Sure it is…collection is that feeling you get when the horse has gathered itself with contained energy when it is ready to spook…it allows the horse to move in any direction in an instant.
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Good luck finding more than a handful of dressage-focused riding schools in North America wth well trained dressage school horses, let alone one aimed at kids.
Here the standard teaching process is almost exclusively focused on walk-trot-canter-jump, with kids learning hunt seat equitation basics and the assumption they will move on to h/j.
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That’s why BLM mustangs make such good dressage horses, obviously. Ah someone beat me to this comment!
Collection is very useful to survival and indeed a good mustang or good working stock horse collects easily and well. Not quite up there with an Andalusian but way cattier than most warmbloods.
Flashy gaits are unfortunately not great for survival. They use up too much energy. They also reduce top speed. That’s why both race horses and endurance horses do best with flatter gaits. Also wild horses do not tend to be tall unless there is a fairly recent mixture of draft blood into the herd.
IME mustangs tend to breed down to 14 hand, agile, little things. Some of the populations that are said to have old Spanish blood have some float to the gait. But basically feral horses tend to breed down in size and do not select for things that make elegant riding horses.
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Warmbloods were bred for a purpose, and surviving in the wild isn’t one of it.
Ahahaha! Just thinking about a wild herd of Hanoverians prancing around makes me laugh!
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I also think of the time we left a very nice Oldenburg out on pasture until October. He almost died. Even the ottb make it through the winter ok. I don’t think anyone in his direct lineage had been on pasture that late for at least 300 years. And boy could he move.
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I lived in Germany for a few years as an expat. The certifications make it easy to access quality instruction at all levels, for sure. What the article leaves out (though some other posters mention) is that everything related to riding is easier and cheaper to access than in the US. (That is, if you’re interested in sport horses; I suppose if you wanted to learn saddle seat, things would be different.)
But seriously, everything.
The most brilliant thing is that there is a culture of partial leasing. Owners, generally speaking, want their horses exercised nearly every day by competent people, so if you already know how to ride decently (1st+ level, I guess?), you have access to a lot of lease options. At one point I had partial leases on 3 different horses at 3 different barns, all of which were accessible either by public transportation or by bike. Two of those three leases were free. One was on a retired M-level jumper, another was on an older Andy stallion, and the third was on a warmblood mare who was schooling L level dressage and jumping. (The third, obviously was the non-free one, but if the owner weren’t in college and wanting help with board, it may have also been free.) After those three, I free leased a greenish 6 year old for about a year and was able to take weekly (group) jumping lessons for 15 euros each. Dressage lessons from the owner’s coach were 25 euros/hour, but mostly I opted instead to take a train ride once a month (approximately) to a riding school and take lessons on their UL school horses at 60 euros/hour. These were not fancy horses, and they each were challenging in their own way. But honestly, applying what I learned at the school to the greenie taught me more in the last 6 months I had him than practically everything I’d learned in my life to that point. I also did two multi-day clinics with S-level jumpers and eventers for 35-45 euros/day.
You could spend your whole life “hobby riding” in Germany affordably and without owning your own horse, and still be a better rider faster and cheaper than here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a “stuck” rider, and will be for a while due to “real life” limitations, but I’ve got enough experience to know that I made changes to my foundations in Germany that at least open the door for some forward motion in my training (if I can ever afford the time and $$) that 20+ years of riding and training pre-Germany did not.
Beyond all of that, there are two other important differences I observed that I think contribute to German dominance in sport:
- The average quality of horse and rider that you see around you every day is better there (due to warmbloods being plentiful and the trainers and instructors going through uniform rigorous certification processes), so your eye is tuned to a high standard right away.
- There’s a different bar for “hard”. I think a lot of us in the US get started in places where everyone around us is stuck at training/1st for their whole lives and so we think 2nd+ is impossible, but we probably wouldn’t feel that way if we could see other riders and horses around us making regular progress through the levels.
In order to avoid the impression that I’m seeing everything through rose-colored glasses, I’ll give you a few stories about not-great experiences I had too. A mare I leased after the greenie sold had some problems from being pushed to hard too young. She was still a good 1 m jumper, albeit a little complicated at times, but was extremely tight in her body and probably could not show successfully in dressage at even the lowest levels, despite being put together nicely. The other mare I mentioned tended to be nervous and tight in her loin, maybe from her owner’s riding (which was generally speaking very good! There was just one obvious flaw that seemed consistent with the tight loin). I also had a few jumping lessons at a place that was more like a beginner/up-down facility and their school horses were as sore and sour as the ponies I grew up riding. So anyway, it’s not perfect, but nowhere is. It’s just easier there for more good people and horses to rise through the ranks more efficiently across the board.
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Sorry I don’t agree with you at all… Horses are able to adapt to different situations. A lot of Warmbloods (also Hannoverians) grow up in the Marsch in Northern Germany close to the Baltic sea… They do not see much or many people for 3 years. Especially the Holsteiner are kind of famous that they are pretty feral when they are ready to be started with around 3. And about the Mustangs… Not sure, but somehow I learned that they originated from the Spanish horses which were brought over to the US. I am sure those horses were not used to live in the Wilderness… They were horses bred for riding. But still they survived and adapted to their new life. Horses are more versatile then you think…
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The Spanish horses were brought over in the 1500s and 1600s. Before the Andalusian breed was even formally recognized. And they presumably chose for sturdiness. I think all horses were probably tougher in 1600 plus the mustangs represent centuries of survival of the fittest.
When I say they mostly don’t have elegant conformation i am just speaking the bald truth as obvious in most BLM photos. I had one as a kid. She was wonderful in her way. She was not a dressage horse despite learning 3 tempes.
