Stuff I Discovered Climbing the Beanstalk
DRESSAGE Unscrambled (although it did not yet have a name) began in my head over fifteen years ago. Not unike the brooms in Fantasia, once started, it was impossible to stop. So added to the original manuscript, here are nearly 500 blog entries to cover a few things that I missed.
As before, the tales which follow are not arranged chronologically but in studied disorder. Some are meant to illuminate. Others to distract. Some just can’t stand to hide in the dark any longer. Light and Truth R Us.
A reprise of an earlier post from 2011
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,
Break it!
I was riding a student’s horse in her lesson one day, a horse that when he was imported, had been advertised as “Fourth Level.” Such a designation means different things to different people. To some it means he can make flying changes and a semblance of pirouettes, to others that once in a schooling show he muddled through Test One with a 52%, and to still others that he feels like what Fourth Level is supposed to be.
On this occasion, his owner’s miniature donkey managed to escape from his stall and began causing all sorts of mayhem in the driveway. “I’ll go get him,” I volunteered with unwarranted optimism. I cantered out of the arena and located myself in the laneway between Charger and the front gate so as to herd him back to the barn. My horse showed no fear—that much was good! He also showed insufficient maneuverability to stay in front of that little creature to head him in the right direction. The donkey wasn’t especially agile or light on his feet, but even so, Mr. Fourth Level couldn’t keep up with his half-hearted dodges and feints.
Here was a horse who could truck his way through fancy dressage movements but who really was immune to moving his center of mass around in response to my weight aids. You’ve heard of the Quick and the Dead? He was among the latter. Another way to look upon his condition was to realize he was “trained” but not “broke.”
It’s very popular in some circles to claim that dressage is the foundation for all other disciplines. That’s true if you remember that the basic behavioral skills every horse should learn are within the scope of that definition. If you jump ahead to endless, ponderous (yet rhythmical, cadenced, and balanced) 20-meter circles and your horse can’t herd a damn donkey, you just may be missing the point.
I’ve sometimes said to riders that their horse must be at least as maneuverable as a large home appliance. Even if it’s only so they can dust behind him once in a while.
Being able to make a quick, prompt, argument-free reversal or displacement or a “canter right over there, stop, and stand” is as much a requirement of real dressage as the stuff that’s written in the Directives and the Purpose on the test sheets.
Taiwan On!
In a recent blogpost I wrote about using reprises or pre-established patterns as you school your horse. It unclutters your mind from trying to think “what should I do next,” and you can repeat the same pattern until you squeeze all the good out of the exercise before moving on to a related one. I mentioned there are dozens upon dozens of possible reprises to use, but let me call your attention to a basic one in case you haven’t encountered it before.
Here’s a riddle: what do all these celebrities have in common?
Cary Grant
Fred Astaire
James Bond
Winston Churchill
Irving R. Levine
Archibald Cox
Bill Nye
Gene Shalit
Orville Redenbacher
Pee-wee Herman
Buckaroo Banzai
Krusty the Clown
If you haven’t figured it out, here’s the Mother
of All Hints:
That’s right. Bow ties! And below is an arena diagram
showing the bow tie pattern. The black lobe towards M and
the blue lobe towards F are the “bows.” The red circle at B is
the “knot.
Before getting fancy, be sure you can do the foundation pattern in walk and in trot: Ride B to M along the track. At M, ride a 10 meter half circle to the center line at G and from there a straight line back to B–a teardrop or ice cream cone shape. Then at B, a 10 meter circle to the right followed by a straight line from B to F. At F, 10 meter half circle to D, a straight line back to B, a left 10 meter circle at B, and then the entire pattern can be repeated.
Now some variations:
1. Start with the 10 meter circle to the left in the walk. Coming to the track, ride from B to M in leg yielding nose to the wall (yielding from the right leg at an angle of 30-40 degrees to the track). Ride the half circle at M and back to B. After a left 10 meter circle at the “knot,” proceed from B to F in nose to the wall leg yielding (away from the left leg). Finish with the half circle to D and ride straight back to B.
2. Repeat Exercise 1 but now in the trot.
3. Ride straight from B to M. After the half circle, reposition your horse to the right and follow the line from G to B, keeping him parallel to the track as you leg yield from the right leg. After riding the “knot” at B, do the mirror image of the exercise, riding B to F
and leg yielding from the left leg from D to B.
