- Jul 26, 2010
- 2,969
- 3
- 171
Yeah, dressage people get a bad rap, but you ought to remember, as my dad used to say:
"It all depends on whose ox is getting gored"
I've seen Western riders insist that THEY are the only ones that know a single thing about horses, too, and I've seen Saddleseat people do it, and Arabian horse people do it, and every one else do it. If you stopped and listened to them for a bit and put yourself in someone else's shoes for a moment, you'd see that virtually no one group in the horse world has a real monopoly on being stuck up.
They're all stuck up - at least there are enough highly vocal, 'I'm better, my horse is better, my breed is better, I am braver, more skilled, blah blah blah' people to make a gathering of horse people, a very, very memorable occasion...and not in a good way.
I almost got mugged and beat up by a bunch of Western/Parelli devotees in a restaurant in Columbus Ohio, and no, actually, despite what you may think, I didn't even open my mouth - OR write something and show it to them!!!! LOL.
I had a 2" embroidered horse doing an extended trot on my purse within view, and I had, while I was trying to snort my spaghetti down as quickly as possible and get the heck out of there, a whole bunch of obnoxious, satin-jacket clothed women screaming at me 'Warmbloods are so<expletive deleted> stupid and dull! You can't ride outside of your own wittle sand box!'
So if you think dressage people have a monopoly on acting high and mighty, you just ain't never been around - and you haven't been listening to how it sounds to the OTHER GUY, on the receiving end.
I've never seen a dressage person act like they were the only one who knew anything about horses.
In fact, the legitimate dressage people that I know, are absolutely fascinated with how non dressage people train horses, and most of them know a great deal about it too, because they usually came from other types of riding, but also because they're fascinated by how horses learn...
AND because eventers, hunters, western riders, come to them - not to do dressage, but to get their horses easier to ride and more broke. And it takes a person who is intrigued with other riding styles, and understands them, to help out that person.
There's a reason that I'm fascinated iwth other training methods yet I've done dressage exclusively since I was young - well - it started that, I broke my knee, and it never healed properly, so I couldn't ride in two point as much as hunters and eventing require. It ended up, though, that while I chose to spend my time doing dressage, I was still intrigued by what other riders do.
There's also a reason that I'm fascinated how other styles train, and am always delighted to get up on a saddle seat horse, a reiner, or an Icelandic.
The reason is that every half way decent dressage person I ever met, was fascinated, and they taught me to be too, not so much by what the person was teaching, as, how the horse learned.
In Europe, the knowledge of other riding styles is a given, because young people are pushed rather hard, to try and NOT just go directly into dressage.
They are pushed very hard, to get involved in showjumping, eventing, or anything else, not dressage, NOT FIRST. They don't have Western (til recently), they don't have saddle seat, they have very little show hunters, there. Even when they eventually do, they'll do it differently than Americans, I'd wager, more like eventing-dressage-showjumping.
We have to recognize that the American 'seats' are really a uniquely American creation, almost do not exist anywhere else, and have gone into their own style and developed separately for a long, long time, along their own path, with their own goals - but if you think about how they first developed, and their original purpose, what they're going for makes sense.
The words these days, may sound the same(keep in mind that's only happened rather recently), but the way they are achieved and the final picture - very, very different. Our American styles shows are - they are just different. They have developed on their own.
We really have two very different currents of riding in the US: show hunters, Western and Saddleseat, and Eventing-Dressage-Show Jumping, the last 3 are more similar to each other than the American styles are to them.
However, in Europe, there's a lot more similarity between how all of them train, because they're mostly show jumping-dressage-eventing over there. And there is an immense amount of cross over between those sports. Too, dressage and jumper shows are often held at the same place and time, and eventers gotta do dressage, so there is a lot of rubbing shoulders.
What I HAVE seen, though, is that when people try to tell dressage people what dressage is, or that it's just like their kind of riding, or their own methods will work in dressage, that the dressage people say, it's not really like that, and people get REAL MAD.
(runs and hides)
In America, we have a unique problem, because as dressage gets more popular here, instructors without any background, experience or training (or very little) in dressage, want to teach it and gather some of those dollars. As a result, there is a very, very strong drive here, to 'homogenize' dressage and try to make it more like our Western, Show Hunter ad Saddle seat...and a lot of flaming ire if someone doesn't go along with this homogenization.
