
Dressage – war or joyfulness?
I had a Blinding Flash of the Bleeding Obvious this morning. It’s no wonder that we’re still watching dressage struggle with conflict between horse and human. It was developed for war. Can you imagine what that would have been like? Even when trained with kindness and skill, the end result was that the horse and human’s lives depended on the horse doing what they were told and doing it NOW. In those life and death moments in battle, there’d be no thought of anything else but getting the job done in a flood of adrenaline and action. The skill in that was enormous.
Dressage’s roots in war is the reason for these echoes of “getting the job done, now” at whatever cost, that’s in all the levels of dressage today – specially in world level competition and copied at every level of the sport. We’ve been watching it for years – horses so forced into the shape the rider desires, that their tongues have turned blue and bled. We’ve revered world champions who’ve rollkur’ed their horses into abject helplessness – forced their horses heads low with severe bits, while driving them from behind to work their asses off – so that their legs flick up in an extravagant action when they release the rein for the paltry few minutes of the competition.
In my first draft I wrote “WTF? Who thinks up this kind of stuff?” then I realized that in WAR, all bets are off and you get the job done in whatever way you can because life and death depends on it.
And now in more war-like behavior, we see another world champion whipping a horse repeatedly to get it to do what she wanted it to do. I’m not going to talk about that more than to say that Charlotte is a scapegoat for a system that hasn’t really come to terms with the fact that they’re no longer riding horses into battle.
So here’s the love letter part… to all those dressage lovers who dreamed of dancing with your horse – are the echoes of war going to bring you what you dream of with a horse? Is that what brought you into horses?
Or do you want that glorious feeling of a horse and rider that are flowing together in a dance of love and joyfulness that has the spark, the expressiveness of movement – the flash – that’s directly related to that joy?
The irony is, that the glorious feeling of a horse and rider flowing together in a dance of love and joyfulness is actually EASIER and FASTER to get than all these war-like training methods.
I read “every”where that you need patience to train a horse. What a load of crap. Impatience is a wonderful thing. The message of impatience is that there’s a better faster way. The problem with being STUCK in impatience with a horse, is thinking it’s the horse has to do something differently, when it’s actually up to US to create that better faster way. And we’re more likely than not, training OURselves rather than the horse.
FAST is not a dirty word. There can be joyfulness in “fast” too when it’s done horse and person together.
FAST is created in the everyday interactions with our horse – in the foundation of our relationship.
The dance of joyfulness with a horse starts with a deep connection and co-operation between horse and person – that starts the “fast”. The deep connection is something that you LIVE, not just something that you do when you’re riding – and it’s most easily learned when you apply that to EVERYthing you do with your horse in your daily routine. That’s what gets the co-operation of your horse that adds to that “fast”.
That joyfulness together also has at its foundation, a beautiful riding seat where you can EFFORTLESSLY flow with your horse’s movement pretty much no matter what’s happening. It’s kind of sucked into the saddle and magnetized to your horse’s back AND it feels good to your horse to have you there. And you don’t have to work your ass off for years to achieve that – the way we teach that here is also FAST.
The combination of the joyfulness of the relationship and beautiful riding, means that your horse WANTS you on their back, so in their enjoyment and your enjoyment things progress both fast and enjoyably.
This flip from the echoes of war to a focus on feeling good together means that dressage can be a dance of joy and love if you want it to be.
I didn’t start out to make this about Fast Track, I just had that Blinding Flash of the Bleeding Obvious about dressage being mired in echoes of its war roots. But I’m not surprised that this leads to Fast Track. There’s a lesson in Fast Track called “Heaven and Earth meeting through me in the saddle.” Everything beautiful that you want to do with horses leads you to Fast Track.
And coincidence? I think not! There’s a monumental surprise for those who pick up Fast Track this week that I wrote about in yesterday’s blog that was titled “Ride like the centaur of legends”. Click on the picture below for a “holy snapping turtles, all THAT is really possible?” look at Fast Track.
The Fast Track to Brilliant Riding
The Fast Track photo above is staff member Sandra Hagan and Tilly, taken by Jo Thieme Photography.
Today’s picture is a painting of a horse doing a capriole by Ludwig Koch. As the horse leaps into the air, he kicks his legs backwards in a movement designed to attack someone behind them. I’ve got some video somewhere of Rapunzel doing a movement similar to this in sheer joy in the paddock.

Very timely, I for one am finding it almost impossible to watch the Olympic games dressage …. where’s the unity and joy?
Maybe it should be compulsive to include a section of free riding, and allow the horses to become the teachers.
Ahhh what a pleasure to hear from you Sue from the bush! <3