I’ll PM you. thanks
sorry, It was late and I was sick. I’ve always been a bad speller—I was NOT DRUNK
Count me in as another average rider who has improved a horse’s gaits, as shown by scores from multiple judges at various shows.
Improving the gaits (way of going) is the goal of every discipline from saddlebreds to runners. It should be one of the major goals of dressage training. Anyone who has rehabbed a less than perfect horse knows it is more than possible. It is required.
Can I claim it for a horse who when started was a foot off tracking up in trot. Nearly a year later and boy did I rejoice when she tracked up.
It’s funny because this video keeps popping up on COTH and on FB for me… and I love Ingrid Klimke and I hate this video. IK has done such a spectacular job with Franziskus, I understand he is quite hot… I don’t think this is her best video (other than it does show how brilliantly she can ride). I honestly do not see true collection in this video.
Franziskus is tense as a tension rod. He’s fighting the contact the entire time. Of course I’m sure the atmosphere plays into this and I cannot fault him for being “up”. I just don’t think Franziskus has the elasticity or relaxation that is ideal in a dressage horse. He is a brilliant mover but total leg flinger up front and he doesn’t deliver the same power or impulsion behind because his back is as tight as a washboard.I think he gets away with good scores because he is a good mover up front and IK is an absolutely brilliant rider that can push the best out of him. I don’t see “harmony” in Franziskus’ rides, but I do see the brilliant potential that IK sees in him… just looks like it’s very hard to get it out.
The second video you posted is much more my cup of tea. To my eye she looks much more collected, much more relaxed, and while she doesn’t have the brilliant gaits Franziskus has she demonstrates what Franziskus does not: harmony. Her walk is much better than Franzi’s as well.
I guess IK’s video does exemplify pretty well what I’ve come to really dislike about dressage - where some top horses are very tight, not anywhere near as supple or harmonious as other top horses, have major tension in transitions and within the gaits, but they score really well because their movement is absolutely brilliant or they are bred to be very elastic.
On the subject of can you change a horse’s way of going - it helps to have a naturally loose mover, but you can improve the gaits - trot is easiest. I think the walk is hardest. Good correct work, poles, and maintenance can make the difference between a “Stabby” or “tracky” mover and a nice, fluid mover.
You are kind of corroborating the point I was trying to make.
I do not delude myself that I can improve the gaits of an already very fancy horse. I cannot take an 8 mover and make it a 9.
But I can take a stock horse that is a 5 and make it a 6.5. My last horse could not even canter a circle when I got her, and I changed her to having a decent canter both leads, which in my mind is an improvement (say, going from zero to 5). Also confident that getting my current QH to track evenly with her hind legs constitutes an improvement in her gaits. That’s why I said it will be interesting to see if I can improve on my more talented Oldenburg mare. She is already probably a 6.5-7 for her trot, and I’m not sure if I’m good enough to improve it.
It sounds like you’re surrounded by fancy horses, so your frame of reference is much different that many of us who are starting off with the sub-5-figure horses. It takes a lot more skill to make those incremental improvements as you get closer to the top of the scale. I don’t imagine a lot of horses in that pool have significant gait asymmetries, or total inability to canter, or even ground-bound trots, so the low-hanging fruit aren’t there. Why do people buy nice gaits? Well, they don’t have to spend a year getting the horse tracking symmetrically, the horse is likely supple and able to move towards the lateral and collected work more quickly. That Appy with no canter I mentioned earlier would probably top out as a 6 mover after tons of work; there is such thing as genetic limitation, and no one here is claiming that any horse can be turned into an uber-mover, just that it can be improved from baseline.
Yes, anyone that’s restarted one straight off the track will tell you that you can indeed do a lot to influence a horse’s way of going. Mine was gawky and still figuring out where her legs went. In the almost 11 years I’ve owned her, pros have been on her maybe two dozen times, so I’m left with the thought that indeed, mediocre rider that I am, I improved those gaits with riding and training to the point that we’re now showing at 1st, in addition to successfully showing in 3’ divisions at h/j shows, and going around at 2 regional equitation finals this year.
It’s not rocket science, it’s a lot of schooling the basics, both on the flat and over fences–circles, serpentines, spirals, grids and gymnastics–it should all be in the service of improving the horse’s way of going, whether that is better sit for a pirouette or better sit to push off to a 3’6" oxer. I’m never going to make my 6/7 mover a 8/9 mover, but we’ve come a long way from gawky straight-off-track-letdown to show horse, and if I can do it, I’m sure plenty of people can. It might not be Charlotte D levels, but most horses aren’t Valegro, either.