When I say small i refer you to any isolated population especially island populations. They seem to all breed down to big head, short neck, economical gaits, and a ewe neck is no barrier to survival. Basically breeding back down to look like the original native ponies in the uk or Mongolian horses or even prezwolskis 
that is the conformation that appears to give survival when wild.
Thank goodness for sensible breeding programs is all I can say.
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I’d hazard a guess that loose ranch stock and intentional infusions of non-Iberian genetics have influenced the conformation of most U.S. feral horse populations at least as much as a couple hundred years of evolution has. But your point holds that no known feral horse population exemplifies dressage conformation or movement, and that there’s no evidence that nature selects for free shoulders, uphill balance, stunning extended gaits, etc. If we are trying to rationalize specialty horse breeding as somehow representative of a natural tendency to flee from predators, flat-running TBs should be more deserving of veneration than German warmbloods. I’ve yet to see a Secretariat or a Donnerhall come through the BLM pens, in any case.
Island populations are a curious and interesting case, given the phenomena of insular dwarfism and gigantism – it’s long been observed that when isolated on islands, populations of small organisms tend to evolve a large body size and large organisms tend to develop small body size (see, e.g., huge birds like moa and tiny quadrupeds like pygmy mammoths). It relates to the balance of resources, predation, etc. So it’s perhaps more telling that feral populations in the interior tend to comprised of smallish (14-15hh) individuals and that Przewalski’s horse tends to be 12-13hh than that Assateague horses are technically ponies. In any case, big horses with big movement do well in dressage but apparently not so much in the wild.
I doubt that a herd of Hanoverians left to its own devices for a few hundred years would retain many of its dressage-selected characteristics. Whether they can survive a couple years in the Marsch is orthogonal to the issue of breeding selection and whether the specific subset of dressage characteristics German horses are known for are relevant to long-term survival pressures.
I find it interesting to hear more about riding education in Germany, though. Especially from riders like @strangewings who can describe what that equestrian world looks like from the perspective of an American amateur.
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I had a post typed from my perspective (from Germany) but it was rather incoherent so I’m going to wait until I’m off of a mobile. :winkgrin:
I actually wish that there were more public resources going into riding in North America. There are so many subsidized activities a kid can do, that riding can start to look pricey for parents. Imagine if in Canada we put the resources into developing riders that we do into developing hockey players!
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Methinks Manni01 initiated this thread in order to facilitate her personal back patting.
Chauvinism thrives.
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The great thing about a lack of a “system” is you can take bits and pieces from everyone and use what works for you and your horse…CA’s “method” doesn’t work for everyone either…
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ok, fine, never mind Manni, never mind…
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It is absolutely moot to discuss the human-guided selective breeding of performance horses in terms of their likelihood of survival in the wild. Either way, a colt being turned out to live in a big herd of colts until his 3rd year all the while still under human control in a fenced area void of predators is not “surviving in the wild”. Further, it’s a bit laughable to say that anything a horse does is not helpful to him in “the wild” - indeed, horses have been evolving for millions of years, and evolution doesn’t waste time with things that don’t benefit a species long-term when it comes to survival.
Every horse has an inherent ability to collect and extend, period. It is in their genes, so to speak, and the ability to extend and collect is about as natural to every living horse on this planet and all those who came before them as anything. To what degree is another story, and another story altogether as to whether any given horse can do either of these things in ways we humans have decided is required in competition. This is why we have selectively bred for certain characteristics in performance horses.
But count me as another who isn’t sure what the point of this thread is - the Germans wrote the book on modern competitive dressage, so to speak. If you wrote the rules, makes sense you’d dominate the competition upon which those rules are built. It isn’t rocket surgery. I was raised with the German training scale and moved away from it in college because I found it to be too rigid and rather upside down - there are many ways to teach a horse, and the Germans certainly haven’t got the market cornered.
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[h=2]Definition of self-aggrandizing[/h] : acting or intended to enhance one’s power, wealth, position, or reputation
- … staggeringly self-aggrandizing greed and theft …
- —William J. Astore
- … a self-aggrandizing cad bent on gathering for himself whatever spoils he can amass from the public coffers.
- —Paul Beckett
- self-aggrandizing remarks
- … the skill of talking about yourself in a natural way without coming off as aself-aggrandizing braggart.
- —Jim Murray
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The lawn care spammer ascribes German dressage success to their rider education only, and not German influence on the development of the sport. Manni must be right if the spammers are so convinced that they’re voicing their agreement in the place where they usually insert a bunch of nonsense text…
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Jesus H. Christ, you and the other 19 pischers who never miss an opportunity to take Manni down for posting anything with a whiff of praise for German riding.
Look, there are things they do better that we do in the US and producing reliable, educated, regulated horse training and breeding is one of those. How can you deny that? Don’t shoot the messenger. It doesn’t change the truth and it makes you look small.
Also, Germany produced a model of university education that was intended to turn out good citizens (as opposed to more clergy). I think that was successful, too.
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No one is arguing that fact, or disagreeing in ANY way with the German success and why they are successful.
We already know about german riding, most of us have probably been doing it longer than Manni.
It’s the tone and confusion of the posts. Not content.
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:lol::lol::lol::lol:
Thanks for making my day with that observation I had missed because I don’t usually read who is posting something.
As noted, the Germans have the history and opportunities for young riders to learn dressage. In a way, it’s more like “what’s wrong with you?” when one can’t ride dressage well. The basics of correct use of core and enhancing/improving the gaits of your horses are just THERE from growing up in the system.
Many of the American disciplines - the rodeo, saddle seat and hunter disciplines pop to mind - have large numbers of people with the same instinctive ability to ride per their disciplines and large numbers of opportunities at lower dollar costs.
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