4. It’s usually a bit more difficult to ride the B-M and B-F arms in leg yielding tail to the wall, but it’s a good preparation for the shoulder-in which is ridden in a similar way but retaining the bend from the B circle as you yield down the track.
5. Bunches of additional possibilities: mix and match! One yielding up the track, a different one from the center line back to B. Or do the pattern in reverse: yield parallel to the center line from B in to G, half circle right to M and then follow the track back to B in the lateral movement of your choosing.
6. If your horse is further along, shoulder-in, travers, or half pass can replace the leg yielding.
7. To build energy into the system and to test your horse’s suppleness and obedience, before proceeding to the second lobe, canter a 15 meter circle at the knot, transition back to trot as you finish the circle and continue on. (A Training Level horse can make a larger “knot circle.” An upper level horse can make a volte.)
8. As appropriate to the horse’s experience, much of the Bow Tie patterns lend themselves to canter. Return to the track from the first loop and trot at B for the circle, then take up the new lead for the loop at the F end of the ring. Or at B, make a change of lead through the trot. Later a simple change. Later a flying change.
Or after returning to the track from G to B, leave out “knot” and continue B-F in counter canter. Transition to trot at F or ride a change of lead as fits your horse’s state of training.
There are many, many alternatives to the exercises described above. This is just a starting point, and you can use your creativity from here. Remember, if an exercise isn’t working, go back and simplify it. None of them will do your horse any good if he’s over faced and made tense. Do the exercises correctly and they will train your horse.
And now there are thirteen!
Fundamentalism and Art
A guest blog by my New Mexico friend and crazed long distance runner, Katrin Silva
“The artist . . . believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world. The fundamentalist entertains no such notion. In his view, humanity has fallen from a higher state. The truth is not out there, awaiting revelation. It has already been revealed.
Fundamentalism and art are mutually exclusive. There is no such thing as fundamentalist art. The fundamentalist reserves his greatest creativity for the fashioning of Satan, the image of his foe, in opposition to which he defines and gives meaning to his own life.” (Steven Pressfield, The War of Art)
Steven Pressfield wrote these lines for artists – painters, poets, musicians. But his observation applies to horsemanship just as much. I’ve met plenty of fundamentalists. They are easy to recognize. They worship the great masters of centuries past, or their chosen guru of today’s clinic scene, unconditionally. Horsemanship has, according to them, fallen from a higher state of perfection, practiced in a mythical past, for example in European riding schools or by California vaqueros. Fundamentalists condemn most modern practices as non-classical, or downright abusive. They also spend a disproportionate amount of time criticizing and vilifying competitive riders, recreational riders, or any student of a tradition of horsemanship that’s not their own.
I’ve also met a few artists in the horse world. Like fundamentalists, they are dedicated to the pursuit of horsemanship, devoted even. But they rarely condemn and criticize. Instead, they show up and work with their horses, every day. They take lessons from teachers they respect, but they don’t worship their teachers. They read books and watch videos, but they know the information they find there is not gospel truth.
They know they, ultimately, will carve their own path to good horsemanship. They know horsemanship will always resist dogma – because horses are individuals, because riders are individuals, because the act of communication that takes place between them is a living, evolving, adaptable, ever-changing thing, not a commandment carved in stone, not a mathematical formula. The truth of good horsemanship is not a fading picture of perfection from days past, to be imitated as best we can. It’s a multi-faceted truth, both the same since the days of Xenophon and ever-changing, from horse to horse, from rider to rider, from ride to ride. It reveals itself, one glimpse at a time, if we’re patient enough, if we hone our craft enough, if we listen well enough to our horses, if we keep showing up at the barn every day, undeterred by how slow our progress is.
Artist-horsemen don’t feel threatened by riders from other traditions, or with other approaches to training. They may disagree, but they also feel curious. They look for common ground. They are slow to criticize mistakes in others because they know they make lots of mistakes themselves. And they can laugh about those mistakes.
Fundamentalists are, of course, made, not born. Fundamentalism grows well in hierarchical environments. Condemnation, shaming, harsh judgment, and various degrees of ostracism are potent fertilizers. What would happen if we stopped using that fertilizer? What would happen if we looked at horsemanship as a creative pursuit, a building of communication and partnership over time, with room for a range of artistic expressions, not a quest for perfection? I hazard a guess: the horses would be happier.
Katrin Silva
The texts of past blogs which used to appear here have their own page. Access them with a simple click below