Complicated and Incomplete

I just went for an interview ride last night, and I found it interesting what I learned in the process.

I felt an overwhelming feeling of complication in the instruction I was being given to bring the horse to a “correct” position, i.e., rounded through the neck, stretching down and over the back and then coming up into a form of frame with the head on the vertical. So foreign to me, yet a bit of familiarity. Not foreign in the sense of I’ve never had my horses stretch down and through the back and maintain a certain posture on the vertical, but foreign in the aids used to do it. Rough and unkind, forceful but unclear.

I was taken back to old lessons in dressage with instructions that gave little insight into the purpose of the aid, and emphasis on the symptoms and not the cause. The horses were given little benefit that they could perform correct dressage, while I kept thinking of my own impossible little Paint gelding who performs high school movements on slack reins. All the while I found myself liking the people and feeling for them that they hadn’t seen what I had seen in my few short years. They had seen only the negative, the money comes first, performance in the show ring is the goal, and dressage Queens truly rule the barn. A maze I’m not interested in traveling anymore.

I have also been helping a student of mine look at horses that are for sale. We had a long day yesterday, traveling to Iowa to look at a sweet 5yr old Paint gelding. Sweet as he was, his training was next to nil and it was plain to see he had little or no clue as to what was being asked of him most times. They had been using spurs on him because he was “lazy”, when really he had not the slightest idea that legs mean move forward (or even a crop).

Friday we also looked at a couple of Morgans and I got the pleasure of riding one of the owner’s young geldings who she thinks has potential for dressage, and rightly so. Smart, also green but a quick learner. He had been having difficulty moving into canter transitions from the trot, common in young horses. So I worked with him introducing walk to canter transitions. He started getting the idea and before too long was giving me half a canter stride or so, then breaking to trot. Not bad for never having done walk to canter before.

A lot of information this weekend, a lot of seeing. I’ve now come down with a cold, unusual for me.. it’s usually the flu if I get sick. All of the “those horses can’t do dressage” energy I got only continues to encourage me to show otherwise, not to inflate my ego, just because I’ve seen it done, I’ve felt the difference, I’ve felt the simplicity and gone “WOW!”. I think sometimes that if everyone could feel the simpleness of the riding, they would stop in amazement just as I have, and continue to do.