I would…I have one in my barn who is similar.
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Their heads …or how their heads are hung, that’s the main give-away. Then of course if they pace like this one does. My guy has nice bone on his legs and a long deep neck. But his body is long, his wither prominent (can’t tell here cause he’s fat) and there’s just a sort of lanky feel to him. Loosely jointed? flexible…don’t know how to describe it really.
Hey, i was wondering…somewhere upthread someone mentioned horses being forced onto their bit and tipping at C3 rather than at the poll. So horses that are naturally cresty, like Iberian breeds for example, how hard is it to see the poll being the highest point?
And judging-wise, do judges take a natural crestiness into account? Or do they just overlook the whole poll being highest point into account anyway across the board? (hope i’m being clear with this question??)
The poll is pretty might right where the top of the bridle is, and maybe 1" or so back. That’s before the real crest. Any judge worth his salt should be able to tell where that is.
Random photos, I don’t know anything about these moments in time, only that they show:
poll not the highest
poll at the highest
The neck should be a smooth arch from withers to ears. Any time you start to see a bit of an upward kink to it, that’s the “broken at C3” part.
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WHAT?? If you think it doesn’t take much skill to ride one of these athletic, huge moving horses, and to produce an FEI test on one with a respectable score, I’ve got a lake house in the Sahara to sell you.
I did not say RIDE. I said to train the flashy movement. (But while we’re talking about riding ability, I wonder how many riders could sit a trot without a big saddle block and without bracing against the horse’s movement. Hmm.)
I should have been clearer - it takes LESS skill to get flashy movement on a talented WB of today than it does to achieve CORRECT balance on a less than talented horse. I dare you to pair a GP rider today with a draft or QH or gaited or some other such breed with less than impressive movement and see if they can achieve correct balance all the way to GP.
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That’s a whole lot unfair about that.
Gaited horses don’t often have pure, correct trots. Many don’t have a true canter either. But if you’re talking Gaited Dressage, then absolutely, a GP rider could do that IF they are versed enough in gaited breeds. Even if they aren’t, if they are a student of biomechanics, they could improve a horse immensely.
There are enough QHs and draft crosses at GP level to prove it can be done.
What cannot be done, no matter the talent, is take a horse who isn’t built for upper level Dressage work, and try to push him there. He’ll break sooner rather than later.
Every single GP rider, should be capable of taking a sound horse and improving his balance and posture and muscle through at least 2nd level. That’s the level where it starts to become as much about the mental aspect of the work (because it just gets harder), and the conformation that allows them more and more collection.
The most mentally willing QH who is 3" butt-high with his front legs right under his withers is proobbbbbably not going to be able to do a pure pirouette because he’s got poor conformation to start.
The most incredibly conformed QH (and there are many) isn’t going to get there if his mind is just intolerant of the precision and schooling needed to get to that level.
You can’t take a poorly built WB who was even purpose-bred for Dressage and do what you’re asking.
But 100% there are the horses you describe doing at least respectable GP tests.
Full draft? I don’t know. DNA testing isn’t reliable, but this horse is allegedly a full draft (of mixed draft breeds) and he certainly looks like a draft
The Chronicle of the Horse (chronofhorse.com)
If she can do that, most GP riders can too.
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YESSSSSSS This.
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This is unfair and makes no sense.
How’s your sitting trot? At what level is your horse and what breed are they?
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Cottonwood Flame was a full perch who did GP with a local-to-me trainer.
They currently have a full Belgian gelding who is schooling all the GP movements, not sure what they will show him at this year though.
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So every competitive discipline ends up over exaggerating some aspect of movement and then breeding horses that play into that exaggeration naturally.
Dressage could go in one of two directions. It could downplay collection and handiness and focus on giant trot as the gold standard and breed for that. This is the current direction with WB breeding and international competition. Or it could downplay big extended motion and focus on crazy handy collection and manoeuvrability. This is more what you see in Iberian disciplines like Working Equitation which has a dressage phase. And in the Spanish Riding School.
I would say that based on old photos and books, that if your end goal is Haut Ecole and not modern Grand Prix, you look at piaffe and passage very differently because they are not just boxes to tick, but foundations for levade and Capriole.
