(“The inside leg and the outside rein are the only aids we’re allowed to use.”)

As the story goes, a woman of limited experience recently acquired a schoolmaster—a 14 year old Andalusian stallion trained to I-1. Simultaneously she acquired an instructor to work with them. The trainer is not a woman I know, but visibility is no measure of competence, so we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt—so far. Now comes the problem, but we don’t know whether it is instructor-generated, a weird Internet-spawned misconception, or just plain literalist craziness.

The Andalusian novice lady told my novice lady that she wasn’t able to make a 20 meter circle on her schoolmaster. She knew she was only allowed to ride him from her inside leg to her outside rein in dressage and she wasn’t allowed to do anything with the inside rein exceptt keep it very soft and passively light. And she couldn’t make a circle happen.

When my novice lady asked if she was sure that’s what the instructor had meant, the Andalusian lady’s friend chimed in, “Absolutely! The inside leg and the outside rein are the only aids we’re allowed to use.”

My novice lady was tactful enough neither to argue or to giggle, “Too bad about those circles, huh?” But she came back to me to double check that the inside rein is allowed to be in play at times in proper dressage and was quite relieved to be reassured that it is.

Long live Reductio ad absurdum!