Hi all. Feeling very frustrated and could use some advice.
Some of y’all know my horse, but to recap he’s coming up on 13 and is a holsteiner/TB mix with a lot of fire ants in his pants.
We’ve technically been doing dressage to event for 4 years now after being jumpers, but between his injuries and my own I’d say we’ve really only had a year and a half total of focusing on dressage.
About half of the time, he’s solidly first level preparing to start schooling some second level things. The other half of the time, we have to revert back to rhythm and relaxation and regaining an actual connection. Even on his good days, riding him requires constant alertness and constantly testing the connection - at the first given opportunity, he’ll drop right into a fake connection that looks and feels almost identical and he throws a mini tantrum when I call him out on it.
While I don’t fault him for not wanting to work hard, I feel like he has no work ethic and no desire to work with me. Over fences, which are his jam, he’s ridable, adjustable, and basically perfect. Carries me to the fence, honest as can be, etc. He clearly LOVES to jump and just has none of that passion on the flat. And while I’m not a pro, I’ve ridden a LOT of horses from barely saddle broke to FEI. Once they know what’s expected of them, they rarely question it and will do it as long as they can. Ie, remaining honest in the connection without correction every other step. Even the green horses seem to try really hard to please - he has none of that desire on the flat.
As another example of what he does, he’s very bad about any correction. Let’s say I turn on the forehand off the right leg - something he’s been schooling for almost 9 years. His first response to the right leg is to step directly into it. If I continue adding calf/thigh pressure, he just moves faster into it. If I poke him with the right spur or tap with the dressage whip, he’ll kick out but them move away from my leg properly - but the rest of the ride he’ll be super pissy about my right leg and still move into it the first step of every lateral movement before moving away correctly. Again, we’ve been doing this for years and years - he knows exactly what he’s supposed to be doing.
Even on the ground, he’s more reluctant to come see me in the pasture if I’ve been working dressage a lot. I first assumed he was sore, so I had a full vet work-up done and had a saddle fitter out. The dressage saddle should be in no way causing pain whereas the jump saddle fits like a glove on my feet (saving up for a new one though!). Yet he still prefers it. I did a bute trial and a previcox trial anyways just in case there was another soreness but he was the same. His teeth were just done too.
Can anyone offer some advice? I’m not planning on stopping dressage as I still want to event, but I feel like I’ll never be able to compete in solo dressage if every ride is a battle of wills. It’s just not fun anymore. I feel like every ride is seeing how much he’ll let me ride him that day, and some days he’ll go into the little box and let me ride and other days he’s just constantly trying to annoy me into fighting.
TIA!
EDIT - I should also add I do have an excellent dressage trainer who thinks he’s just an *ss. He tries the same things with my trainer on him but fires up right away to fight her when she tries to do anything to correct him. He’s also never been abused or super spoiled, I’ve had him basically his whole life and was a blast to teach to jump.
A lot of training/first level horses do that. That’s normal. If you’re not monitoring the connection/contact, you’re not riding. Connection is hard. Contact is hard. Working over their back is hard. My mare spent a year scooting out of the arena when I asked her to work honestly into the connection. She’s fine, now. It took a few years. It was hard work, and she had to use her body in a way that didn’t feel natural to her.
Have you experimented working your dressage flatwork between fences/lines? How do you warm him up to prepare for jumping? Are you asking for the same connection? Are you asking for the same amount of throughness and impulsion? Is he working as hard? The jumping question may be a lot easier for him to answer than the dressage question. What is your attitude when you “do dressage” compared to jumping? Do you get tighter? Harder? Jabbier? Are you asking for a frame that he can’t give yet? I’ve yet to meet a horse that didn’t respond positively to a training-level stretchy trot - unless there was pain, and that’s a different story than a training problem.
