(“. . . a dressage version of the Hippocratic Oath.”)

“Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.” . . . . Makes a pretty good song, but one student told me she thought Dressage was guilty of doing the very same thing. “I read all of these books,” she complained, “and every single one of them for page after page says I should never use my hands, and my aids should be light all the time. They aren’t telling the truth, aren’t they?”

Unfortunately, for several reasons, that’s an accurate observation. Another student recently returned from a USDF Adult Amateur Symposium conducted by Hilda Gurney. Many of the horses which took part were displayed in high frames with short necks, and one of Hilda’s dominant themes was to teach the horses to reach to the hand over the top line and work down into the contact. My student’s horse is a long, strong half-bred mare which she has trouble getting together. During a break she asked Hilda if she should work her own horse the way the seminar riders were be being encouraged to do. Hilda’s response: “This may not be politically correct, but with horses of a certain conformation and history, you just have to cram them together.”

Now THAT was no lie! If you have read enough of these blog posts or my book, you know I think much the same way. This is not an “end justifies the means” cop out. It just speaks to certain realities where the “rules” have some flexibility built into them in order to remain credible.

“Cramming your horse” can’t be the theoretical model on which your riding is based, although we can all think of people who seem to have adopted that approach. In this case what Hilda was suggesting is a short term deviation from principle in order to level the playing field and make the horse more susceptible to the aids we want to use.

So why do so few authors (experts) admit to this in print? With the advent of E publishing and the Internet, this situation is changing, but in the old days, generally you didn’t get to have your book published until you were pretty old and famous. By then, I think, many rider/writers have graduated from the kind of disasters they used to have to try to train in their youth. It’s a lot nicer to describe the mysteries they’ve solved and the nuanced equine relationships they’ve experienced as they matured than to revisit those less inspiring times.

The second reason is that all instructors know from experience that anything they tell a student to do– particularly with their hands – is apt to be misunderstood and exaggerated to the detriment of the poor horse. So-called “politically correct dressage” is really just conservative advice handed out when the author doesn’t quite know how someone will interpret and apply it–a dressage version of the Hippocratic Oath.

By the way, one of the things I like best about Kyra Kyrklund’s book and videos is that they do tell it more “like it is” and, without losing sight of correct goals, give the reader credit for being able to make some judgments in the way various techniques are applied in real life. At last someone who says, “Son, you CAN handle the truth!”