Short of an injury or malformation, is there a body type that will just never adjust to dressage? Also, does dressage alone build muscle, or should muscle be built first, in order to do dressage?
Good question. Dressage in itself means training of horse and rider, and it works with any horse. In “competition” dressage, the confirmation will be one of the reasons that the horse can’t progress to more difficult movements.
Not competition dressage. I meant “discipline of dressage” .
[QUOTE=Mnsn2Mzrt;8523303]
Short of an injury or malformation, is there a body type that will just never adjust to dressage? Also, does dressage alone build muscle, or should muscle be built first, in order to do dressage?[/QUOTE]
Well my personal conformation holds me back. If I was a svelte, long legged thing I’d at least LOOK better if not ride better. Or where you talking about the horse? 
Proper and progressing dressage training will build muscle. One does not have to condition the horse to start dressage, the progress and progression goes hand in hand
“Dressage” is French and means training. All riding is a form of training. You are teaching your horse something, for better or for worse, each time you ride.
When you work in the discipline of Dressage, you work at progressively improving the whole horse. As the horse progresses, the body will change.
There are body types that make a horse less athletic, but all horses and riders can benefit from the basic foundation of the concepts of dressage.
It kind of depends on what you mean by “adjust to dressage” and how far you want to go.
Any riding horse can benefit from basic dressage riding because it’s about developing an athlete. However, there are indeed horses that I would not choose as horses to ride dressage because of their build. The halter bred Quarter Horses are not meant for it (they are downhill and their hind legs barely bend). Many individuals with in the gaited horse breeds, especially if their job is to be gaited horses, would not be great choices. The dressage work changes their musculature to a different purpose.
Sympathetic riding to develop the horse is always a fine thing. However, asking a horse to flex and use his hocks and carry himself from behind is real work - best to have a horse that has the shape and rider commitment to make this worthwhile. If your goal is to say have a horse comfortable even at working first level, then I would pick a horse with an athletic riding horse build so you don’t make him unsound with the work. This still covers like 85% of the horses out there. 
Lynn Palm quote: “Dressage is good for all horses, not all horses are good for dressage.”
conformationally speaking - an inharmoniously built animal will find their body challenging to work through. poor conformation can hinder performance, restrict mobility, and procreate unsoundness. all bodies can adjust their musculature if given an appropriate load.
generally, any horse can find benefit in low level dressage - training, maybe first level. once collection truly enters the scenario you will find many horses struggle due to their conformation to really sit under themselves and travel straight.
it would be difficult to point out every flaw out there and how it relates to performance, because sometimes a horse can overcome a certain fault, or sometimes, they have an excess of a different trait that overcomes a certain fault (IE, maybe the horse is straight hocked which usually means loss of mobility/range, difficulty stepping under, concussion to the hock and SI area – but lets say that horse has a very long, sloping femur with an extremely open angle – then you have a horse that is not limited by the straightness behind, and is capable of stepping under, etc). but generally speaking, disharmony throughout the body is an indicator of poor dressage potential.
I have a friend with an older arab with a congenital spine defect of “sway back”, which is rather severe, I think you call it lordosis. He has benefitted from excellent condition because of dressage and scores well at first level and probably would at second also, and schools some third level movements at home with his owner and their trainer.
Building on the disharmony conversation:
We tend to focus on the phenotype a lot. How measurements of parts compare to measurements of other parts. What angles the horse has in its natural standing position. Etc.
What determines success in dressage more than any of that is the trainability. Is your horse a try-er? When things feel difficult, do they offer more or do they say, emphatically, NO?
The issue with conformation is that “when things feel difficult” may happen much sooner in the levels for a disharmoniously conformed horse vs. one with more ideal sporthorse conformation. You’ll be asking for more mental effort earlier if your horse is heavy through the neck/shoulder, or straight through the hind legs, or has a tough loin conformation.
Imo dressage does more than build muscle, because any equestrian discipline or riding would build muscle including hacking around .
What differentiates (one hopes) dressage is it encourages balance and shifts the carrying power from front to back, which should benefit all horses , much as ballet, pilates or similar benefits all humans.
Some horse body types such as low set neck or very long body might struggle with it and though it would benefit them the most, riders would tend not to work with them in dressage because results would be so much longer to see. Horses with conformation bred for dressage tend to get the upper level training so we may never know how other breed or conformation types might perform since they are rarely trained above lower levels.
I have a morgan/QH 13 year old gelding. He’s MAYBE 15 hands, possibly 14.3. He has a skinny neck and no butt, which is one of the reasons I became interested in dressage, however, I have the feeling that his neck will tone with work, but his butt is just a breed thing. He’s also really clumsy. Yet another reason I’m seeking training. But I just got to thinking, does he just have no balance, or is he built wrong? He’s also always been barefoot. Would he benefit from shoes? And yes, he has an excellent attitude and is very smart. He has his quirks, but he also has a lot of patience with new things.
I used to have a grade Appendix type gelding who had a really long back, and was built really downhill, and dressage with him was really a nightmare. He hated it, and he also had HYPP so getting stressed out did really bad things to him, so we quit doing it, and just trail rode. Some fights are just not worth having.
All horses benefit from dressage. Conformation plays a large role in the ease and correctness of the performance of some movements, and even some gaits. In another forum there is a discussion on a carefully bred WP horse, whose soundness is in question, simply because the horse has been carefully bred to move in a manner that most people have no desire to utilize, at least in not in their disciplines Proving the point of Lynn Palm’s statement, “Dressage is good for all horses, not all horses are good for dressage.”