Is this every time? Does he do it to the left? Are you asking for one step and then releasing, or asking and asking and asking? Have you experimented asking him for a working TOF? Are you getting more frustrated and getting jabbier and pushier with your right leg? Does he feel blocked somewhere on the left? What are your thighs doing? How balanced is your seat? Can you move him over on the ground? Can another person move him over with you mounted? When you say “move into it” does he brace his side against your leg, or just refuse to move sideways? Was there ever a point that he did NOT react badly to this particular movement? I no longer subscribe to the school of thought that says if we don’t get a response from a quiet aid, we make it louder, at least for my horses. It just seems to make them jumpy. I ask with the same aids until I get the answer I want. For a turn on forehand: seat balanced over the base of his withers, inside leg at girth (9th rib), outside half halt to catch the shoulder, outside thigh, seatbone and leg open slightly, inside hand softening the jaw, and then when I get the step, I gently close the outside aids again. If I get no answer, I just keep asking the same way without getting pushy or kicking or thumping until I get a response, adjusting to whatever response I get (forward step, side step, back step, etc).
He prefers the jump saddle? Then ride him in that.
A horse wants to be treated fairly and not have his balance compromised. They don’t like it when they are pushed out of balance or if the aids conflict. He’s learned how to balance himself around a course of fences - maybe you aren’t in his mouth as much when you are jumping? Maybe he is frustrated with your seat? Just a guess, I haven’t seen a video or anything. You are asking him to change his balance again when you focus on pure dressage. That’s a hard question to answer for him. If you are asking for him to “carry” rather than “push” that is definitely harder to answer. Maybe ask in shorter spurts.
Have you tried doing the dressage work in your jump saddle? How does he respond to that? Horses aren’t typically jerks for no reason. It’s all typical behavior that something is uncomfortable. To some extent, it is supposed to be hard. There’s a degree of athletic discomfort we are asking of them. He has less tolerance for this when his brain isn’t thinking about more interesting things like jumping. But perhaps there is something about the saddle and the rider position that is making things worse and so he objects more.
What happens if you do “dressage” day with cavaletti?
Are you maybe asking too much from the connection given the stops and starts with the training and not giving enough stretch breaks? Could he perceive it as drilling? If he gives you good connection, maybe stop and let him stretch before he falls out of it. Do that in little snippets repeatedly until you can start stringing them together more with fewer breaks.
I do think horses have a preference for different types of activities, sure. But putting your leg on a horse broke to go around courses of jumps and have him go into the aid is a pretty loud objection. Some horses just have more fight in them, but whether it’s fight or flight mode, that’s not where you want to be, and there’s always a reason for the defensiveness. Usually there’s something physical. Not always a lameness.
Thank you for a very detailed response! I’ll try to answer each part as best I can.
Most of the training/first horses I’ve ridden aren’t 100% in the connection yet, but the vast majority make some attempt to seek it out (at a very basic level of connection, they don’t just fall into a flawless connection) and will accept it when set up properly for it. When they lose balance or are otherwise distracted, it gets lost, but can be regained. When I ride this horse it’s much more of a constant battle - keeping in mind that by battle it still looks smooth to the average eye. i’m not talking head flipping or anything, but it’s a constant ride of little half halts, one step leg yeilds, playing with contact, etc. I’m not expecting him to go around in a connection by himself, but the glimmers of baby self carriage I see on other horses just isn’t there. No matter what, when I stop riding, he drops right into a hollow frame and stops working.
We do “dressage” in between fences in that I use basic lateral movements and control the outside shoulder, and of course half halts/stride length adjustments. He can get a little upset if I get in his face mid course but will take a hard half halt to rebalance without complaint. I warm up similarly for each, long rein forwards walk for a minimum of 5 minutes and another 3-4 minutes warming up lateral stuff at the walk in a simple connection. Usually just leg yeilds, TOF, and shoulder in, but some haunches in if I’m feeling sassy. Then up to trot LNL, asking for a slight stretch and moving off the leg. Again, I do simple lateral stuff, mostly leg yeilds. Then a loping trot in the same low connection for maybe a minute each direction, and I’ll pull back to the trot and pick up my ideal connection. School that for a minute, walk, school 2-3 canter transitions and basic lenghten, and go jump. The only thing I really do different for dressage schools is I spend more time stretching and more lateral stuff. His stretch work really sucks, a symptom of the connection issues, hence how much I do in the warmup. I’ll also stretch him after working on hard lenghtens/shortens.
