(“It’s nigh onto impossible to legislate against stupidity.”)

By this time is there a single dressage soul who doesn’t know about the rollkur controversy? About last year’s gone-viral video of the blue-tongued horse being ridden in hyper-flexion? Or about the outcry from tens of thousands of concerned horse lovers?

Recently, I was contacted by an investigative journalist seeking either to follow up on that story or to re-fan the flames of disgust. “Where and why had things gone wrong,” she wanted to know. “How could the judges reward this kind of schooling? Why was Article 401 being ignored?”

The part of the FEI rules to which she was referring is what we know as “The Object and General Principles” which outlines in a few paragraphs what we’re all supposed to be striving for in our riding and training:

1. The object of Dressage is the development of the Horse into a happy Athlete through harmonious education. As a result, it makes the Horse calm, supple, loose and flexible, but also confident, attentive and keen, thus achieving perfect understanding with the Athlete. These qualities are demonstrated by: – The freedom and regularity of the paces. – The harmony, lightness and ease of the movements. – The lightness of the forehand and the engagements of the hindquarters, originating from a lively impulsion. – The acceptance of the bit, with submissiveness/throughness (Durchlässigkeit) without any tension or resistance.

2. The Horse thus gives the impression of doing, of its own accord, what is required. Confident and attentive, submitting generously to the control of the Athlete, remaining absolutely straight in any movement on a straight line and bending accordingly when moving on curved lines.

3. The walk is regular, free and unconstrained. The trot is free, supple, regular and active. The canter is united, light and balanced. The hindquarters are never inactive or sluggish. The horse responds to the slightest indication of the Athlete and thereby gives life and spirit to all the rest of its body.

4. By virtue of a lively impulsion and the suppleness of the joints, free from the paralyzing effect of resistance, the Horse obeys willingly and without hesitation and responds to the various aids calmly and with precision, displaying a natural and harmonious balance both physically and mentally.

5. In all the work, even at the halt, the Horse must be “on the bit”. A Horse is said to be “on the bit” when the neck is more or less raised and arched according to the stage of training and the extension or collection of the pace, accepting the bridle with a light and consistent soft submissive contact. The head should remain in a steady position, as a rule slightly in the front of the vertical, with a supple poll as the highest point of the neck, and no resistance should be offered to the Athlete.

6. Cadence is shown in trot and canter and is the result of the proper harmony that a Horse shows when it moves with well-marked regularity, impulsion and balance. Cadence must be maintained in all the different trot or canter exercises and in all the variations of these paces.

7. The regularity of the paces is fundamental to Dressage.

* FEI Rules for Dressage events, 24th edition, effective 1st January 2011.

Even before her phone call, I’d been giving this question a lot of thought, particularly on the heels of the Classical versus Modern blog entry and how elements of the two approaches should intersect and merge.

So, in order, let me take up a few of the items she raised:

Yes, some of what we see internationally in the Grand Prix looks different than the way it used to. If you go back to the ‘50s and early ‘60s, you can see that the quality and athleticism of the horses has made a marked improvement since then. In the ‘80s when Overflexed Deep and Round hit the big time, first with Rembrandt and then with Gigolo, those horses won because they were better than the alternatives. Regardless of whatever they were asked to do in the warm up, once they got into the show ring, they were up in the poll and generally seemed to go about their work in a cheerful way. And the judges’ job has always been to evaluate what they see in the test—not what happens in the schooling ring, for that matter not even what the horses do going around the boards before they enter at A.

Say what you will about Rembrandt, remember Ahlerich had retired. Marzog, who won the World Championships in ’86, was wonderful in his way but more workman-like than spectacular. Most of the other contenders made mistakes. Here came two horses that could knock off precisely 15 steps of piaffe with absolutely clear transitions from and back into the passage—not chopped liver by any measure! But then several things happened to top level dressage, and some—but not all—of the blame can be laid on the judges.

