PPCO Twist System

Your Professor,
the ‘Made’ Horse
How to select, care for, and learn from a dressage schoolmaster
TEACH YOUR RIDERS WELL: A four-legged professor is the best riding teacher
48 July/August 2014 • USDF ConneCtion
ILLUstRatIon BY ED tURnER/aRtBYED.com
BY Anne GRiBBonS
F
rom the frst time you sit on a horse’s back, you will
learn something from that animal. You will instinctively
learn to search for his center of gravity in order to stay
on, to connect with him by using your body and hands,
and to read his reactions to fnd a way to communicate.
if the horse is young, inexperienced, or both, chances
are that he will be as unsure and tentative as you, his novice
rider, and that scenario is not very promising. it is best if
one of you knows what you are doing!
it has been tradition in europe for hundreds of years to
teach new riders on experienced, older horses, but when i
frst arrived in the US some decades ago, this concept was
not generally accepted. Dressage and warmblood fever was
running high, but the tendency of new enthusiasts was to
acquire a lovely youngster to start and train, although they
had but a dim view of how to go about it.
Along with other dressage instructors, i vigorously
preached the virtues of the schoolmaster, but our words
sometimes fell on deaf ears. More than once, a client who
seemed completely on board with the idea of buying an older,
trained horse forgot her intentions and proudly presented me
with a two-year-old fre-breathing dragon of a colt. Te dragon, the client would explain, was a better investment because
he was young and represented the future—and besides, her
husband much preferred the Black Stallion to a sedate, “boring” animal that could do all the movements.
Such impulsive decisions frequently resulted in young,
confused horses carrying (and sometimes losing) their frustrated budding dressage riders. even with good help, the result of these green horse/green rider pairings is often disappointing. Worse, it sometimes ends with an injured rider
and a promising horse down the drain. it is very difcult to
erase incorrect information that has entered a horse’s brain.
Poor training does not delete well.
eventually the American dressage community began to
accept the idea that a well-schooled horse and his amassed
knowledge should command a decent price, and that the
investment in an education is the smarter way to go before
firting with young Adonis.
Why a Schoolmaster Is
Worth His Weight in Gold
once you have made the decision to learn from a master, you
just go out and select your new teaching tool and get on with
the ABCs of dressage, right? Whoa, not so fast! trained horses
come in many varieties, and fnding the right one for you can
be a daunting enterprise. A well-trained horse, sound enough to
compete and willing to serve as a teacher, is a rare commodity.
You will be looking for a horse suitable to your size and
conformation, properly schooled, kind enough to allow you
to make mistakes, and generous enough to repeat the lesson until you “get it” without becoming bored and cranky.
He also needs to be easy to handle on the ground, accommodating in the stable, and reasonably normal to feed,
ship, and care for. He cannot be heavy in the bridle or lazy,
which will only teach the rider to pull and kick. Preferably,
he should not be a huge mover, which is difcult to sit on,
but he needs to have three basically clean gaits. He should
be able to work on a lunge line so that the rider can learn
to sit correctly without having to worry about making the
horse perform.
Te schoolmaster ought to be several levels ahead of
his rider—not necessarily an Fei horse, just a well-trained
horse that can be of beneft to the rider. He has to be people-oriented, patient, and sound enough to be able to perform his daily work without pain or discomfort, plus possibly compete within the national legal limits of medication.
A pretty tall order, i’d say!
on a mission to acquire such a horse, you will fnd that
they do not grow on trees. And they are neither young nor
inexpensive. What you are looking for is a vehicle for your
education, and what you will pay for is in essence college
tuition for Dressage 101 upwards to a PhD in piafe. Keep
in mind that, for many years, some rider/owner has spent
oceans of time and money training and maintaining the instant professor you need, not to mention overcoming all the
hiccups a horse delivers along the way. Te time and risk
you save is, as they say, priceless.
Searching for a Schoolmaster
How do you go about fnding this dancing partner who is
going to lead you through the intricate steps of dressage?