The right leg issue is very chronic and every ride. It’s not that he doesn’t move away, he goes into it - for example, lets say we’re leg yeilding off the right leg down the centerline from L-H, like in First 2. Instead of moving towards H with a slight right bend, he goes towards M while holding the right bend. Like a half pass but most definitely not a correct one. He doesn’t do it to the left ever. I do use the ask louder each time thing, so I put my leg on and hold it, adding more pressure until he moves and then taking it off. He doesn’t do it as bad coming into a walking TOF, but he throws the left shoulder out and spins and won’t let me take outside contact to fix it. Again, he doesn’t do it to the left, and I can correct him at the cost of him getting hot. I have a pretty balanced seat, still not a pro but I’m quite balanced and soft in the seat. He’s done this since the day I first asked him when he was 4. He’ll move away just fine on the ground, but if I’m riding him and ask at the same time a ground person asks he’ll just ignore us lol.
He does prefer the jump saddle but like I said it’s an atrocious fit and does make him sore if I ride several days in a row in it. ATM, we’re doing minimal jumping until I can get a new saddle - as well as the fact that I can’t get the same deep seat in it nor can my leg work as effectively due to the short flap and shallow seat.
If it was any other horse I’d be quick to accept the full blame on myself, but as I’ve done almost all the work on this horse I can tell he’s just very unhappy doing dressage and does not want to work with me. It’s not a “green” feeling or him not knowing how to do as I’m asking, it’s more of a “no, that sounds like to much effort”. He’s very much an independent horse, he would be much happier if I just sat and pointed and fences lol.
Like I mentioned, he goes better in the jump saddle but it makes him sore after a few rides so I’m avoiding using it until I get a better one. Plus, due to how the jump saddle positions me, it’s really hard to ask for much beyond training level stuff without fighting the saddle and therefore confusing him.
He doesn’t do cavaletti lol. He jumps even ground poles, so cavaletti become a (very controlled but highly unnecessary) full jump. Which kinda ruins the point. I’ve given up on schooling that out of him, I tried for a few years to do a few poles every ride until he got bored and stopped leaping, but 4 years later here we are.
I do take him abck into work thinking about both mental and physical fitness, so he doesn’t go right back into first level as soon as I can sit on him. Usually I rehab in a long and low frame for a month or so to build a little topline before I really start asking him to use himself.
And just to clarify, he’s not a bad boy by any means. He does mini kicks if you kick hard but otherwise he has no buck, no rear, etc. To my parents, for example, they can’t see when he’s “being bad” - so everything I’m describing is very subtle.
If you have ruled out anything physical causing his resistance, I agree with you that he seems annoyed by your dressage asks. He sounds like a very mentally busy and opinionated guy and he likely prefers jumping because he isn’t micromanaged over the fences i.e. he likes that he is “in control” sailing over a jump. I don’t know if you can make him love dressage, but he might come around a bit if you change things up to make it less annoying to him and add some things he enjoys. Some ideas: for your warm-up, do something that gives him a little more agency and interest, say a nice hack with moments where you ask him to supple on a long rein or maybe some in hand work over different layouts of pole/cavaletti where he is left to choose how to place his feet. You could even introduce some novel objects like a yoga ball or barrel and find ways to move around them so your same old movements, like turn on the forehand, become more interesting. Pepper your dressage schooling with positive reinforcement. I know it doesn’t work for every horse, but I’m a big fan of good old fashioned treats as reinforcement during the ride, especially when schooling movements your horse finds tiresome or especially difficult. If he gets too worked up or rude with frequent treats, you can clicker train so you treat in a more structured way. It can also make a big difference with horses like yours if you are asking for the same things over and over. I’m not accusing you of what would be called drilling, but for some highly intelligent horses, getting improvement toward what you are asking and then continuing to ask for the same or more improvement in the same movement 2 or 3 more times is too much. You might end up only doing 10-15 minutes of dressage if he gives you what you ask on the first or second try, but those short sessions add up and if you have a more willing horse because of it I think it will take you farther than long drawn out fights. This may or may not apply to your horse, but when I was fist transitioning from h/j to dressage (for eventing) I was lucky to ride a very smart, very hot Trakehner schooled through second level. He knew way more than me and would get insulted if I asked for something in a big way. I thought I was being clear, but to him I was being rude by basically shouting with my aids when I all I had to do was whisper. Perhaps your horse is moving into your leg aid because he finds it to be too much?
