. This year I will have had multiple sclerosis for as long as I didn’t. I was diagnosed in 2004 and 17 years later, here we are. It all started with some numbness on the left side of my face that migrated to my left ear and down my neck. An MRI revealed my “textbook” relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis with three brain lesions and seven spinal lesions. This diagnosis put the pieces together for some vision problems I had been having and a strange episode of back pain I had as a 15-year-old.  My “Uncle” Mike was a big part of my life when I was a tween. When I was d ..read more

I’m going to rip this Band-Aid off. Here’s a video of me walking. The absolutely most difficult thing for me to share. I hate videos of me walking because it shows a disabled person and that’s not how I feel. For years, I have avoided having my picture taken with my scooter, canes, or walker because those were “temporary” tools and “I won’t need those for forever”. Newsflash: maybe they are here to stay. Disability is a strange thing. I may share a disability with someone, but not their diagnosis. Anyone affected by an outward disability hears the same unspoken question, “I wonder why she walk ..read more

Spoiler alert: this story has a happy ending, but it was a bit dicey getting there. Some of the lessons I learned are general to the world of dressage in the digital age and some are specific to para. Of course, I had no idea what I didn’t know and really bumbled through the process. There were several minor and one profuse apology along the way.  Read on, PLEASE learn from my mistakes! In my area, there doesn’t seem to be any other para riders showing in para classes, so it’s unchartered territory for everyone. My horse show experience is almost exclusively in the hunter realm from 1994 ..read more

This blog was originally titled, We All Enter At A, which is a paradressage euphemism for “we all put our pants on one leg at a time,” because all riders, disabled or able-bodied, start a dressage test by entering the ring at “A.” I stunted this blog by constricting it only to horses and my conversion from able-bodied hunter/jumpers to paradressage. The title MS Mindspace is literally both the space for my brain, where my MS resides, and also where my mind and identity dwell, harboring my ever-changing id, ego, and superego. I adventure to emulate a New York Times blog I love. I admire its sco ..read more

Support team: check. Horse: check. Trainer: check. Plan: check. Funds: in progress. I have made a lot of progress on my para-dressage journey in the last six months. My relationship with Brooke Waldron and Sprout Therapeutic Riding and Education Center is a foundational element of the triumph’s in the last months. Brooke was able to find Cody, a 14 year-old Oldenburg gelding who is the perfect eqine partner for me at this stage of this amazing journey. We found Lisa Hellmer to be my coach. She brings the technical aspects of the sport to the forefront and guides Cody and I as we develop as ath ..read more

The weather for my ride on Saturday was dreary, cold, late winter rain. Yuck! Duke, Maggie, and I were grateful for the lovely lit indoor ring. We worked on walk-trot transitions on a 20m circle. Are anyone’s transitions ever perfect enough they don’t need work? Well, ours aren’t even close to perfect. Without a leg aid to speak of, I am honing the use and timing of my seat and whip for transitions. Duke is in turn learning, but sees very little urgency in trotting and with my weak aids, who can blame him. For the first time in my life, I rode with two dressage whips. What a sight! As a former ..read more

So, last week Duke was perfectly fine for the lesson before mine, but was off as soon as I was in the tack. We assumed he took a bad step, but when it happened exactly the same way again today, I immediately thought, “It has to be the saddle.” New saddle, new horse. I was gung-ho today! I wanted to work –hard–I wanted to be sore and tired and out of breath. I was not disappointed. I have almost no control over where my legs are, while working or at rest. I asked Maggie to pull my leg out, rotate in, and pull it back. It slowly works its way forward and infront of me, but I hope it will work it ..read more