No quick fixes in dressage
Just picked up a great book, which I will be reviewing soon, called ‘The Elements of Dressage – a guide for training the young horse’ by Von Zeigner. Quite an amazing trainer, I am already learning a lot – a very interesting read. One quote early in the book that struck me as in alignment with a recent blog post I wrote called ‘How to succeed at a show’. The quote is, as follows:
When a horse gets lost, look for the cause. It often lies in an insufficiency of well-being or expecting too much to soon. Whenever one sees a horse perform unwillingly, with tension and resistance, one can be quite sure it is because of a lack of proper basic training. Such horses cannot move freely, lightly, or balanced like they could before they entered training because of stiffness, crookedness and pain. They have been forced to work on levels for which they actually weren’t ready. Unfortunately, we see quite a few riders presenting themselves this way at shows, especially at the higher levels, perhaps hoping for a kind judge. Their horses have been drilled in higher-level movements but in doing so have also lost their natural freedom, lightness and brilliance. Such presentations are ridiculous and most certainly have nothing in common with classical dressage! – Kurd Albrecht Von Ziegner
How true this is, hope is not a good strategy. As Von Ziegner says later in the book, the long route is actually the short route – enough said.
What an excellent quote. And so true.
I often forget this when I’m bringing on a younger horse and I recently had to take a few steps back with a novice horse I’m riding and he’s a much happier horse. We’ll get to the more difficult movements when he’s ready – he wasn’t up to now and all we were achieving was a fight into the correct position.
As von Ziegner says, this had nothing in common with classical dressage.
Thanks for participating in my blog, Alida! With my current youngster, I have really been reminded that breed and the individual personality of the horse really play a role too. I am so excited to finish this book as it will play into the other books I’ve been studying such as Barteau’s personality typing book.
At last some riatonlaity in our little debate.
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