Some horses… many years ago I started a nice WB/TB that loved to jump. He would put up with dressage for a few days in a row. He was young so we did lots of trails and ground poles. If we had spent too much time in the arena he would just turn right and leave. He was incredibly athletic and the arena fence was only about 2’6”. Once at a combined test he calmly cantered down the long side in our dressage test, right over the little white fence and then put in about three good strides and also went over the 3’9” board fence. I came back to apologize to the judge for our unexpected departure and was told that ‘the goal was to finish the day with a number not a letter’. He never stopped cross country or stadium.
I sold him for family reasons when he was coming 8. The new owner never had any complaints. But as the horse was older by then he may have settled down or was getting to jump more.
I am a little guilty of tending to drill things. But it is so difficult for me to find a problem and then leave it alone to give him a break lol. For example, canter up transitions can be a little sticky if I don’t set him up well. So if I get a bad transition, and especially if I was the one to botch it, I immediately want to school it over and over until I fix it. It physically hurts to ignore the problem and come back to it later lol. Maybe I am a little uptight… I’ll try and focus on that this week, not doing the same thing more than 2x in a row.
I’m also a failure at creativity. I have lots of exercises I use, but it’s so easy to drill exercises and I find it stupidly hard to make up varieties to keep him entertained lol. Any tips on more spontaneous riding?
There’s still a progression between long and low fitness and first level fitness where you can’t expect him just to go to a first level frame and stay there for very long. You may need to start with just a few steps of correct contact at a time.
My horse thinks trot poles and ground poles are so dumb, and my last horse jumped 4’ over cavaletti occasionally, so I get it. But it really could be a good way to have the exercise do some of the work for you. Don’t canter them. Just trot. Ignore the leaping and just continue on. What’s important is not how he goes over the cavaletti but how his mind is about the entire ride if you insert some stuff like that in there. Or an occasional jump in the midst of the flatwork. I understand not wanting to use a saddle that makes him sore, but something isn’t working about any of your tack at the moment. In a better fitting jump saddle, you should still be able to ask for 1st-2nd level movements and pop over some small fences or handle the leaping poles.
I also get that the “bad” is not that bad, but it’s still an objection, a NO, and evasion. If pushing him makes him say NO louder until he sort of gives in, try a different approach. Redirect him. Ask smaller, simpler questions. It doesn’t really matter that he should know it. What matters is the reaction you are getting is not the right one. And he is telling you in the paddock he wants to avoid that work. So you need to change your ask to help him feel more confident and successful.
You may also want to find a different rider to give it a try. Not saying your dressage trainer is a bad rider, but maybe they aren’t the right person to get through to this horse. That said, that he objects to the trainer also suggests there’s a physical component somewhere. Maybe it’s in the mouth. Maybe the saddle, maybe she’s also asking for too much physically from him at this point in time.
If you get a bad transition, but it was an honest bad (and you’re being honest with yourself) then you may have to accept it. I have a horse like yours, who has a deeply innate sense of “fair” and who also has a gift for finding the easy way out of everything. The only way to ride him well is to convince him that it is his idea, and allow him to do something he is stellar at as a reward (instead of just stopping work entirely, because then he’d get lazy and check out). You have to make very sure you understand why it was bad - was he really blowing you off? Did you not prepare him well? Did he blow out the shoulder because he wasn’t even in the connection to begin with? Details matter a lot with a horse like this.
