PRE are not totally uncommon here. But it’s still a certain type of people riding these.
They are not approved in any German studbooks at all. At least not with Hanoverian, Holstein, Oldenburg, Westfalen, Hessen, Rheinland, Bayern, Württemberg, DSP and of course not the closed book of Trakehners. I once read about experiements trying to breed WBs to PRE but this was by no means done by an official studbook or stud. Just some private people trying this.
Also more recently (last spring) a horse named Hobbit Interagro also to Oldenburg. Not a big movement breeding wise, but interesting.
At top levels (CDI), the iberians do not score as high, but they are plenty competitive in the national/regional competitions here. You see more in amateur classes, but also an increase in # shown by professionals.
Mine is a 2001 model from Brazil. 15’3". He can go from an ambling trail horse afraid of nothing to a fancy FEI horse with the tap of a whip or squeeze of the leg and then back again. Thankfully still sound and working though we have backed down a bit. Yes he reads minds, and we sometimes have to say “who’s driving the bus - wait”
Ah, this is so new, I didn’t get that 
Just saying schooling shows are comparable to a Reitertag ( or Tag des Pferdes however they are called)!the difference is that schooling shows offer tests up to Grand Prix…. Very different to the Reitertag.
Another difference is that mostly kids participate on a Reitertag while in Schooling shows mostly older AAs participate….
So you don’t have Reitertage ( Tag des Pferdes)in the South? We have them in Mecklenburg Vorpommern
Reitertage are WBO, so no schooling shows. This is something different.
So how do you define a schooling show? As far as I know it’s very comparable. They are organized by GMOs which are affiliated with USDF (and pay yearly fees to them). You enter them and pay a lower fee and your results are not counted for any ranking. You still get ribbons and prizes.
I haven’t ridden in a WBO for decades but in the past, it worked pretty similar
A schooling show is a “Übungsturnier” and not a WBO competition. This is something entirely different. But I’m not capable of explaining this right now due to restricted time and difficulties in explaining such delicate differences in a foreign language.
This is what a “schooling show” or “training show” (Übungsturnier, Trainingsturnier) is:
Totally different than WBO.
Ok so how do you define an Uebungsturnier??
I posted one. Just read through it. That’s what is understood by an Übungsturnier. WBO isn’t called Übungsturnier at all. WBO is a real competition, not a training opportunity. That’s the main difference. Übungsturniere are just “open trainings” with show atmosphere but not competition between the participants. So no judges at Übungsturnier (UT), no rankings at UT, no eliminations. You can take your time, show every jump and as long as it doesn’t take too long jump certain jumps more often, especially if you have trouble with refusal. And there are different Levels.
With WBO it’s like a regular competition, but only on the lowest level. So it’s different.
Not all schooling shows are run by GMOs.
First of all there are plenty of schooling shows that are hunter, jumper, combined tests, or horse trial.
Second, even within dressage schooling shows, there are plenty that are not run by GMOs. They may be run by a barn, or even an individual.
Also, there often are year end awards for series of schooling shows.
Where I live the schooling shows are run by barns. Just as their own thing and income stream.
About the US Cavalry it’s cool they had a school though it started up much later than the European ones. Perhaps a big difference is that across Europe there were links between the nobility/upper classes as officers, the royal court, and dressage or haut ecole going back several centuries. The early competitors in Olympic dressage were military. Also cross country!
A cavalry school in Kansas is well placed to train recruits who will be part of clearing indigenous peoples out of the Western states and territories. But it’s not the same as having a tradition of haute ecole linked to the royal court. Kansas in the 1880s is a long way from any American elites! So in Europe the tradition and prestige of sport riding already had a public entity around which to create a structure and education system.
Sounds like in the US individual ex cavalry coaches had a big impact as private instructors.
Until the 1952 Summer Olympics, only commissioned military officers and “gentlemen” were permitted to compete in ANY of the Olympic equestrian disciplines
Once again, I think @Scribbler makes a very valid point about riding traditions in America.
As one who had my earliest lessons from one of those cavalry officers, and who has since ditched virtually everything he and his riding school taught in favor of much more updated and effective riding techniques, I can say that it was mostly staying on the horse and basic commands for steering and gait.
That said, the very small handful of us who continued on got a good enough grounding that we were considered some of the better riders in the area. That didn’t mean that we had a speck of riding sophistication. We were just safe enough and manageable enough on a horse that we could jump a 3’6" ring course (something almost everyone who rode more than 3 years could do then), survive some degree of bad horse behavior, and ride safely in open country. We were not on any trajectory to grander things in our riding careers.
We were “better” not because we were sophisticated riders (we weren’t), but because we had learned on a motley collection of horses of unknown background. Not on current or former show horses, or even horses that had a nice trail-riding past. We had no qualms riding any horse and could manage most. Our compatriots who did learn to ride in more sophisticated show barns didn’t have as broad an exposure to un-schooled horse behavior.
Honestly the former-cavalry riding school was intended to be a starting point for older children (youngest age they would take was 12), not a course for finishing riders. The assumption was that as the learners put in two or three years in the riding school, acquiring some basic skills (progress tended to be slow), either their parents would move on to a more show-oriented training barn, or perhaps the kids would quit riding for other interests as they got older, but later provide their own children with riding lessons. The real point was simply to keep riding alive in the gentrifying community.
This instructor gave us access to some of the background material for the cavalry teaching. Apparently, maybe 100+ years previously, many new cavalrymen were city boys who had never been around horses, but who thought that the cavalry would be an easy ticket out of the infantry. And apparently they were accepted, because the cavalry needed the human numbers.
And further, the horses had been haphazardly gathered – almost confiscated, really, by gov’t order with minimal reimbursement to their previous owners – from farms (not raised in a cavalry system). The selected horses were of varying ages, genders and training backgrounds, and could not be assumed to be reliably rideable at the beginning of training. Some were, but not all. (There is a whole side rabbit-hole of extensive reports and complaints from the regular cavalry about the inadequacies of horse selection and selectors up through WWI, if you know where to find them.)
So the teaching method was mostly how to keep these new cavalrymen in the saddle and give them the most basic skills for controlling horses, sometimes with large, harsh bits, and even harsh spurs. And hope that the riders and the horses would figure some things out and make peace with each other.
Anyway. Yet another point in American riding where teaching across large parts of the country was not terribly systematic or goal-oriented beyond a basic ability to stay on a horse and direct it. And had no higher ambitions than producing riders who were adequate enough for pleasure riding, and perhaps maintaining a few backyard horses.
Just to be clear, the US Cavalry School started in 1838 in Pennsylvania. But its longest, and most recent, home was in Kansas.
The “American” forward seat was introduced and developed by former European cavalry officers emigrating to the USA in the mid 20th century, such as Vladimir Littauer who literally wrote the book on the foreward seat. His books are still available.
Interesting thread.
Husband is from Austria, (rode for a couple of years as a kid) and I’m So. California native and it’s where we live.
When I started looking for a trail horse he suggested a Haflinger because they were so cheap. In Austria where they’re common, yes. He was shocked at the prices out here and how rare they are.
I once took him with me to the Broken Horn, when it was still a huge shop of everything: English, Western, saddles, etc. (I miss it so much!) That was the first time he saw the “razzle dazzle” clothing of Western Pleasure and all the silver on the saddles and bridles. He was completely baffled and after a few minutes of talking I understood why. Western is working outside with cattle, camping, etc. It’s dirty and functional, so why would people pretending to be cowboys ride around in western saddles wearing shiny stuff no cowboy would ever wear? I didn’t have an answer (I rode English). Maybe someone knows how this developed?
I can watch horse competitions on cable/TV nearly every day in Austria. I only find it on Youtube or specialty sites in the US. Or maybe it’s harder to find here.
His family is now in Steiermark, Austria. I trail rode with a family friend several years ago. All horses had to be registered and wore a large plate on the side of the bridle with the horse’s registration number. Horses and bikes/motorcycles had different trails which I loved. I don’t think that would be possible here.
Full time trail riders out here are mostly western and Australian saddles and often neck reining/one hand riding. English riders are people who trail ride in addition to whatever English riding they do. It looks odd to me, when in Austria, to see nothing but English saddles/riding on the trails.
This definitely exists in some parts of Canada (Quebec and Ontario for sure have some such trail systems with dedicated horse trails).
ME TOO!
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