What drew you to Dressage?

[Louise]

Oh, it’s Friday, I’m tired and sick of working, so I though I’d as a kind of “getting to know you” question. I have a feeling that many people don’t start out in dressage, but gravitate to it from other disciplines. I was wondering if my observations were correct.

To start out, I’m an exception (I think). I didn’t start riding until I was in my mid-thirties, and was drawn to dressage immediately. Why? No great or noble reason, truth was I was fearful and liked the idea that dressage works towards making a horse more calm, supple and OBEDIENT!!! Once into the sport, however, I found that I was intrigued by the precision and the degree of concentration necessary to improve. I also liked the working relationship that you more or less have to develop with your horse, the way you can almost get into each other’s minds.

Now that my guys are retired, and I’m grounded once again, I find that the lessons that I have learned in doing dressage have carried on into the rest of my life. That, is one thing that I absolutely did not anticipate, and one of the greatest benefits I have gained from the sport.

[slc2]

i read marguerite henry’s the white stallions of vienna at ten and became a spanish riding school addict. i’m afraid i was far too young to see anything elegant, dignified or classical in it, or to be intellectually appealed to. i just loved the story of the little boy who became an apprentice and his old cart horse he taught to ‘piaffe’.

i learned all the movements and read like a fiend about dressage. i joined the lipizanner horse club where like minded little girls had karl milkolka as a special correspondent and pen pal, and we all sent in our little drawings and pictures of our ponies. i rode hunt seat at roger young’s in weekly lessons and dreamed of dressage.

then i took lessons from micky way and learned a slightly more dressage-y style called the balanced seat. after that it was college and lessons with rowe stables and a lady who claimed to have attended the spanish riding school, and then having my own horse and finding a dressage trainer when i could afford it.

so really it was never something i ever thought about, intellectualized about or philosophized about. i just liked the horses.

[hobson]

I got into dressage by happenstance. When I was a horse-crazed 11-year old, my parents thought they’d let me take lessons for the summer (HAH!). My mom asked around and got a number for a nearby farm., where one of the boarders gave lessons. It happened to be a dressage barn, not that I had any idea what it was at the time. This was when dressage was still fairly new to western PA, and everyone was riding their backyard QH’s in training level tests.

[Run_A_Muck]

Therefore I had to learn dressage and now I’m hooked.

[suzy]

The Lipizzans did it for me, too. I saw them (the REAL ones) perform in Boston when I was 9 years old, and there was no question left in my mind as to what discipline I wanted to pursue. For you Morgan aficionadoes, Parade and Broadwall Drum Major opened the performance! It was one of the most memorable days of my life.

[Nevsky]

In my last year of high school in San Francisco, my parents finally let me switch from flute lessons to riding lessons! The barn only offered “English” lessons, so I learned how to ride hunt seat. I continued with lessons on school horses and rode at several different barns as I progressed to jumping and showing over fences. When I was in optometry school at UC Berkeley, I was aggressive enough to ask the horse to take off from the distance I saw - unfortunately, always too far away. She did not have the scope to jump from there and we had several falls together in the middle of fences. That was when I found out that I have a vision problem that does not allow me to judge distance properly! After graduation and moving to the east coast, dressage became my goal. I enjoy the perfectionist aspects and the way that you can compete against yourself to progress and improve your scores.

[rescuemom]

I don’t know what drew me. Maybe it was a description of “dancing with your horse.” Maybe it was the way those horses and riders moved around the arena while I was relearning how to ride at 40. Most likely it was a combination of many small things. I learned to jump at 40 as well, and enjoyed it enough to try a show and have a goal of 4 feet, but things conspired to leave me with a choice of jumping or dressage and there was no question at all that dressage was what I wanted to focus on.

I like the detail focus, of being able to shift my body so subtly and feel my horse respond. I like the challenge of figuring out how to do that one more thing my trainer asked of me, without losing the other 7 things I’m doing at the same time. I love the sense of partnership I have with my horse. I live for the moments when one of my recalcitrant body parts finally does what it was supposed to at the same time that my horse is paying attention and for those fleeting seconds we have magic. And I love the fact that no matter what level of competence I achieve or how long I ride I will never, ever learn all there is to know about dressage.

[Velvet]

Well, after years of doing western as a child, I saw International Velvet and it converted me to wanting to do three day eventing. After years of competing in events, dressage shows and training TBs for the track, I decided I wanted to focus more on dressage and really get good at it because my favorite horse had reached his jumping limits. It converted me and I’ve never looked back.

I have spent more than half my life training/teaching/learning dressage.

[This message has been edited by Velvet (edited 12-08-2000).]

[gwynne]

The beauty of it drew me, the feeling from it keeps me.

[jl1]

I figure dressage means “I’m too old and chicken to jump!!” Seriously, I did jumpers when I was an “immortal” youth and then began riding again in my (very) late 30’s. Started out going over fences but really hated the feeling that I was out of control 1/2 the time. Decided serious flat work was in order and began investigating dressage training. Feel in love with the grace and partnership it engendered. Still find myself frustrated by the precision it requires-after all, nobody really cares how you get over a course as a jumper but there’s no way to fake a 20 m. circle. Am starting to do low jumps again and have found that all the dressage work has been of tremendous help to me and my horse.

[justme2]

Because it is so beautiful!