"It all depends on whose ox is getting gored"
I've seen Western riders insist that THEY are the only ones that know a single thing about horses, too, and I've seen Saddleseat people do it, and Arabian horse people do it, and every one else do it. If you stopped and listened to them for a bit and put yourself in someone else's shoes for a moment, you'd see that virtually no one group in the horse world has a real monopoly on being stuck up.
They're all stuck up - at least there are enough highly vocal, 'I'm better, my horse is better, my breed is better, I am braver, more skilled, blah blah blah' people to make a gathering of horse people, a very, very memorable occasion...and not in a good way.
I almost got mugged and beat up by a bunch of Western/Parelli devotees in a restaurant in Columbus Ohio, and no, actually, despite what you may think, I didn't even open my mouth - OR write something and show it to them!!!! LOL.
I had a 2" embroidered horse doing an extended trot on my purse within view, and I had, while I was trying to snort my spaghetti down as quickly as possible and get the heck out of there, a whole bunch of obnoxious, satin-jacket clothed women screaming at me 'Warmbloods are so<expletive deleted> stupid and dull! You can't ride outside of your own wittle sand box!'
So if you think dressage people have a monopoly on acting high and mighty, you just ain't never been around - and you haven't been listening to how it sounds to the OTHER GUY, on the receiving end.
I've never seen a dressage person act like they were the only one who knew anything about horses.
In fact, the legitimate dressage people that I know, are absolutely fascinated with how non dressage people train horses, and most of them know a great deal about it too, because they usually came from other types of riding, but also because they're fascinated by how horses learn...
AND because eventers, hunters, western riders, come to them - not to do dressage, but to get their horses easier to ride and more broke. And it takes a person who is intrigued with other riding styles, and understands them, to help out that person.
There's a reason that I'm fascinated iwth other training methods yet I've done dressage exclusively since I was young - well - it started that, I broke my knee, and it never healed properly, so I couldn't ride in two point as much as hunters and eventing require. It ended up, though, that while I chose to spend my time doing dressage, I was still intrigued by what other riders do.
There's also a reason that I'm fascinated how other styles train, and am always delighted to get up on a saddle seat horse, a reiner, or an Icelandic.
The reason is that every half way decent dressage person I ever met, was fascinated, and they taught me to be too, not so much by what the person was teaching, as, how the horse learned.
In Europe, the knowledge of other riding styles is a given, because young people are pushed rather hard, to try and NOT just go directly into dressage.
They are pushed very hard, to get involved in showjumping, eventing, or anything else, not dressage, NOT FIRST. They don't have Western (til recently), they don't have saddle seat, they have very little show hunters, there. Even when they eventually do, they'll do it differently than Americans, I'd wager, more like eventing-dressage-showjumping.
We have to recognize that the American 'seats' are really a uniquely American creation, almost do not exist anywhere else, and have gone into their own style and developed separately for a long, long time, along their own path, with their own goals - but if you think about how they first developed, and their original purpose, what they're going for makes sense.
The words these days, may sound the same(keep in mind that's only happened rather recently), but the way they are achieved and the final picture - very, very different. Our American styles shows are - they are just different. They have developed on their own.
We really have two very different currents of riding in the US: show hunters, Western and Saddleseat, and Eventing-Dressage-Show Jumping, the last 3 are more similar to each other than the American styles are to them.
However, in Europe, there's a lot more similarity between how all of them train, because they're mostly show jumping-dressage-eventing over there. And there is an immense amount of cross over between those sports. Too, dressage and jumper shows are often held at the same place and time, and eventers gotta do dressage, so there is a lot of rubbing shoulders.
What I HAVE seen, though, is that when people try to tell dressage people what dressage is, or that it's just like their kind of riding, or their own methods will work in dressage, that the dressage people say, it's not really like that, and people get REAL MAD.
(runs and hides)
In America, we have a unique problem, because as dressage gets more popular here, instructors without any background, experience or training (or very little) in dressage, want to teach it and gather some of those dollars. As a result, there is a very, very strong drive here, to 'homogenize' dressage and try to make it more like our Western, Show Hunter ad Saddle seat...and a lot of flaming ire if someone doesn't go along with this homogenization.
Last edited:
