Cultural differences - Germany/Europe vs. US/Northern Amercia

[OverandOnward]

@Djones

Reiners, Rope horses, cutters, etc are all still ‘QH sized’ - it’s the rail horses that are getting taller.

True that.

Which is very, very interesting for a breed that is imagined to be one of the most purpose-bred in the U.S. – that is, stock work.

The QH’s still truly working stock, even if in the show ring, are still at the efficient size for the task.

The QH’s bred for the purpose of carting owners around walk-jog-lope show rings are where people like to look good on a tall horse.

The speed gamers are a whole other species of human, and maybe horse, really. Another topic for an 8-episode podcast … as it were.

Rodeo! 10-ep podcast, at least, to tell the story of the horses zipping out of the box after a calf or steer so a human can win money. Once had a conversation with a die-hard QH traditionalist who upgraded to the faster, taller TB-influenced version to keep up and win at steer wrestling (of all things). He was one of those who demanded absolute compliance from his horses. Knowing TB’s, I asked how that was working with the faster Appendix horses he was now using. He had a wry look and admitted he had to relax about a lot of horse behavior to get the benefit of that extra step, as he called it.

[Curly_Feather]

Off the topic of horses, I wish we could import the German/European way of rider development to my country (South Africa). I watch loads of training videos online, and guaranteed if the rider (even the working students doing short demos) is German their seat and body position is divine.

[thereadinghorse]

FN (our association) is kinda stric about how people learn riding. And germans tend to be tradionalists

[Janet]

@thereadinghorse

FN (our association) is kinda stric about how people learn riding.

The US FN (USEF) has very little control of anything that happens off the show grounds.

[Horsecrazy3]

All the dressage breed WB’s (Canadian and USA bred) I’ve owned or looked at to purchase were not 50% TB, but 30 to 25 % TB where the TB was 4 to 7 generations back. Also the Europeans when introducing TB blood used stallions not mares. The goal is to keep the TB blood to 25 -30% by breeding mares and stallions with similar percentages of TB blood, instead of having to use TB stallions to keep the genetic influence.

[Scribbler]

@thereadinghorse

FN (our association) is kinda stric about how people learn riding. And germans tend to be tradionalists

North America was still being homesteaded into the early 20th century. Farm draft horses were in use through the 1930s and working ranch horses were the norm until.the 1970s and still needed today in much of the mountainous range land in my province. And that’s the rodeo tradition as well as the cutting and reining. Not to mention the significant population of feral horses!

When I was growing up in the 1970s horses and horse keeping were cheap especially if you had the land. There was nothing posh about horses in my municipality. They were more a rural holdover and a bit of a red neck nuisance, like keeping chickens or a pig. The wealthier municipality next to us banned all livestock in the 1970s.

Out of that tradition in the background no national.governing body could ever impose any kind of rider education program on all horse owners. Even if there was an education system for jumpers or dressage, they couldn’t impose it on everyone. And who would fund it?

Horses in North America have stayed pretty much entirely inside the private sector/ agricultural economy. Anyone can breed, train, coach, and try their hand at competing at whatever level they choose. There are no regulations or oversight. Obviously there is training and a tradition in the high end barns, and some excellent coaches. But that’s entirely private sector. And expensive.

[OverandOnward]

Following up on that, I am in south-central Texas in a small city of about 250k population, surrounded by rural geography. Even on the edges of town, as well as on all of the rural highways, it is common to see a truck towing a thoroughly-used older gooseneck stock trailer with several rugged-looking ranch-type horses, saddled and ready to work cattle at their destination.

There are still many large-ish ranches with hundreds of acres of cow pasture. Horses are the most effective way to move and manage the stock. (And a few cow dogs.)

Every one of TX’s 254 counties has at least one auction barn and most run at least monthly, some weekly. Several run a lot of horses through, including broke-to-ride ranch horses that are excess to requirements for some rancher. One of these facilities nearby typically auctions over 100 horses every month, of every type. Some do go to kill buyers, but a lot go for decent prices to … well, anyone with a wallet.

The way a lot of ranch kids are taught to ride - at very early ages - is to put them up on a saddled horse in a round pen, tell them to hang on to the horn, and chase the horse around at walk-jog-lope. The instruction consists of some old rancher (related to the kid or not) shouting “SIT UP and RIDE THAT HORSE!” I think the kids figure it out mostly by watching others ride. Including steering by rein pressure across the top of the horse’s neck, as is traditional in Western riding.

As @Scribbler said above, riding instruction in the U.S. is totally haphazard compared to what I’ve heard about European riding. Some disciplines, show communities and private riding schools try to adhere to a ‘method’ of some sort. But many kids are put up on horses without much instruction and just figure something out, and it often isn’t very sound (or safe) riding technique.

[The round pen method is not how I learned. I was a city kid and my parents put me in English riding lessons because I had seen jumping and wanted to do that. So I ended up in one of the later versions of a riding school run by a retired cavalry officer, which is how much English riding was passed on in TX until these men gradually faded out.]

[Scribbler]

Also neither Canada nor the United States had a haute ecole cavalry related central riding school like the Cadre Noir or Spanish Riding School of Vienna or equivalent in Spain or Portugal. Britain had Pony Club (and also invented Scouts and Girl Guides in the same period) and got the British Horse association rider trainer credentials going.

Canada does have a certification test program through Equine Canada to become a coach, but you have to cobble together the education yourself. You get way cheaper insurance. USEF doesn’t have this. But you don’t need the EC qualifications and there is no oversight or credentials required to set up your own coaching just like you can offer piano lessons in your basement with no oversight

Now some colleges offer Equine Studies programs to undergrads that teach stable management and training but the general consensus is that they are not very good and only equip you for the entry level barn jobs that don’t require any education.

[thereadinghorse]

Very interesting background info on why US is way less “regulated” regarding riders education.

Our riding tradition is very old and I think all of our “english riding” started of with the army. There’s a book, called HDV 12 (Heeresdienstvorschrift 12; engl: army service regulations) written in 1912, which was mainly to educate soldiers on how to safely handle a horse for war purposes and how to keep them healthy, so they wouldn’t have to retire after a few years. This book became something like our riding bible and the whole FN-based riding comes off of this book and the knowledge in it.

It was and is pretty common, that riding schools (if they do english, which is the norm, western and icelandic are the other common options, but they’re way less popular and I would say on 1 western riding school come at least 50 english ones) where based on “FN Riding”. This means, their trainers have to have a license granted by the FN, which you couldn’t become as easy as just buying it. You need to do at least two badges (one in where you habe to do a dressage test compareable to USDF Training Level and jump a course with 6 to 8 fences of 2’8) which both include several days or weekends of practice (it’s required to take part in that!) and after that you have to do another course over a prolonged period of time, where you learn about the “FN rules and riding”, about how to teach people, ride yourself, do a “test training” based of the things you learned and only if the judges find your performance sufficient you will pass that and are now able to call you “Trainer C Amateur Sport” which is only the first of 3 possible trainer levels.

Of course you can train people without this, but it’s still very common to require this for a riding school. Young adults are able to start this path with a trainer assissant and there a load of programms, which educate our riders in any field of horse stuff. The FN has at least 6 consecutive rule books, which teach the basics of the riding method.

If you want to become a judge, you’d have to do even more qualifications with the FN.
And to take part in any show you need again those riding badges. So if you wanna be a part of the english showing community in Germany you have to do a lot of things in order to be allowed to.

So long story short: Getting educated is part of our riding culture.

[Janet]

@thereadinghorse

Our riding tradition is very old and I think all of our “english riding” started of with the army. There’s a book, called HDV 12 (Heeresdienstvorschrift 12; engl: army service regulations) written in 1912, which was mainly to educate soldiers on how to safely handle a horse for war purposes and how to keep them healthy, so they wouldn’t have to retire after a few years. This book became something like our riding bible and the whole FN-based riding comes off of this book and the knowledge in it.

The US Cavalry also had its own manual (I think called “Horsemanship and Horsemastership”) which is well respected, but not often read or used nowadays. It is certainly not the basis of any USEF documents.

@thereadinghorse

If you want to become a judge, you’d have to do even more qualifications with the FN.
And to take part in any show you need again those riding badges. So if you wanna be a part of the english showing community in Germany you have to do a lot of things in order to be allowed to.

In the US there are lots of requirements (tests, training, recommendations, continuing education, etc.) for becoming a judge, or other licensed official.

But few requirements (other than membership) for competing.

[Scribbler]

@thereadinghorse

Very interesting background info on why US is way less “regulated” regarding riders education.

Our riding tradition is very old and I think all of our “english riding” started of with the army. There’s a book, called HDV 12 (Heeresdienstvorschrift 12; engl: army service regulations) written in 1912, which was mainly to educate soldiers on how to safely handle a horse for war purposes and how to keep them healthy, so they wouldn’t have to retire after a few years. This book became something like our riding bible and the whole FN-based riding comes off of this book and the knowledge in it.

It was and is pretty common, that riding schools (if they do english, which is the norm, western and icelandic are the other common options, but they’re way less popular and I would say on 1 western riding school come at least 50 english ones) where based on “FN Riding”. This means, their trainers have to have a license granted by the FN, which you couldn’t become as easy as just buying it. You need to do at least two badges (one in where you habe to do a dressage test compareable to USDF Training Level and jump a course with 6 to 8 fences of 2’8) which both include several days or weekends of practice (it’s required to take part in that!) and after that you have to do another course over a prolonged period of time, where you learn about the “FN rules and riding”, about how to teach people, ride yourself, do a “test training” based of the things you learned and only if the judges find your performance sufficient you will pass that and are now able to call you “Trainer C Amateur Sport” which is only the first of 3 possible trainer levels.

Of course you can train people without this, but it’s still very common to require this for a riding school. Young adults are able to start this path with a trainer assissant and there a load of programms, which educate our riders in any field of horse stuff. The FN has at least 6 consecutive rule books, which teach the basics of the riding method.

If you want to become a judge, you’d have to do even more qualifications with the FN.
And to take part in any show you need again those riding badges. So if you wanna be a part of the english showing community in Germany you have to do a lot of things in order to be allowed to.

So long story short: Getting educated is part of our riding culture.

Yes, the European cavalry schools educated to a higher level and had more grip on the field than the US Cavalry did. I looked up the history of the American cavalry and while there were cavalry troops since 1775 (the Revolutionary War breaking off from Britain), there was never any centralized school. The US never had the history of continual border and dynastic disputes of Europe, and probably the bulk of the cavalry work was not in formal battles but in running indigenous peoples off their land as settlement expanded West.

United States Cavalry | History

I did have a reprint cavalry manual as a teen that had good dressage basics. From what folks have posted on COTH about childhood lessons from ancient cavalry officers in the 1950s and 60s, there was some solid and very disciplined training going on. But there was no central riding school and no haute ecole.

Interestingly the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are the default federal police service for all unincorporated areas or municipalities without local police forces (in other words most of Canada by landmass) do the very popular RCMP musical ride which is a massive drill team exercise (30 or more horses) very showy and fun. They breed their own WB at their own farm. But it’s not haute ecole at all, though dressage based. And they don’t run a public riding school, just train their own officers

https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/corporate-organisation/musical-ride-carrousel/index-eng.htm

[Night_Flight]

@Scribbler

Interestingly the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are the default federal police service for all unincorporated areas or municipalities without local police forces (in other words most of Canada by landmass) do the very popular RCMP musical ride which is a massive drill team exercise (30 or more horses) very showy and fun. They breed their own WB at their own farm. But it’s not haute ecole at all, though dressage based. And they don’t run a public riding school, just train their own officers

I found it interesting when I went to a recent Canada Day musical ride at the RCMP training stables that they had three young horses do a jumping demonstration with three of their trainers before the musical ride in order to train them around crowds. While it wasn’t high level jumping, and one of the horses was very spooky about the crowd around the ring, I was impressed that they appear to include some jumping training, at least for their green horses that aren’t yet ready to be assigned to an RCMP officer for the musical ride.

[RedHorses]

They do lance work, and firearms training too. Tent pegging, the hanging ring. The demo I saw had the riders shooting balloons as they jumped the tiny obstacles.

Way back when I was taking lessons we had an RCMP Ride trainer come and teach us how to do the various ride patterns. We only had 16 horses in our ride.

[RedHorses]

I think in North America we have a better understanding of the fact that there is no one true way when it comes to horse keeping. The huge variety of climates demands different horse keeping in different places. I mean beyond the in vs out, barefoot vs shod, etc sort of thing.

One of CotHs posters from down under had real trouble understanding that a full WTC ride was not possible (if you cared for the horse’s well-being at all) to do in 5 minutes in winter where I live. They just didn’t understand the sort of cold that I have, much less how it affected the horses. How could they know without any frame of reference?

European countries have far less variation in climate within their boundaries, which leads to a greater commonality in horse keeping practices and knowledge. Which makes it more difficult to change too.