Unsurprisingly, the story starts with Money and the campaign to make dressage more than a niche sport. Once the snowball started rolling, even if you look only at results and not methods, you see some of the same trends that are lamented among breeders of German Shepherds or Morgans. Flash. Pizz zazz. Form over Substance. Crowd grabbing über movement in the horses. The holy grail of TV coverage. Freestyle! Freestyle that isn’t really free but is choreographed and evaluated with such precision that the music has to be constructed around the performance, almost as an afterthought. Add in the pressure to score higher “because how can viewers be impressed with the so-called best in the world if they can’t even achieve 75 percent of perfection. Gymnasts and skaters can get almost 100! ” Oh, did I mention the skyrocketing price of top horses? No longer a million, but many millions of dollars for a Medal horse.

Think how other sports work. An NFL team wins the Super Bowl with defense, and every other team goes overboard in that direction. Then somebody wins with a spread formation and throwing the ball 50 times a game, and everybody copies that.

And that’s how the rollkur bandwagon gained momentum, culminating in Totilas—all that plus the fact that when a one-in-a-million super horse comes along, despite some flaws, it’s pretty hard not to be overwhelmed by the really good parts.

I told the writer that I think the pendulum will be swinging back the other way. In an Emperor’s New Clothes moment, people noticed (and shuddered) at Anky’s horse a few years ago being rewarded even though it didn’t seem to be able to make an honest halt or stand quietly.

The writer said she thought support was waning for the defense of the horses’ interests, citing how few people had signed on to the recent petition demanding a re-write of the FEI rules.

I disagreed, saying that it was far easier to collect thousands of signatures decrying the blatantly ugly image of a blue tongue than it is to rally them around a re-jiggering of technical language in a book that most of them don’t read.

The petition demanded wording, among other things, making the poll “as highest point” mandatory at all times in both warm up and in competition and promising draconian consequences should it not be. “Something has to be done before the Olympics!” she moaned. Oh, the humanity!

Another petition went farther, proposing to eliminate the term “on the bit” from the rules altogether:

In all the work, even at the halt, the horse must be “in the hand”. A horse is said to be “in the hand” when the neck is more or less raised and arched according to the stage of training with the lowest point of the underside of the jaw to be in front of a vertical line downward from the poll at ‘all’ times and with the poll being supple and the highest point at ‘all’ times as the head is held in a steady position, accepting the bridle with a light and consistent soft contact. The rider shall not compress the head and neck of the horse into any other position through excessive rein contact. At all times, the use of the snaffle bit as the primary bit is to be enforced, while excessive use of the curb shall call for deduction of points for failure to meet the description of ‘in the hand’.

Not to be callous or nonchalant, but I wanted to say, “Oh, the equin-amity! Don’t go off the deep end! Do you really think the rule that says a horse should be ‘on the bit’ is the problem?

You can talk, talk, talk all you wanta, but it’s different than it was (no it ain’t) but you gotta know the territory!”

And as I said to her, the territory goes like this: The FEI is a bureaucracy. Yes, it is nominally responsive to public opinion, but it is composed of many factions, each of which strenuously defends its constituents’ interests. There will be push-back from some Germans and the Dutch, as well as some breeders. Expecting everything to change in the next three months sounds highly unlikely to me, and frankly, so what if it doesn’t? It’s just another competition, and things will change by and by. The lightness, the harmony, the de-mechanizing of the impression which the horses give—these concepts are already coming back to the fore.

As has been said at other times in other places, you can legislate against overt cruelty but it’s nigh onto impossible to legislate against stupidity. And stupidity will always exist in human endeavor whether it includes horses or not. “Shunning” is an option we can employ in reaction to legal but extremely vulgar methods. Beyond that, the rising tide of awareness of all that I’ve mentioned above will lead trainers, riders, and judges back to a middle ground that’s kinder to the horses and aesthetically more satisfying than what we’ve seen in the recent past.