The FEI passed good rules this year, and the Olympic judging held to the high side. Dressage had things to celebrate but then the modern pentathlon debacle happened, not even an equestrian event, and we all saw the competitor crying and whipping her horse. The press failed to grasp what we all know: Horses take … Read more
Dear Fellow Primates: It is our instinct to grab. It is our instinct to talk in imitation-semaphore with our hands, to eat with our hands, and react to fear or alarm with our hands. We start when we’re babies being offered a finger to grab and we never let go. We use our hands … Read more
The rider’s dream goal is that the horse moves as freely under-saddle as he does at liberty.
Let’s say you like to jump and so does your Arabian. Let’s say you do endurance on an Appaloosa. Let’s say you have an expensive, impeccably bred performance horse and you actually use him for the very thing he was bred to do. Or let’s say you trail ride your rescue horse. It’s all the … Read more
Dressage is freedom of expression within limitation; a waltz, a sonnet, a bird in flight.
This is why Dressage judges have as many words for hollow and tense as Eskimos do for snow.