Funny story:
Decades ago I lived on a strange and small island where equestrian sport was not exactly…well developed. We loved our horses and did our best with very limited coaching and knowledge. There was literally not a warmblood on the island at the time. We mostly rode a mix of draft crosses, TBs, QHs and crosses, with a healthy dose of off the track Standardbreds thrown in for good measure.
One year the national powers that be sent a Big City clinician down to our little backwoods place to host a “talent identification” clinic, to see if any of us might show enough potential to be selected to move to the mainland and receive professional coaching.
Day 1 of the clinic I rode my own horse, a very pretty QH / TB cross who at the time was 4 years old and almost as clueless as I was. This terrifying tiny woman ridiculed all our horses in her strong German accent and said we all had no hope of ever “doing dressage” unless we rode warmbloods, and there was little point in trying with our ragtag group of mounts. (And silly me, I had read lots of books and believed that the point of dressage was to teach ANY horse and rider to go in harmony together).
Her words truly demoralizing for all of us as we loved our horses and they were the best we access to at the time, given location and budgets. None of us had any aspirations of riding them to FEI levels or on national teams - we just wanted to learn the basics and improve year after year. Ignorance was bliss I guess because until she told us, we didn’t think there was anything wrong with our horses.
Not surprisingly, my young, inverted, confused horse gave me a very tough ride that day but she must have seen something she liked, because she asked me to ride again the second day, but on a horse with more training. I borrowed a friend’s handsome black jumper gelding (who I had never ridden before), threw my dressage tack on him and away we went. This sweetheart gave me the ride of my life, saying yes to everything asked of him. At the end of the session the clinician gathered everyone around and said:
“See this? This is the kind of horse you need to do dressage. None of you can hope to improve if you keep riding these horses not designed for dressage. You must have a warmblood, as you can see from how well this horse and rider did today.” She turned to me and said “Tell us about this horse’s bloodlines dear.”
Seeing the look on her face when I told her he was a Registered Quarter Horse was the best part of that whole clinic :lol:
:). Didn’t you mention you used to be a scientist??? Then you should really try to base your phantasies on more reliable facts 
