This is so true. My first year at PSG I was so happy that I could complete all of the exercises. I thought of the test as a checklist. As my accuracy improved, I was able to get my Silver Medal scores, but I rarely broke 62. It wasn’t until the next horse that I really understood how much of the picture I was missing and started aiming to improve the horse’s gaits and carriage over completing movements.
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Perhaps for some, but for many others it’s going for the learn.
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In Calif. I’m seeing $80-90K for WBs with vast show success.
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welllll…it is a discussion board, right?
Several posters on this thread have alluded to folks having sour grapes/jealousy etc about purchasing schoolmaster horses. I mean…like four or five posts of that. Just presenting my point of view, that is is not necessarily a judgemental/jealous intent, but a different process/different goal.
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How is it “going for the win?” They are not easy to ride, take years to learn to ride well, and there’s no guarantee you will be able to manage one well enough in the shoe ring to even score well, let alone win, until you’ve out hundreds of hours in.
The main purpose of a schoolmaster is that they teach you do things correctly. I have never competed either of the ones I’ve had, and likely never will. Competing certainly wasn’t in my agenda when I bought them - the opportunity to simply ride and learn in a horse like that is the main motivation for a lot of people.
Now if your goal is being competitive, perhaps qualifying for regionals, nationals, NAYC, etc. why wouldn’t you buy a horse that is going to be competitive? Buying something that doesn’t suit your goals is pretty dumb, IMO.
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I think you were the person they are referring to
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Interesting discussion here 
. Just saying I have a different approach 
…
I am producing my own schoolmaster….
I bred my mare, got stuck at 4th level and although I found a great trainer, progress was slow…. So I decided to take a shortcut and let my trainer ride the horse… She started exactly 0ne year ago and showed her in I1 this year and hopefully in GP next year . Next year my mare will be 13…. So I am calculating that I will have a gorgeous schoolmaster soon…
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Love this so much! Bringing a horse to fourth level is such an achievement. Investing in a year of training at that level is no small undertaking but now you are on the cusp of having a GP horse you know inside and out!
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Thank you so much!!!
Exactly what I am thinking right now and I admit it took me a long time to admit that I wasn’t able to do it myself…. but now I am happy that I threw my pride over board……
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Not to hijack, but I wasn’t referring to eightpond at all. Just for the record.
This is awesome. I will add, though, that you were very capable of riding the horse before you engaged the trainer. This is much more risky when you buy a horse you can’t ride and give it to a trainer for a while. Even with training, not all horses will suit any specific rider.
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Fwiw - I have a 17yo PSG schoolmaster and a 4yo young horse. Financially and from a time perspective, I should sell the schoolmaster. I’ve made the decision not to for a variety of reasons, but if I were going to, he’d be in the 15-20k range because of some significant maintenance costs. This is all to say, you’re likely looking at the same overall price, either up front if they’re sound, or spread out if they’re less so.
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That’s what I’ve been seeing as well. Some really, really nice horses, not necessarily aged, who are being dropped down to First, or have the significant therapeutic shoeing and maintenance needs. A good value still, if you click with them.
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I think a quite fancy (National horse)GP school master in its mid 20s with maintenance is going to run around 30k; if quirky, less.
A FEI horse in its mid 20s with maintenance (Regional horse) 15/20k, if quirky, less.
And FEI or GP horse with at least Regional abilities in its late teens can be anywhere from 15k to 100k depending on how easy to ride and maintenance (some reason people buying seem to think a horse in its teens should never have had maintenance and be 100% with years and years of intensive training)
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Any horse doing this type of work and a rider wanting to achieve that work and take the training off the table needs to budget for maintenance. Upper level horses need more support as they get older unless you want to step them down.
Upper level horses who do not need a lot of maintenance have been managed very very well (and by that I mean someone spend time and money in preventative care and a very tactful training plan) and if they are kind and generous are going to be very expensive at any age. If you find one, buy a lottery ticket… sort of like finding a unicorn.
My business model for my clients is to find kind young horses for my clients and train them up into good solid citizens and the client finishes with a FEI or GP horse of their own; with the client and I riding and the client showing if they want. This requires investment in training over many years; after the initial approximate 15-30k investment in a quality but not overall fancy young horse.
At the end of the day unless your very lucky you will pay to achieve in this sport unless you are very talented, very lucky, or can invest $ into your riding and riding goals.
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This is totally right. For my schoolmaster the majority of the cost is because he is IR and Cushings. If not for that, his maintenance would be pretty reasonable. Two courses of adequan yearly, monthly legend, and a monthly massage, and reasonable supplements.
To keep him at his best, he does two days of conditioning work (hill work when dry, poles while we’re limited to arena work), two days that are more toward stretching, and two to three days of upper level work. Any significant time off becomes harder and harder to come back from the older he gets.
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One of my grad school professors once commented that undergrad was for learning the subject, masters for digesting all that and coming to a true understanding of the subject, and doctorate for adding your mark by trailblazing new paths and adding to the body of knowledge. The horse is every bit as much the teacher as is the human trainer. Trying to learn something as complex as dressage without a schoolmaster is kind of like an undergrad trying to write a doctoral dissertation on organic chemistry under the tutilage of a high school student who got a 3 out of 5 on the AP test. Can you truly understand the scope of the subject if you don’t know what you don’t know? Sure, you have the occasional Charlotte Dujardin, simultaneously developing a Grand Prix horse as she developed herself. Those people are pretty rare.
