(Today Monsieur Crabby asks: “Le Dressage, qu’est que c’est?”)
So what is dressage anyway? You’ll get a heck of a lot of different answers depending on the mindset (or the agenda) of who’s doing the talking.
As dressage came of age in this country—let’s spotlight the 1970s when local and regional dressage clubs were proliferating and the USDF was founded—life was relatively simple. Even our Olympic level efforts weren’t yet Big Business, and in the local realm, either everyone was on approximately the same Podhajsky/Müseler/ Wätjen page or at least too naïve to know if they weren’t. Yes, there were a few arguments [In DRESSAGE Unscrambled I recounted the controversial judges’ forum where FEI Dressage Committee chairman Colonel Gustav Nybleaus introduced leg yielding to a skeptical American audience.] but in the absence of the internet or social media, it was pretty hard to get a tempest brewing if no one even knew about it.
As you may have noticed, times have changed. Once there were three TV networks. Now there are 3000. There are just as many independent pockets of fervent dressage interest—as xenophobic as a bunch of Balkan crazies—each hard-headedly claiming exclusive access to Truth and Right while denigrating every other possibility. You’ve got your assorted Strict Constructionists and Original Framers who fight over what year to dial the Wayback Machine in to. Add in the “A horse can feel a flea on his shoulder so no aid should ever be larger than the weight of a flea.” (You think I’m kidding?) There’s the “Don’t trample on your horse’s self esteem by demanding submission” crowd. There are Rollkurs, antiRollkurs, Call It Anything Else While You Keep Doing Rollkurs, as well as the factions supporting any of the alphabet soup of permutations of places your horse’s neck should or shouldn’t go.
Can a sport exist both with common sense and without the need for moral indignation when someone thinks differently from you? Must anything which does not approach the hypothetical “10” automatically be described by its critics as “deplorable?” Apparently not.
Here’s a choice: Dressage can be a “big tent” sport and include all varieties of horsemanship and agree to accept the modified goals that come with them. Or it can be exclusive as in “You folks can do anything you like as long as you do it out in the hall and stay out of our ballroom.”
An elitist at heart, my compromise comes down a little nearer to the latter choice. The Dressage I subscribe to makes the most of your horse’s potential. Yes, he may be a magnificent creature in nature, but the way you meld with him makes him something greater. The cutesy little training pyramid seems trite, but when I go back and think of the meaning of dressage, the pyramid’s categories keep jumping out at me in bold relief. Impure gaits? FAIL. Their size may vary, but if your training program mars the clarity of their rhythms, you’ve got basically squat. An unsupple horse? FAIL. You’re just doing tricks. No impulsion? FAIL again. If you’re trying to bore me, just read the phone book out loud. Don’t make me watch your horse trit-trotting around. And don’t start telling me that everything begins with the rider’s hands, that you shouldn’t use your legs, that your horse is already perfect and should be allowed to be what he wants to be. I don’t mind if you say that—I just mind if you somehow think you’re doing “my” dressage. Same thing with bitless bridles. If you can ride with just a string or nothing at all, great. But don’t expect to do it at the show and be judged head to head against conventional riding. Maybe you can already guess what I think about curb bits in the lower levels of western “dressage.”
Use my tools. Improve your mind. Improve your horse. But my dressage is a little sacred to me so please don’t make up something else and pretend it’s what I do. You’ll only embarrass yourself, and you’ll certainly annoy me!