My sweet mare is conformationally challenged. Her neck is set low and she’s long. Her passage is barely recognizable. But she loves to work and tries to do whatever is asked of her. Her canter pirouettes are lovely, her piaffe continues to improve, flying changes are reliable. If you saw her in her paddock, you’d never think, “that’s a dressage horse”. If you saw her working, you’d reflect on how soft, willing and lovely she is. She looks quite capable.
I know she would never compete successfully against a horse with a different conformation.
[QUOTE=princessfluffybritches;8523324]
Good question. Dressage in itself means training of horse and rider, and it works with any horse. In “competition” dressage, the confirmation will be one of the reasons that the horse can’t progress to more difficult movements.[/QUOTE]
Your answer is partly correct.
I will admit I don’t understand what you achieve by placing competition dressage in quotes.
Dressage, by definition is a specific form of training. My horse (or any horse) is as adept at it in the schooling ring as in the competition ring and yes their conformation plays a role in how good at it they can be.
But regardless of conformation dressage is good for any horse as it will help develop musculature and fitness.
If someone is asking the questions that the OP did then a simple “any horse can begin schooling dressage and build muscle as it goes/advances” and leave it at that.
By clumsy, is he stumbling a lot? That might not have anything to do with training or fitness - it could indicate neurological issues, like EPM related problems, etc. I’d have him checked by a vet with those concerns in mind, and ensure you have a good farrier. Barring a medical condition, hill work and correct transitions would all help increase the strength in his butt, as would cavalletti or low jump gymnastics to get him to rock back on his butt and load weight there.
[QUOTE=atlatl;8523590]
Lynn Palm quote: “Dressage is good for all horses, not all horses are good for dressage.”[/QUOTE] Pfffftttt She doesn’t understand the meaning of the word if she said that.
Imo he could benefit from shoes, have a good farrier in, put shoes on and evalute how he goes with shoes. Shoes can help balance and stabilize their gait
I don’t know enough about gaited horses to know if some have a conformation which prevents them having w/t/c gaits. If so, that would prevent a horse from doing true dressage work, as the gymnastic development through dressage work is developed for the mechanics of trot and canter, so will not have the same effects in other gaits.
Otherwise, dressage done correctly will help every horse. There are many stories of “my horse’s body couldn’t hold up to dressage work” and barring injuries (see recent article about Rosmarin and his lesion on a stifle ligament (?) when his rider knew something was wrong because of his trouble sitting for an example), they are typically from incorrect work. I know multiple examples of horses who people claim can’t do dressage, but do.
Super downhill quarter horses:
One with a very long back who still manages to move uphill and fluidly and score high 60s/low 70s. Inconsistent work has kept her in the lower levels, not inability.
One who was a “western pleasure dropout” in her owner’s words. VERY downhill when she started at training level, this horse is now doing well at second level and moves uphill. Her conformation even LOOKS more uphill standing still, as her sling muscles have lifted the front in a new posture. This pair is one of my favorites who wins their fair share through correct work and allowing the horse all the time it needs to develop not just muscle but the CORRECT muscle. It took her about two years to start getting a real lengthening, for example, but now to watch her going you would have no idea her history.
Birth defect/uneven hind legs:
A friend’s horse has cannon bones which are different lengths on the hind legs. I’ve mentioned her here before, too. It was a birth defect where the left hind wasn’t growing when she was born and surgery helped some but not entirely. At the time, vets said she may never be rideable, but that it was not a heritable flaw and could be bred. My friend just got her bronze and is now schooling 4th level on her, my trainer rides her through the I-1 test without major mistakes. This horse gets better as she goes because the topline development from more collected work helps support her movement. She steps absolutely evenly with her hind legs and has never had a comment from a judge about her unevenness, but she has taken 2-3 years/level rather than shooting up 1 level per year to develop the muscle needed to support her. Her owner is thrilled with just having been able to get the bronze, and her progress continues because of the positive effects of the work rather than out of ambition.
Very straight legs, lack of mobility in the sacrum area:
This is a horse who is a very heavy warmblood, who was diagnosed with navicular young and not supposed to be rideable after 5, or survive past 6. Going barefoot was a last ditch effort to help the horse, and worked. The work and weighting of the hind legs has made the front hooves more comfortable, and there is less reactivity as a teen than there was as a 3 year old. X-rays look better, too. As can happen with straighter legs in dressage horses, he had some stifle issues which he had to slowly develop more strength to support as he was starting to get more sit. Last showed I-1, then broke a splint playing and has been out of the ring a while, when he was getting ready for an I-2 debut. Piaffe is VERY hard for this horse and will never be a classical ideal because the hind end just doesn’t want to fold well. The rest of the GP is fairly solid except for the 1 tempis being green and inconsistent at this point but improving.
[QUOTE=stryder;8523913]
My sweet mare is conformationally challenged. Her neck is set low and she’s long. Her passage is barely recognizable. But she loves to work and tries to do whatever is asked of her. Her canter pirouettes are lovely, her piaffe continues to improve, flying changes are reliable. If you saw her in her paddock, you’d never think, “that’s a dressage horse”. If you saw her working, you’d reflect on how soft, willing and lovely she is. She looks quite capable.
I know she would never compete successfully against a horse with a different conformation.[/QUOTE]
Your horse reminds me of a story that I just read about on coth. A cart horse turned dressage star by a very talented rider. There were quotes in the story regarding how "ugly"the horse was. Long bodied, short legged, but a winning personality.
Any sound horse can learn the lower levels of dressage and become better because of good training. There are lots and lots of horses with great conformation that never make it past training level. Could be the riders skill or motivation or it could be the horse’s temperament.