IMHO, successfully starting a beginner in a highly technical skill takes considerable skill. A studio I taught at had a lessons manager that got fired after numerous teachers complained she was poaching all the new students for herself and her siblings. She and her sisters could sing from the standpoint that they performed in a family bluegrass band (She was a mandolin player, another sister a fiddler, the 3rd a dobro/guitar player.) That didn’t make them even marginally competent at teaching others to sing. So they were incessantly asking me to explain to them how to teach their students. ( I have no problem with giving occasional advice. However, I made a significant investment of time and money into my skillset and I’m not teaching you how to teach unless I’m getting paid for it.) The feeling of muscular engagement + lift and freedom that is correct singing technique can take years to learn. I know how to isolate that feeling and teach it to students through exercises. They know the feeling they’re going for long before they’re capable of perfecting the physical process to achieve it. They know what they’re working toward. So if they’re at home in their room singing along to a recording and suddenly the stars align and the clouds part and the angels sing Hosannas and they hit that feeling for a spilt second, they know they’ve got it right.
In many ways, I think green-to- dressage rider on green-to-dressage horse is similar to the above scenario. I leased an FEI level schoolmaster. He had moves like Jagger. He also gave nothing for less than perfection. He was quirky yet safe. Asked for the lead you were already on? Him rolling his eyes at you (literally) was the worst that would happen. (The buck you 20’ into the air reaction of a pro’s horse was thankfully not his style.) He always knew what I was asking. I wasn’t going to get it unless I asked correctly. It never lasted long – a few seconds at most. But when I got it right it was like magic. Elasticity and strength like I never thought possible in a horse. This was it. This was correct dressage. I thought I’d ridden an extended trot 100s of times over the course of my riding career. The monster gait I finally got after months of practice coordinating my aids to juuuuust hit that sweetspot of correctness? It felt like it was from another planet. He was on the vertical, hind end driving him forward into the contact. ( hallelujah! The klutzy green bean human had finally figured out where to hold the contact for him to seek!) Yet, it was the lift & buoancey in his front end that I’d never, ever felt in nearly 40 years of riding. We bounced/floated/roared down the long side in like 6 strides. I’m still lucky if I can get 6 strides of that kind of ride out of a 45 minute schooling! But I now know what I’m trying for. The human trainer with a " dressage PhD" does their best to explain. The horse with a dressage PhD is the one who is going to sign off on your internship to graduate 
Anyway, I’m rambling. I agree with others. A nice horse that is functionally sound with maintenance is going to run $15k+. Be prepared to move fast. Get in there to see the horse ASAP. Have check in hand and be ready to put down a deposit contingent on vetting.
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I don’t know what your level of riding is at but I would suggest you look for something that doesn’t have such big movements that it makes it hard for you to sit them. You want a nice ride that allows you to concentrate on learning the aids. Have you taken any lessons on a school master to see what riding them is really like? I would start there and get a good idea of what you are capable of riding before buying something that is going to be a struggle.
Having owned a 4th level school master I can say it was worth it and made me a much better rider; however, in the beginning I quickly learned you must give the aids correctly or you are going to be doing things you didn’t intend, like tempi changes when you weren’t asking for them; fortunately my horse was a saint and tolerant of my mistakes.
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This exactly. I frequently compare it to trying to fly a fighter jet with no training (e.g. sitting on a Grand Prix horse with little riding experience). Surely the fighter jet “knows” how to fly but the pilot must know how to operate it with incredible precision and education.
I realized I never fully answered OP’s question. Most schoolmasters that you can find within a budget will be word of mouth. I free-lease my PSG schoolmaster and the only reason I got that opportunity was because he was first offered to my trainer to be used as a school horse by a former client and she passed down the opportunity to me. My horse’s owner has said that she would never list him for free lease or even paid lease because she knows that people would be fighting tooth and nail for him and that it’s possible he could go to a less than stellar home who was just looking for an upper level horse as a ticket to medals but not necessarily keeping the horse’s best interest in mind. He’s an older horse and he does require considerable maintenance. He is also very much a “one-person” horse so I know he wouldn’t thrive in an environment with multiple people riding him each week.
So I suppose the “trick” to gaining access to a schoolmaster on a budget would just be to communicate to your trainer and any other horse friend you know who connected to the upper level world and say what you’re looking for. They might have an opportunity pop up that they can recommend you for. It’s not as instantaneous as seeing an ad for a horse you’d like to try but it does happen. That being said, if someone did have the budget, I’ve seen plenty of high five-six figure schoolmaster-type horses listed online.
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Not trying to take anything away, because Charlotte’s rise was amazing, but she actually developed another horse to GP before Valegro. I think we also have to consider that she rode at Carl’s and had access to his schoolmasters as well. Again, she is absolutely amazing and I’m not trying to take anything away, but I’m sure she learned the feel on schoolmasters as she was developing on her own, which supports the idea of this thread.
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Yup! That’s the horse I was referring to. 
Her mother helped her buy it as a youngster at one of the breed auctions in Europe iirc.
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