My horse will take over and tell you that he knows what he is supposed to be doing, thank you very much, and get POed if you correct him because that’s not actually what you wanted. We had to come to a “deal,” he and I. This horse can’t be drilled, because he will just tune you out more and more. Spontaneous riding comes from always understanding what you are trying to accomplish. For awhile with this horse when he was absolutely not understanding how to take the right rein forward, we cut corners and turned into them in a volte instead, or we halted in the corner, then walked through the corner, then halted out of the corner. A 10m circle when you lose the leg yield to rebalance, or a volte to straight line with no bend, etc. The horse will never learn to wait for your direction if you always follow the same formula. When I ride mine I am always thinking about what I can do to engage that right hind.
Some horses do find it physically difficult. The occasional course correction leg yield is a lot different than that expected in dressage… While he bending and position holding in S/I is a lot more intense than that used when galloping forward to a fence.
Longer reply later, but spontaneous riding is riding with feel - no agenda, no training plan (today, we are going to do X, Y and Z) just feeling the horse and adjusting and guiding him as necessary. Much more akin to sculpting or painting or improvising than an athletic workout. In the beginning, we have to accept bobbles and honest tries and one or two steps of correct, praise quickly and give the hand often.
I’m reading this with interest as I used to ride a horse very similar to what you describe. She was an amazing jumper. If we worked in some cavelleti in our lesson, it generally went much better. She would grind her teeth during flatwork. She was a very compact TB, tight through her back. I noticed improvement in her bend and transitisions after Chiro work, but her tense grumpy attitude never went away. Start jumping though, and she was relaxed, light, responsive, and generally overall happy.
Sorry, I don’t have much advice, I’m just here to read the suggestions!
If he was sore, wouldn’t I have seen improvement on bute or previcox? He had spine xrays when he was 8 that were very clean, maybe I’ll get a chiro out and see if they feel anything before I invest in more imaging. We already did all four legs up to knee/hock that were very clean for his age except navicular LF that’s very well managed with shoes and osphos. We did inject it just in case and saw no behavior changes.
Also, if he was sore, wouldn’t I feel something over fences? I get it’s two very different ways of using themselves, but a sore muscle would bother me no matter whether I was doing powerlifting or hurdles. Other than what I’ve done and more imaging, how would you check for soreness?
I’m also just realizing I’m the dumbest person alive :lol:. I was all caught up in how this weekend went I forgot I was having surgery next week and can’t ride for 16 weeks! All this great advice and I’ll have maybe three rides to try it. Oh well, maybe a long break will reset his (and my!) brain enough to come back with a better mental state. He’ll be turned out on ten acres with 5 others to just be a horse.
A bunch of years ago I bought a very nicely bred Oldenburg mare. First she was a “kick” kind of ride, and second she did not have an easily accessible work ethic. Lastly she had some health issues, which did nothing to help the situation. Not sure what she would have been good at, but she was not designed for a rider who is laid back personally and did not want the “you make me do it” kind of process.
And she had zero interest in jumping anything…why bother?:no:
This might be just the ticket! Hopefully he will come off his vacation fresh and more interested in the work. While are you recovering maybe buy yourself some books to help you approach your dressage in a more adaptable way. Dressage In Lightness and The Balanced Horse: The Aids by Feel, Not Force, bothby Sylvia Loch are great.
It might also be worth making a list of warmup and cross training ideas, potentially with the input of your trainer, to try with your horse to see how he reacts. This blog post has some interesting ideas to consider: https://www.artisticdressage.com/blog-content/2017/9/13/difficult-horses
“It is very important to find the right structure for the work. With especially difficult horses it is usually not a good idea to climb on cold and start riding. You make work easier for the horse and yourself by finding the optimal structure. I would experiment with free longeing, longeing, double longeing, long reining, and work in hand. With some horses it helps to warm up with one of these options. For others, there is a specific combination that prepares the horse especially well for the rider’s weight. The goal of the warmup is to create a certain physical and psychological balance and mental collection, and to warm up the muscles before adding the weight of the rider. This is often recommendable for “normal” horses, too, but with especially difficult horses it is almost required.”
I hope your surgery goes smoothly and you heal quickly!