Te easiest and safest way is to put your instructor to the
task of locating and testing the horse. After all, your human
teacher is an important part of the triangle of learning. He
or she knows how you ride and what you need, and will help
to ensure that you and the horse are a good match.
if you do not have a regular instructor, an alternative
method is to approach a reputable professional with whom
you are familiar. of course, you can also surf the internet or
reply to ads in the horse magazines, but this method will involve much more time and efort because you will have to
examine every prospect yourself. Unless you routinely buy
horses and can accurately evaluate them, this method is risky.
in any case, you will ultimately have to go and ride the horses
that interest you to assure that you are comfortable sitting on
an animal you will spend a lot of hours on. [
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July/August 2014
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Tere is no need for love at frst sight, but the horse
should have a positive attitude—no pinned ears, clapping
teeth, wringing tail, or tendency to “think backward.” He
must willingly perform the movements of the level he is
represented at, over and over again.
Stay cool and try to regard this purchase as an arranged
marriage. Real love can, and often will, develop later. Do not
get frightened of if the horse is over ffteen years of age. Te
ones who got that far and can still pass a vet check usually
keep clocking for many more years!
Prepurchase Exams
and Maintenance
When it comes to the prepurchase exam, there may be concessions to be made. You cannot expect fawless radiographs or
perfect fexion tests. Tere will be comments indicating wear
and tear, but if the horse’s history of performance is consistent
and he passes the clinical exam in good order, your risk is actually less than when buying a young horse without any history.
USDF-certifed instructor and certifcation faculty
member Vicki Hammers-o’neil, Meriden, Ct, who gave
me some valuable ideas for this article, has the following to
say about keeping your new partner in shape:
“Many schoolmasters need maintenance, usually because they are older by the time they have earned the title.
i don’t personally feel that having an older horse who needs
maintenance should make or break the situation. Keeping
a horse ‘glued together’ just to get around the arena is different from having a horse who needs specifc assistance a
couple of times per year and then is competitively sound
and happy in his work because his body does not hurt.”
Getting to Know
Your New Teacher
When you have your schoolmaster home in your barn, what
can you expect? First, anticipate lessons on the lunge line,
which will seem endless and will bore you, your horse, and
your instructor to tears and make you wish golf was your
game—that is, until the day you realize that sitting comfortably, feeling in control, and being balanced and coordinated
with your horse is a certain kind of bliss.
now you can start operating your new “tool” and gradually fnd the “buttons” that somebody else installed. over
a year or so, those buttons will become adjusted to your
specifcations, and little by little the horse becomes your
horse, reacting better to your aids than anybody else’s. Tat
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HORSE & RIDER
process normally takes about a year, with both you and your
horse needing to adjust to the new language of aids you will
develop to communicate.
in fairly short order after acquiring your professor, you
will learn to produce the movements. When the euphoria
of that experience wears of, you will be ready and better
equipped to dig into the issues of throughness, suppleness,
and “oneness” with the horse and really start to appreciate
the fner points of riding.
if you have hit the jackpot by fnding a schoolmaster that is
also competitive in the show ring, he has a whole other dimension for you to discover. Without all the young-horse nonsense
and hazards, your seasoned veteran will take you through the
tests while focusing on your aids in a businesslike manner.
However, even this type of horse is not a free ride or a guarantee of blue ribbons and high scores. Te results of your performance together still depend on how well you have adjusted
to your horse’s body language and how far you have come in
your work to tune his reactions to your station. no dressage
horse, however well trained, is completely “push button” because there are just too many variations on the theme. to gain
success in competition and perhaps even to be able to train a
horse from scratch one day, you frst have to learn to ride. And
for sure nobody can teach riding as well as a horse! s
Meet the Expert
A
nne Gribbons was
the US Equestrian
Federation’s technical advisor for dressage from
2010 to 2012. She developed
the USEF educational dressage
pipeline and guided the US
riders through the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian
Games, with Steffen Peters winning two individual
medals; the 2011 Pan American Games, in which
the US won team gold and swept all three individual
medals; and the 2012 London Olympics, where the US
fnished sixth with all three team members scoring over
70 percent for the frst time.
Gribbons has trained and shown sixteen horses
to Grand Prix, competed in ten USET championships,
and was a member of the US silver-medal-winning
team at the 1995 Pan Am Games.
An FEI 5* dressage judge, Gribbons is a former
member of the FEI Dressage Committee, and in 2013
she was inducted into the Roemer Foundation/USDF
Hall of Fame. She and her husband, David, own and
operate Knoll Dressage near Orlando, FL.
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