First I hope you and your family have had a joyous holiday season and I wish you the best for the new year. Let me offer you three New Year's resolutions for AERC members:

1. Dedicate time to trail work.

2. Bring a new person into our sport.

3. Find an area to become better educated and apply that knowledge.

AERC is America's leader in creating and maintaining trails for long distance equestrian use. We have established this leadership through the volunteer time and energy of our members. Each of us should find time this year to build our leadership position by ideally spending 20 or more hours on trail work. We now have a database to record those volunteer hours. (Click on "volunteer" after you've entered your member log-in on www.aerc.org.)

Our sport has much to offer to others sharing our love of horses and the outdoors. So find another person to bring into our world as a rider, crew, ride volunteer, and/or veterinarian. One of the best ways to bring somebody into the sport is to give a gift membership as a thank you for crewing or as a birthday present or even a Valentine's Day present (be careful on this one, guys).

We owe it to our horses to be the best-educated equestrians we can be, to learn from others, and to share our knowledge with others. My personal topic for the year is to learn more about what to observe at checkpoints and what to do with what I observe. So I plan to keep a record of progressive recoveries and other indications taken during the checkpoints and correlate that with my horse's performance. I would encourage each of you to find your own topic and act on it.

Thanks to all the candidates who ran for AERC director-at-large We had a talented group of candidates this year, all of whom were worthy of serving on the board. In addition to Laura Hayes, Mike Maul, Robert Ribley, Mike Tomlinson, DVM, and myself -- current BOD members who were reelected, Randy Eiland, a past president and board member for many years; Heidi Smith, DVM, and past board member; and John Crandell III, who showed his excellence as an endurance rider by winning the "Triple Crown" -- Old Dominion, Tevis, and the AERC National Championship -- last year, will be serving you as directors-at-large. These folks, together with the 18 regional directors, give you an excellent board. Let them know what you want from AERC.