Year over year, the FEI dressage rules have shifted the emphasis to the size of the trot over the quality of the collected work. That’s been documented. To the extent that if we are looking for a talented dressage prospect we are usually thinking about really big natural movement at the trot, not about collection and handiness. That’s why people are dipping into Friesians, DHH, Hackneys, etc for dressage. The trot.
You can teach any horse to do an extended trot for his conformation and talent but it won’t look like a modern high end WB. If your horse is less talented then you need to be methodical about teaching collection then extension, and you need to keep the extended trot balanced in the old school way because it will fall apart if you let the horse overdrive to DAP.
In order to have a coherent conversation about this, it’s necessary to note that things have evolved in competitive dressage quite far away from where dressage was 100 years ago as has every other 20th century discipline. You can be neutral, positive or negative about this shift but you have to recognize that it happened and some things developed while others were lost.
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This sums up SO MUCH.
Correct work that isn’t as big-moving and flashy is often getting overlooked in place of bigger movement that isn’t as correct, as the levels go up. Somewhere along the way, there’s too much emphasis on big vs correct.
Correct is correct. Period. Conformation doesn’t matter in what determines a correct 2-beat trot.
Now, if you see 2 movements that are both equally correct - regardless of conformation - and one horse has more energy, then he should be scored higher
If one horse has pretttty correct but has lots more energy, and one is quite correct but is just going through the motion, an argument could be made either way, but I would likely score the first horse a little higher, depending on the level of the test. The foundational levels need to prioritize correctness over flash, or the lack of correctness will compound as the movements get harder.
It’s just like conformation. There is a range of correctness in every body part, no matter the breed. But the well-conformed foundation-bred QH doesn’t look like the well-conformed race-bred TB doesn’t look like the well-conformed Dressage-bred WB doesn’t look like the well-conformed TWH or ASB or or or.
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Yes, I would strongly suspect he could be one. The forehead, solid legs, looks a bit straight in the hind end. He’s a lovely solid fellow regardless of the breed.
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Just about everyone I know, and certainly most of my students, can sit a trot without bracing and/or relying on thigh blocks. They (and I) can do it bareback if necessary. You are wondering with a broad brush there.
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Now see? That shows your good eye. If I weren’t told this horse was a Standardbred, I’d have assumed he was a Morgan.
I used to have a Standardbred/Gelderlander cross. My trainer, upon learning that she wasn’t full Gelderlander, remarked, “That explains the shitty canter.” 
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Well, Morgans and Standardbreds do share some of the same ancestry back in the beginnings of the breeds. 
If you spend enough years looking at them every day for a few years, you start picking out things, especially when you have a bunch of dark bays with no white. You have to learn to recognize face shapes right quick! LOL
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That gives very little credit to riders and trainers. It takes a lot of skill on any horse, period. Flash alone isn’t going to get a horse to Grand Prix. If they don’t have the progressive development of balance and strength, it’s not going to happen, regardless how talented the horse is or what its bloodlines are.
Most of the GP riders I know can and have trained WBs, Iberians, and draft crosses to GP. Are the “off breeds” as flashy as the purpose bred WB’s? Nope, but they are all correct.
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If it was easy to get a flash horse to those levels then Lauren Sprieser wouldn’t be crying (literally I got teary eyed myself) on a podcast about having to move on a beloved horse because he had topped out and she had sponsors to answer to. And if a top level rider can’t get a big moving horse to the top, maybe it isn’t that easy?
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I dunno, I think it’s hard to do regardless of the talent level of the horse. Riding a big flashy mover and helping him or her find their balance, swing, and staying with you mentally is hard in a different way than helping a 6 mover develop strength and suppleness to make an extended trot for an 8 while keeping them sound and soft in the hand. It’s just damned hard.
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I have a good friend who rdes a full CLyde complete with bobbed tail at FEI - just did his first I-1. He got his bronze and silver on him. Brian Kimball, riding ADS Cole https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10158711556006573&set=pob.551941852
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CUrrently, the GP test has 6 boxes for trot work (not P/P) and 6 canter work (not piro). 8 for P/P, and 2 for canter piro. So more emphasis on collected work than on trot.
Remember that todays GP horse has to be a master at ALL the movements to succeed in the rarified CDI (Lauren Spreiser) world. BTW, we had her up for a clinic last year. She worked with all levels including a gypsey vanner and western dressage hroses. All made improvements.
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