I’ll start off by saying I’m not a dressage ride, I prefer hunters. But I have done some eventing, and routinely take lessons with a dressage instructor. My horses can all easily do training level tests, and we do a lot of lateral work at home.
One of them I bought as a yearling because he was a clear hack winner. There was a period where his movement didn’t seem to have the same quality any more though, I wondered if he had just lost some elasticity as he filled out, but it turned out to be a less then stellar farrier. New farrier brought him back to being a hack winner overnight.
My moms horse does not move as well. He has a weaker hind end and prefers to pull himself a long. In the winters she goes to Arizona and leaves him with me, here he gets a boot camp in collection and using his booty. By spring it appears he moves better, by fall he’ll have lost some of the strength and push from his hind end. It’s a yearly cycle.
We just bought a weanling this fall who is another awesome mover. I’ll have more video evidence of this one then my other one so it will be easier to see how her movement changes as she ages and starts undersaddle.
The dressage rider’s education up through the levels includes a learning curve on riding the gaits. You start and if you’re not actively interfering with the horse’s motion, you’re at the very least not helping the horse improve. Where you start is a function of your own athleticism and balance. You then improve to neutral: your presence is no longer hampering the horse’s innate quality throughout the movements. Finally, you progress to a point where your presence reinforces and improves the horse’s preferred way of going-- you keep the tempo consistent so they develop cadence and from that cadence they can improve the scope of the gaits. That cycle repeats itself as you add greater and greater complexity to the movements by going up the levels and raising the bar for collection and extension.
I’ve always ridden horses that either had holes in the training (and were therefore tense/arrhythmic/inelastic and therefore cheap) or didn’t have the easiest/most elastic gaits (and were therefore cheap), so I’ve never had the experience of just sitting on a horse who had 8- or 9-quality gaits and didn’t need improvement from the rider. I hear they’re out there, but they’re not in my budget.
My GP horse ended up as a 7-8 mover on average-- 8.5 on a good day, 7.5 on a not-so-good day-- in the show ring, but remained a hot mess when he was cavorting out in the field. Pepe Le Pew canter, the works. I am a believer in training having a big impact on the quality of the gaits.
Thank you very much everyone who has commented. I definitely respect the breeding that goes into these fancy dressage horses! I just wanted to fact-check from real dressage riders on whether or not this rumor and/or truth is fact or fiction.
I, myself, have moved to a barn were we sort of have a mismatch of everything. The owners are very, very wealthy and are european dressage riders but have chosen, for their american mounts, personality over breeding for their horses. So we have a classic-bred eventing thoroughbred who competes 3rd level, and an american warmblood (basically just a plow horse) who did intermediate-level eventing and has competed up to 2nd. Not sure if that even matters in this discussion, but neither of these horses have the breeding that would allow them to go up to GP, but for the owners their trail-savvy skills and ability to pack them around during a dressage test outweighs their limited physical abilities.
My own horse is a TB. I talk about her a lot. She has a more hunter-type movement and is a beautiful jumper, but doesn’t have the suspension nor the knee-action a GP bred dressage horse has. However, she has awesome collection thanks to her more compact frame. I HOPE, just on her collecting abilities alone, we might be able to go up the levels but I wonder how we will be perceived - her being a hunter with daisy-cutter movements - by the judges who are used to seeing horses who step big and up.
I also want to add that, as i am sure you all know, not everyone has dreams of grand prix, so it just shocked me that these people thought that if you couldn’t make it all the way, it’s best not to try at all or appreciate how far you can go :no:
In the Delmar related set of threads there’s a lot of discussion about how much judges are instructed to take brilliance of gaits into account at lower as well as upper levels.
There is general agreement that like it or not, brilliant gaits boost your score at every level. It’s not just that you need a certain scope or suspension for a good extended trot or piaffe but rather that brilliant gaits raise your score at every level.
Most ammies stall out at first level dressage so realistically most ammies are not going “up the levels.” But even at first level, gaits are rewarded and can compensate to some extent for holes in the training. That is why everyone wants big gaits in their horse and wants a WB even for training level tests.
My bolding…
I think it sensible to recognize that there is a difference between being able to go out and compete at international level, which lets face it, only a very, very tiny fraction of the dressage riding population of the world is going to do, or whether you are going to work towards the GP movements in a more limited fashion on your regular horse and maybe go out to play locally.
