Learning on a schoolmaster versus learning on a challenge-horse

[KBC]

@Scribbler

My point exactly. Number 3 is teaching you how to ride him. He won’t do anything dangerous when you miscue, but shows you are not asking correctly. I wouldn’t even call it evading, it’s more that you need to ask correctly for this horse. And that has to do with seat and balance as well as the rein and leg aids. If you know it’s there when you ask correctly, that’s a lot of incentive to ride him correctly!

A schoolmaster dressage horse is not going to be a point and shoot push button horse for someone new to the discipline.

It is the most wonderful incentive, we were kind of doing well, then it all went wrong, so I had a taste of what he can do. Now we are really building a relationship, and it makes me smile so much when we get it right.

[JLR1]

My first horse was challenging…a hot and opinionated mare. It was green horse green rider syndrome. I honestly don’t think I would be the rider I am today if I hadn’t learned so much from her. Mostly it was how to hang on for spooks and bolts, but also life lessons on patience and perseverance. She ingrained in me something schoolmasters don’t always teach which is to be a proactive and “thinking” rider.

[Edre]

I guess for me to really answer this first, I’d reframe the original question a little.

There is “schoolmaster” as in “educated to what the rider is trying to do” and then “green/unschooled/uneducated/developing” as in, the rider is asking the horse to do something the horse is not yet consistent in (either has no background knowledge, minimal, or may have some background education but isn’t consistent or really good/comfortable with).

(“Genuinely challenging to ride but still talented and capable” isn’t really helpful in the parameters of a schoolmaster discussion - because schoolmasters, as others have mentioned, do not mean “uncomplicated”. In many regards they are more complicated because there are that many more buttons, levers, and switches that a rider can inadvertently button mash with an uneducated aid/lack of body control.)

That said, I think that in general it is better for people to learn on horses with a more advanced education than the riders themselves. This does not, imo, mean putting a starter rider on a PSG horse. However, it is very, very hard for riders to learn things when they are having to teach a horse the same thing that they themselves are just learning. How can a rider really teach a horse to accept contact when the rider doesn’t know what contact should feel like in the first place?

In that way, I think there is a lot of value in the “lower level” schoolmasters. It’s easy for us to become enamoured with the idea of the, say, PSG schoolmaster (or even the third/fourth level schoolmaster who can help teach a rider changes) but we lose sight of the training and first level schoolmasters who are rock solid in the foundations and the basics who can really help a rider get a solid framework for the skills that are required to be a “good” rider going forward.

This doesn’t mean that every horse with a confirmed education at a level is a schoolmaster - some are too exacting, factitious, or opportunistic to ever really excel at the role. But for the ones that are capable, I think they are absolutely incredible horses and generally am of the opinion that more people should spend time working with them them at all points in their equestrian careers.

For what it’s worth: I am a “do as I say and not as I do” (for the most part). The horse I had the most experience with was one I brought up through the levels without having any former education myself to what we were working on training. He was a beautifully moving, phenomenally athletic (and talented) horse, but god was it hard because he was not necessarily willing to volunteer what you were asking. Even if he understood the gist, you had to be impeccable in your requests for it to occur - which for me, as a rider who was also learning the movements as I was trying to teach them to him, was not so consistent an occurrence. Since his passing I have spent more time working with some schoolmasters and have valued the educational experience tremendously. While I value what I learned with my horse, I can’t help but think of how many mistakes I might have avoided if I had more education on a horse that could teach me, rather than having to teach myself and teach another simultaneously.

[Scribbler]

If you get a green horse and work through that successfully, you end up with useful skills for green horses.

If you get (or create) a problem horse, and you work through that successfully, you end up with useful skills for solving problems, and usually a sticky seat.

If you get to ride a well trained horse early in your riding career, you learn correct position and aids.

Often, riding a a green or problem horse can leave a developing rider with bad habits and position problems that are functional in emergencies, but make it difficult to ride properly at more sophisticated levels.

Young pros develop their skills by riding all these types of horse every day, the green horse and the problem horse and the well trained horse (who might be a sweetheart or a difficult ride, but knows his stuff). That’s how working students become junior trainers. And they usually have a senior trainer mentor keeping and eye on them to see that they don’t develop any bad habits along the way.

The complication for ammies is that we don’t have access to a revolving sequence of green, problem, and well trained horses, nor the time in the day or week to ride that many horses. And for the ammies that do have a bunch of horses of different ages on their own land, they tend not to have the continual eye of an on-site senior trainer to help them.

So I would say that all these kinds of horses are very useful in one’s riding education, and that you will eventually be a better dressage rider if you have the confidence and sticky seat from riding green and naughty horses in early life. But someone from that background would be well served by getting a chance to finally ride a properly schooled horse.