When I’m home, I jog as part of my fitness routine. When I travel, hotel treadmills are often the only exercise option. And I’m always surprised at how much easier it is to run on a treadmill, even with an incline, than it is to propel my, er, mass over the ground.

Apparently Paragon feels the same way. The eighteen-hand, nine-year-old Danish Warmblood gelding faithfully does his dressage training and his four-times-a-week treadmill stints at home in Wellington, Fla.; but the hills and rolling terrain of Gladstone, N.J., took some getting used to, said owner/rider Heather Blitz, 43.

“He was huffing and puffing” on the grounds at the 2012 U.S. Olympic dressage selection trials in Gladstone, Blitz said. “That’s why the piaffe and passage were a little flat