What? Do you honestly think that sidereins would have made one bit of difference in this case?
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If you say so.
There are a couple of trainers in my area that use a “check rein” or bungie cord on a horse while teaching…one local puts women on the longe line for a few months and won’t let them touch the reins. So at the schooling shows they have no idea how to use their aids, timing etc.
I have taken a few of them on for lessons on my school horses. I find when they do pick up the reins they get all tight in their seat and can’t get the horse to move LOL. They don’t quite understand the whole leg to seat to hand thing.
I get the whole German thing but we are not in Germany and don’t follow the whole process or have the horses they have.
So my riders regardless of age have to learn slowly and do a lot at the walk, then the trot and learn feel and timing. I have to say they are so excited when they start to get it! I never let them bang around on the horses mouth because that’s not fair to the horse…and the two old ones I use are still in great shape and willing!
Things are getting quite expensive and most dressage barns no longer have lesson horses so who knows where this is all going.
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Oh yeah, no, no one else was in the immediate warm up area except child and fellow students. This is a small, local show that is notorious for attempting to give competitors a good experience. There was additional warm up options elsewhere so infront of the dressage arena wasn’t where most of the individuals were warming up anyway.
Another example is a bad day in a jumping round I had once and someone actually came out to lower one of the jumps just so we could successfully go over a jump before being excused. Far from the first time something like that was allowed. Trainers have been allowed to go out and assist their student who was having a bad day,e tc. So I don’t think the child got a score, but was able to complete the test.
The horse in question also wasn’t frantically going over the jump, he was just banking left, popping over the chains (if I recall correctly, yes they still use chains there) and jogging over to his friends.
You may not agree with it, but it is a very popular venue for these reasons. I will continue to support it and go to shows there because the atmospher is professional but relaxed and very competitor friendly.
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I am not sure, the example was just a point of someone doing well at home (knowing how to navigate a dressage test, as someone mentioned) and everything falling apart at a show. In part probably due to child’s show nerves and in part a horse willing to take advantage of that.
Sometimes, things fall apart at shows despite our best efforts at preparation.
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I’m sure you well know that those things happen at every level, at every (human) age.
Yes, I am…which is why I appreciate the show venue I mentioned, which is why I think statements referring to only going to a show when you/your horse are “fully prepared” are short sighted - you can be prepared as you want at home and everything can fall apart at shows.
Also, if you can only afford a schoolhorse, maybe you don’t have the most polite, willing horse in the world. Maybe your horse is a bit cheeky at shows or known to take advantage in general when they think they can but you can handle it in the lesson but maybe show nerves are going to get to you, especially if it is your first show/first season showing/hadn’t shown in years, etc.
This sounds like my ballet training. Demi, demi, plie for an hour.
It was only the one lesson, and it wasn’t really just being lead along. There was a lot of discussion to build vocabulary about feel, aides, position checks etc built in.
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There’s a huge difference between the type of schooling horse show you’re talking about (which I’ve been to) and a bigger schooling show that doesn’t do that, and the UDJC format.
I do wonder why none of the friends moved closer to the dressage ring after say, the second time this happened? So the kid could just ride in the ring and the horse would be happy that its friends were near by.
I think the type of schooling show you are describing is priceless and we certainly need those!
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Oh, they did - they were like 50ft away, outside of immediate warm up, then since no one was in that warm up, they moved closer and eventually, after talking to the judge, the horses (about 5 of them) moved to take up position AROUND the dressage arena and that’s when the horse finally stopped leaving.
I had a brief conversation with the trainer and I forget the exact reason but it wasn’t necessarily a surprise - like this horse could be good or good be cheeky like this and he chose to take advantage of his diminutive rider. The trainer was glad her student was given an opportunity try to work through it, even if it meant no ribbon that day and while likely no score, she did at least get comments from the judge so she could work on the dressage part of learning to ride as well as getting better at controlling her mount.
Like I said, there are some types of schooling shows where this might be appropriate. But others try to run as close to recognized as possible to give people the chance to practice the experience without the cost.
I have to question why a trainer would have a diminutive child riding a cheeky draft lesson horse.
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I do not know this horse, this barn, or even this show.
It sounds like this lesson horse’s cheeky side is not necessarily dangerous (because horses are always dangerous but this behavior is not upping that) when it is cheeky and likely 98% of the time this horse is just what this rider needs.
Not all amazing lesson horses can be perfect 100% of the time.
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I don’t get the impression that UDJC is looking to “prep” competitors for any national or international competition but to offer a different avenue for those uninterested/unwilling/unable to show at the recognized events. I could be wrong.
These read like someone who’s watched dressage shows but never ridden the tests or trained to understand what and why the test flows like it does. And does not actually ride dressage but what they think it is. Not to offend hunters and jumpers but it reads very much like what I see a lot of them describe as their understanding of dressage which typically isn’t accurate especially of the higher levels
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I finally clicked on the UDJC website and it’s very much concerned with children, especially beginner children. That’s fine, and I am not in a position to evaluate whether there’s a need for another tier of unrated show for beginner children. It might be popular and lucrative, or fade out. It does seem to me that the children’s coaches probably need to buy into the progression and levels and things like side reins. Or else by combining dressage and “jumping for style,” they hope to attract beginner hunter jumper programs.
I hesitate to call a beginner child riding a pattern on a school horse in side reins “dressage” in any meaningful way. But it might all be just fine for a children’s program.
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The big focus on a welcoming environment to young riders seems ill thought out in light of what other posters mentioned above, with SafeSport suspensions being ignored.
One of my concerns, which I don’t think has been discussed in the thread yet, is the governance/feedback process for UDJC and its rules. It seems like the pet project of a person (or people) who are not very receptive to feedback, given their responses in the thread. I understand that governance and updating rules are not very fun or appealing to a lot of people, but they are also critical to avoiding the pitfalls of USEF/USDF (much of the critique of them - including the cost - boil down to catering to a small clique of wealthy members, while ignoring the needs of adult amateurs or smaller professionals with less stratospheric budgets).
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In case anyone was interested, this group has put out videos explaining their classes. You can find them on their FB page.
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I’m mostly ok with the dumbing down. The world has changed so much. Few riders get the same opportunities now as we did as kids. To be alone – horse & rider – without structure & trainers hollering instructions. To just noodle around & let the horse whoop your a$$ if you were being a punk.
The late, great Judy Richter’s book was one of my most treasured posessions as a teen. Yet, as I’ve pointed out to my own teenager, the halcyon days she described were already long gone when I was a 17yo in the early 1990s. Land prices were astronomical, for sure. The only people I knew rich enough to keep their.horses at home did so on 2.5 acres. No. It was the freedom from liability that bowled me over. Judy described hacking with a friend over to the USEF training farm every afternoon. There, the two of them would pop their ponies over the fences left out in the cross county field. And the USEF team members gave free lessons every Sunday to any & all kids who showed up.
Can you imagine anything remotely similar happening now?? I sure can’t. It would be: “Stop over-jumping that pony! You’re ruining it!” And “my insurance doesn’t allow anyone under 21 to jump not in a lesson!” Even in my childhood as a young Gen Xer we did have some privacy to ask for stupid things & let our horses hammer home just how dumb we were.
Not anymore. Few people in the US grow up with horses in their backyards anymore. Plantiff’s rights attorneys & liability insurance are a big thing now. Ever checked the comments on an IG video of an Irish 7yo jumping their 13hh pony around the .75m?
It is for this reason I don’t begrudge the puddle jumpers or the W/T dressage tests. Everyone has to start somewhere. And for most US-based riders, the pathways to the 1.0m as the baby classes disappeared 50 years ago.
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