A lot of things influenced me. I too read Margurite Henry’s Book, and also the Disney movie, Miracle of the White Stallions. So I was hooked by all the precision and elegance. I also pony clubbed where we were introduced to dressage and eventing, and I had a teacher that believed in dressage basics for all her students. I focused on eventing because I thought the dressage wasn’t as demanding…as I didn’t have the patience then and I love to jump. Now I love the way it feels when we get something right. Also I will always be able to do dressge, may not always be able to abuse my body jumping

[Cactuskate]

My TB mare came up navicular, thus ending her hunter “career”. Also explained why she could be such a dirty stopper.

Started clinicing in Dressage w/deKunffy in Oregon. Love the discipline (being a control freak).

Plus as I age , I believe more in the true translation of the word dressage.

It means too afraid to jump.

[Janet]

and a horse.

In Pony Club, we had to do both (dressage and jumping). Our dresage instructor was Werner Platzet (Sp?) who had come from the Spanish Riding School to Sunnyfield Farm, and also taught the Pony Clubbers.

He is the one who inspired me to work on dressage. He never put any rider down, but he was also very sparing with his praise. When he said “yavolle” (sp?) it made you feel good for the rest of the day.

My horse at the time was a talented jumper. He was long backed and a bit short strided, which made his normal way of going a bit rough. Dressage was his “weak area”, though he had been well trained (also at Sunnyfield) before I got him. But when we worked on dressage and got it right his way of going completely changed, he became SOOO smooth. Even without anyone there to see (and say “yavolle”) it made me feel so good.

[BeeLu]

My trainer. I was a hunt seat maniac! Until, my trainer came along. She had evented, and now competes @ PSG and next year I1.

It was actually a night in the arena alone. I was following what my trainer had said, and suddenly my horse was correct. I loved that feeling. I had worked nearly 2 years for that feeling, and I LOVED it. I worked hard at getting it again, and again…

I was in a candy store lol.

I love the grace and style. I think (personally) horses look much better when going correctly. Dressage makes the horse to me.

[Louise]

LOL Kate and AMEN!!!

[magnum]

torn up ankle, one ripped up knee cap and 3 months of therapy – ALL from eventing. THAT is what I am doing there! Seriously, I always LOVED the peace and harmony in dressage and even years before I quit eventing, I found myself liking the jumping less and less and less and liking the dressage more and more…

Until one day, I realized I was in denial about the whole jumping thing (me and my broken neck…). Sold off everything related and haven’t looked back since. Anyone who knew me was SO SHOCKED I did it, but it was for the best. Altho there are crisp fall days when I sure do miss galloping cross country. Just not enought to do it again!

[Lynne_S]

I kinda got into it to save my bones…switched from hunt seat when we moved to Texas in '84 and there wasn’t a single “over fences” class for my Appy, who had just won his Medaillion in Green and Working Hunter by being #1 in the nation in show points that year… Couldn’t drive two states away to show him. So switched him to
“dressage” and suddenly discovered how much he, or rather WE, didn’t know. Then got addicted to the complexity of it. Plus I liked the added bonus of no longer seeing (in my mind’s eye) my crushed and broken body on the other side of the fence (I had a 4 year old at the time. I think being a Mom makes a lot of us more cautious!). Since then, it’s been a continuing journey, full of twists and turns and wrong-way up the one-way streets and U-turns… but always fascinating and I’ve always learned, even (or maybe even particularly) from my mistakes. Which, of course, I continue to make!

[marianne]

I was initially hooked with Christilot Boylen (nee Hansen) book “Canadian Entry”. Great for a young girl of 11. That was what I wanted to do. But first I learned all sorts of other horsesports-even was a rodeo queen. I started to focus on dressage because of my personality-a very detailed scientific one and more importantly lack of time in the day. I would rather focus on one area well than a bunch. But that is not to say I do not jump because I do gymnastic cavaletti.

By the way, Louise, you asked about the hunting mules. My husband wants a pair to ride into the wilderness and then should he be so lucky, pack out the 300 or so lbs of elk. It is different than hunting as in fox. The Gila wilderness is so rugged and remote that a friend’s father was killed in a plane crash there and the crash site was not found until 6-7 mos later in an inaccessible site.

[BostonBanker]

I got into dressage after years of H/J. The coach for our college equestrian team is a dressage rider. I started riding full-time with her when my old trainer left the business, but I was still convinced I was NOT going to be a dressage rider. Since I didn’t have my own horse at the time, I rotated through horses at the barn, riding whichever ones weren’t getting worked consistantly. I ended up riding one of my trainer’s Dutch mares for a few months. She is an absolutely incredibly talented horse, with quite a bit of good training on her, but was extremely hard for me to ride. Anyway, one day I was having a really good lesson on her, and got to do a little bit of trot lengthening (which, on this horse, felt HUGE). I thought, “Yup, this is very cool, and what I want to do”. And I never looked back

[system]

As a child I did the h/j route and fox hunting with Jack Trainor in Philadelphia,but the beauty of classical ballet beckoned and I stopped riding for 20 years. By then I was a broken-down dancer, but still horse-crazy. When I got a horse again, I though I would continue where I left off with the hunters. Wrong. My knees wouldn’t take those short stirrups. Then I discovered dressage. The idea of dancing with my horse was irresistable, and the discipline and technical proficiency required to do dressage appealed to the dancer in me. 20 years later I still haven’t ridden a kur in competition, but dressage is an all-consuming passion!