[Janet]

@Scribbler

I looked up the history of the American cavalry and while there were cavalry troops since 1775 (the Revolutionary War breaking off from Britain), there was never any centralized school.

I beg to differ.

Fort Riley (Kansas) was the site of the US Cavalry School from 1887 until 1947, when the Army disposed of their tactical (as opposed to ceremonial) cavalry horses.

Jimmy Wofford’s father, Col. John W Wofford, was an instructor there, as well as riding for the US Show Jumping team in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics

[Caol_Ila]

@Alterration

came up through the BHS system. You had to pass tests to be a trainer.

You don’t have to pass anything to be a trainer. The BHS stages are by no means a requirement. They might make it easier to find a job/clients, but you don’t need to do it in order to be a trainer.

I’d argue that the BHS teaches a pretty rigid system in terms of horsemanship and horsekeeping and I can’t say that I’m impressed with the level of horsemanship I see in a lot of amateur riders. For instance, I watched the wee unaffiliated SJ show my yard put on, and about 90% of riders regularly chipped fences, took them long, and no one could do a proper release if their lives depended on it.

Then myself and some friends went to one of the biggest horse shows in Scotland to spectate, and we spent a little while watching the 90 and 100cm working hunter class (think sorta like American hunters, but the fences have brush under them). These people have to qualify to ride in this show. And I was shocked by the amount who couldn’t see a distance or release over the fence or land on the correct lead.

When I watched the odd H/J competition back in the States, the average quality of ammy riding was much better. At least people could reliably do a crest release and not whack their horse in the mouth over every jump.

It’s also harder to find ‘alternative’ horsemanship, especially in Scotland.

[Mersidoats]

Are there any requirements for the amateur rider if they want to compete? Here, in the US, the only thing required is a NGO (equivalent to your FN) membership and SafeSport training.

[Bluey]

@Caol_Ila

You don’t have to pass anything to be a trainer. The BHS stages are by no means a requirement. They might make it easier to find a job/clients, but you don’t need to do it in order to be a trainer.

I’d argue that the BHS teaches a pretty rigid system in terms of horsemanship and horsekeeping and I can’t say that I’m impressed with the level of horsemanship I see in a lot of amateur riders. For instance, I watched the wee unaffiliated SJ show my yard put on, and about 90% of riders regularly chipped fences, took them long, and no one could do a proper release if their lives depended on it.

Then myself and some friends went to one of the biggest horse shows in Scotland to spectate, and we spent a little while watching the 90 and 100cm working hunter class (think sorta like American hunters, but the fences have brush under them). These people have to qualify to ride in this show. And I was shocked by the amount who couldn’t see a distance or release over the fence or land on the correct lead.

When I watched the odd H/J competition back in the States, the average quality of ammy riding was much better. At least people could reliably do a crest release and not whack their horse in the mouth over every jump.

It’s also harder to find ‘alternative’ horsemanship, especially in Scotland.

I would say maybe cultural differences were at play there, that other parameters you may not have been aware of were judged, maybe they considered a good seat foremost, a way to keep a horse together, not strung out as hunters do in the US?

When I came to the US from Europe, continental Europe, don’t know how they do things in the British Islands, I too wondered what kind of strange riding hunters were doing, horses so slow and strung out, riders jumping draped over the horses’s necks, later I found out that is what was wanted as a kind of odd crest release technique, was not a fault of getting ahead of the horse, not balanced with the horse’s center of gravity, loose seats and legs even at the higher levels.

Best to keep in mind that is always easy to be critical when coming across something new that we think we know how it should be and others are doing it differently.
Let’s not be critical, but think, what may I learn about these differences, what can they teach me?

[Caol_Ila]

Hah. I been living here a while.

If a ‘good seat’ = being left behind and balancing on the horse’s mouth over the majority of fences, we are all in trouble.

[Bluey]

@Caol_Ila

Hah. I been living here a while.

If a ‘good seat’ = being left behind and balancing on the horse’s mouth over the majority of fences, we are all in trouble.

Bad riding is universal, you can see it more at the lower levels, they are learning, but you can also see good riding, no matter how it seems looking at the rider, the horse will tell.
I have seen all kinds of bad riding in both continents, people learn to do better and can’t be expected to be all good every round, is part of learning.

I don’t think that is what you were talking about, but general idea of riding techniques, that are definitely different, what its judged is different, that is what I was addressing.