We have some GP-capable riders on relatively ordinary horses around here. They aren’t going to set the world on fire, but they have done a very creditable job of bringing good minded horses of a variety of breeds to an upper level and had some fun with it. (I watched a lovely ride in a clinic last weekend from a lady on a Hackney Arab cross, for instance.)
Don’t get hung up on the breed unless you are going to be competing at the very highest levels. And don’t think it’s “not worth it” to train your nice horse to do the best he can do within whatever limitations he has, which probably are not many!
Every club level tennis player doesn’t have the ability or desire to compete in the US Open, and they don’t throw down their rackets and go home, but every dressage rider seems to think that they have to rush to dizzying heights or be considered a worthless failure, rather than happily enjoying the journey, however far it takes them.
I wonder if this is because of the type A personality of many dressage riders? Or are we being sold a bill of goods by internet posters?
I suspect most people see mostly low level riding IRL and only see GP on TV or Internet, unless they score a ticket to a big name event. All the upper level riding they see is international calibre via media and all the riding they see IRL is very low level.
If OP wants to see what’s possible she should start attending local shows and watching with attention to movement perhaps taking notes, and then compare to the posted scores. Or auditing clinics attended by local riders.
OP could pay special attention to the careers of other ottb in dressage as well.
In general getting off the internet and going out to look at real horses locally is a huge help.
This might be the best advice OP has gotten all day.
@thecolorcoal I know you say in the other thread that dressage is almost non-existent where you live, but don’t I recall from one of your earlier threads that you’re in the Bay Area? There’s plenty of dressage in that region! Traffic sucks, but not so badly that it’s impossible to get to shows and clinics locally.
Find a clinic to audit! Go sit ringside at a show for a few hours! The best way to figure out how your horse’s movement and the training you’re getting fit into the bigger picture is to get some exposure to the bigger picture.
This post nailed it.
Any decent rider should be capable of improving a horse’s gaits to a 6 or maybe a 7, just through correct training. Trying to take a horse who’s naturally a 7 mover and turning them into a 9 is a different beast all together, and if you can do that, please move to Wellington and start schmoozing some sponsors for a team horse.
As far as at the lower levels over-rewarding fancy gaits, I think it’s a similar mechanism: any decent horse should be capable of showing Training/1st level, and how good the training is matters less, because less training is required. This allows the fancier movers to get those extra credit points, because if two horses are doing the same movement, such as a leg yield, why shouldn’t you reward the horse that is showing more reach, suppleness, etc.?
However, the skill level and training it takes for a horse and rider pair increases as you go up the levels, and so I think in some ways, the scoring for the specialist WBs and the off-breeds becomes more fair as you move up, because better training on a less naturally gifted horse can beat out average training on a better mover. It’s a lot harder to teach a horse/rider to do a good pirouette than it is to teach them to do a leg yield, and there’s a lot more possible mistakes that can be made.
Of course, this does not apply in the international arena, where we can assume all the horses are getting very good training/riding, and the margins between riding skill is smaller.
Thank you.
Ignorant question: when judge’s score, are they looking for a type of gait/movement, or are they looking at the horse in front of them and assessing its movement based on its conformation/training/etc? Do they hold it against horses who don’t have the high knee action, because that is the baseline that they feel all horses should at least meet? An ex-friend of mine, who does western dressage now, always used to jump on “english” dressage and claim western dressage scores more fairly based on the horse’s conformation and inherent way of going (stock breeds).
@x-halt-salute@Scribbler There’s a few shows coming up! I definitely want to go see them, thanks!
I have no idea how Western dressage scores.
However yes what we have been saying over and over here is that big gaits earn points at all levels. I would not call the currently desirable dressage action “high knees.” Rather it is “big”: long strides, a lot of reach, a lot of natural suspension, and the flexibility to do lateral work with grace.
If you go watch some dressage classes IRL you will see it.
Your friend was not correct - a judge can’t look at a horse’s conformation and make a determination as to how it “can” go, all a judge can look at is what they see in front of them at that moment, how the horse is actually going. The difference between the two forms of dressage (English and Western) is primarily the Western Dressage judges don’t emphasize the “quality of the gaits”, the look more at the directive of the movement, and the quiet submission is more important then anything else. And of course, the other difference is the tack used.
If you looked at Valegro’s conformation, would you ever expect him to move the way he did? Conformation is not relevant to dressage (other then as a partial predictor of long term soundness).
And Western Dressage is not limited to stock breeds - having judged quite a bit of it at area schooling shows, I’ve seen Arabians, Gypsies, Warmbloods, Morgans, as well as the Stock breeds. The discipline begin in the Morgan world, after all - and that is not a stock breed!