Cavalli Connections » The lifelong pursuit of classical riding.

Dressage Is Not A Discipline

In the past, when people found out that I rode horses, the first question I would get was “What kind of riding do you do??” and my usual response would be “dressage”. Then I changed it to “dressage and jumping” because if you just say dressage, for some weird reason everyone assumes you do a few select things on a few select (and usually fancy) horses and everything else is out of your range of abilities. Which is strange, because correct, classical dressage puts you into the position to participate in pretty much any type of riding. But it was sort of true – mostly I rode in a dressage saddle, and sometimes I jumped in a close contact saddle. And sometimes I even jumped in a dressage saddle (did you gasp? ). But I did lots of other things that the layman wouldn’t even think to associate with “dressage”. The image of dressage has become that rider at the Olympics, all decked out in the right outfit, riding a multi-million dollar horse, having trained for years and years for this moment. But that image is only the tip of the iceberg, a tiny piece of the truth. Unfortunately it seems to put the average rider out of reach.

Later on, as I acquired more knowledge about certain things supposed “dressage riders” were doing out there in the world, I stopped answering the question as to what kind of riding I frequented with “dressage and jumping” and simply said “English”. If elaboration was called for, then I would say “dressage and jumping” still…but it made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want anyone to think I did what I saw a lot of riders do who claimed to “ride dressage”. It was just embarrassing. And you don’t even have to get into serious topics in the equestrian world like rollkur. For example, I recently witnessed a woman, who loudly proclaims to be a “dressage rider”, get extremely upset with her horse after the mare refused to stand still and allow her to shut the gate after exiting the arena. The horse apparently took a few steps forward, and this woman tried to get the horse to back up to where she felt she should be…and when the horse refused she pulled and pulled and used her entire body weight to pull on both reins. The horse braced herself and refused to move. The lady then continued pulling and proceeded to kick and kick and kick…with spurs. And then used her whip on the horse’s chest with every ounce of her strength. The horse at this point kind of half-reared, and still refused to go backwards. All this time, the lady is not only out of control physically, but emotionally she is a wreck. I swear, this must have gone on for 20 mintues. If it had been my place rectify the situation, believe me, I would have done it. Unfortunately it was not, and I had to witness this with my blood boiling and threatening to blow the top of my head off. In my mind I saw myself running over, throwing the fit the horse probably would have liked to throw, and screaming “Don’t you EVER tell anyone you do dressage!!” But…that wasn’t really a possibility. And so…this is a definite dilemma. I really don’t want to be associated with that and I definitely don’t want some to-be or novice rider seeing that and thinking that’s ok. Because yes, “dressage” is and should be so much more than just what you do in the arena. It’s everything about how you treat your horse.

“If training has not made a horse more beautiful, nobler in carriage, more attentive in his behavior, revealing pleasure in his accomplishment, then he has not truly been schooled in dressage.” ~ Col. Handler

So why has dressage become categorized as a discipline, a mere subset in the sport of riding, when it is the basics to all riding? One of the reasons I have come up with is because there are dressage shows. So people think, “Well I don’t ride dressage so I can’t show at those shows”. Not exactly. What I usually tell people if I have the golden opportunity to explain is that dressage is just French for training and they should try to think of someone who only “rides dressage” as being like someone who works out just for fitness’s sake. Not for any certain sport, just to be the best human being they can be. Theoretically, if that very fit person chose to do a sport they would have a clear advantage over their unfit counterparts. So dressage is riding for riding’s sake, making the horse the best athlete he can be and therefore expanding his options. I tell people that when you go to a dressage show, what you are really doing is showing how well your horse is trained at the level at which you’re competing. The qualities dressage judges look for are not specific to dressage at all. Would a western or hunter jumper rider ever claim that things like suppleness, flexibility, and accuracy aren’t important to them? Of course not. So if they are training correctly they are doing dressage without even knowing it. It’s just correct training. And riding is always training because it is darn near impossible to ride a horse and not influence the horse. All influence on the horse is training, whether it is good or bad, correct or incorrect.

The coolest thing would be to see an influx of riders who typically only go to other types of shows start to show up at dressage shows to gauge their training.

The real shame here is that a lot of horses are missing out. Every horse deserves the chance to be trained correctly and to be the best he can be. If dressage weren’t considered an area to specialize in, and instead were the basics to which everyone learned to ride and then chose what “discipline” to show in or what saddle to ride in, or what-have-you…how many horses would be better off? Not to mention the riders. This is one reason why I love K.A. von Ziegner’s version of the training scale in Elements Of Dressage: A Guide To Training The Young Horse so much. He has a “Training Tree” where the trunk contains the scale and the leaves are the discipline in which the horse competes after he has been trained according to the scale. Dressage, Jumping, and Eventing are up there. And so maybe what we should really be calling dressage is the higher levels (4^th Level onwards perhaps?), where horses move onto after receiving correct basic training. And so all of us sub-double-bridle classical dressage riders would instead tell people “I just ride…correctly…but someday I hope to do dressage” – ha!

I would really love to tell people “I ride dressage” and have them understand what I really mean…but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. So nowadays, when I am asked what type of riding I do, I say “Classical Riding”. And I do it because 99.9% of the time the person will say, “Huh…what’s that?”

Then I get to say: “I’m so glad you asked…”

I would really love to hear your thoughts on this!