The last thread/predictable train wreck on the Dressage meets Western (kinda, sorta, maybe) got to a new topic which we have not explored yet.
That topic is judging Western Dressage. Who should judge it? What’s the “search image” those judges should use when evaluating horses?
To refine it a little bit, I’d ask more specifically about seeing great training (which produced a horse using his particularly body to the best of its ability) vs. qualities-of-gaits that have been bred in.
And I’d ask about more abstract concepts like “submission.” In particular here, I think DressageWorld and most of western world wants a horse to behave differently toward a snaffle bit in his mouth.
For the sake of this discussion, I’ll leave out the whole stupid “you can ride in a curb with two hands” thing. Can we just agree that this is a political compromise/mistake/artifact of WD getting off the ground and being a young discipline still finding its way? If you do wish to defend that way of riding, go ahead it seems like a bit of a side-bar topic to me.
And what happens when someone shows their very well-trained hackamore-stage horse in WD? There isn’t properly an equivalent stage in that horse’s training to “push in to the bridle to seek contact.” I’m not sure there’s a “stretchy circle on the buckle” for that horse. Though perhaps you could teach it.
I’ll give you my thoughts on how judging standards for dressage world and be fruitfully applied to WD, without dissing Western approaches to training (at least the good ones). But I’d like you opinions, too.
Think hard, be civil, enlighten us all.
