(“Don’t be a slave to didacticism.”)

Okay, sit still. Stabilize your core. Don’t move your hands. And, dammit, don’t let that poll get lower than your own eyeballs!
That’s pretty good advice for Pony Club “C”s, but I think it applies less across the board to real riders in real life. There, I said it! Have I now turned up my nose at all that is Good and Pure and Right? Are the barbarians truly at the gate? If it’s all about the journey, if only the means legitimize the ends, then where must we draw the lines of dressage “morality?” I put that in quotes because it raises the question “On what grounds do we decide what is Classical. Or Moral? Or Normal? Or Appropriate?

I will cast my vote with the welfare of the horse. With his health, both physical and mental. With his welfare. With his longevity. However, I am not an Originalist or a Strict Constructionist. I wonder if the spin doctors who represent the “Classical” viewpoint over-emphasize their antecedents’ total adherence to their written words.

I want to ride as discreetly and as correctly as I can. But I don’t want to be enslaved to any method that isn’t working on a particular horse. There is a small number of Masters (many who are females) and Magicians in the dressage world. And a whole mess of people who are trying to find their way. Not many of us get to feel the results those Masters create. We do encounter many, many from the hands of the latter.

I meet horses which are trained but not broke. There are times when you simply need to go outside the same old box and do what you need to teach those horses to listen and believe. That can include overbending them. It can include briefly (and kindly) putting their chins on their chests. Why not counter flex the horse any time it helps, even in a half pass or a counter canter. Why not be able to alter the speed of the movements if it makes the horse more thoughtful in his relationship to the aids. No, you don’t go spinning your horse around all over the place, but he should at least be “spinable.” You should equally (when it helps) be able to do things extra slowly. You won’t be successful at that without the horse’s mental involvement and his being thoughtful to the leg—otherwise they’ll just stop.

Just be sure that whatever you do, you can undo. Create options; don’t limit them. Don’t be a slave to didacticism. As long as you don’t physically harm your horse and you don’t get yourself stuck in a cul de sac, have at it!

One related thought which spawned all of the above: How many horses when I touch their mouths through the reins (whether while astride or from the ground) lack pliability! Or the ability to hold their head up with a relaxed underneck! Or what (as I recounted in DRESSAGE Unscrambled) a confused legal secretary misheard Reiner Klimke call Swoo-ness! That’s why you have to DO SOMETHING!