who rides dressage

[Oblio13]

As a former three-phase eventer and current foxhunter, I view dressage as a necessary evil. I can't say I enjoy it, but flatwork is what makes you a rider. For that matter, jumping is really just "dressage over fences".

 

[fancyfowl4ever]

Since I was 7 I rode dressage, I love it. But that was back in Germany, stuff like western is soooooo hard to find there. I rode Dressage and later also rode spanish dressage(I cannot remember what its called........) since the gelding we bought turned out to have been so severely miss treated when it came to any english discipline, he would kick you if you walk up to him with an english saddle. Western saddles were fine, for spanish dressage you use western or australian stock saddles so I switched over to that for a while. I couldn't ride my gelding with a bit either since he would go lame within a day if we did since he would get so tense that he would shift his back vertabrea.(his mind switched to "painful" when you give him the bit because the previous owner did not fix a broken tooth and hurt him badly with the bit for about 3 yrs...). Took us 3-4 yrs to let me ride him with english saddle, never got him used to a bit but he worked up to L level dressage(3 level?) with a Hackemore. Could never attend a show with a hackemore tho.

I think it also depends on the horse if you like dressage or not, my gelding loved dressage and over all was easy to get moving and you could get him to hold his head etc properly with your little finger. Not like some warmbloods where you need sharp spurs and a whip in each hand to get them to even take one step and you have to remind them at every step that they need to keep up the speed..... or you need arms like arnold schwarzenegger to keep them together and in the proper form.

When we moved to Canada that was pretty much the end of my dressage riding, when we finally found a coach that acctually knows what she was doing we couldn't really afford it. Then my new mare went lame and I was supposed to ride the coaches gelding. Ug, after 20 min on that horse your face is bloodshot and your arms felt like spagetti, not what I imagen under dressage. So now I sit on the horse twice a year, maybe go riding in the woods but thats it.....

As to guys riding dressage, back at our stable in germany 50% of riders were male, all but 1 of our dressage coaches were male, and I can remember pretty much all of them had either girlfriends or were married.

So I am not quite sure where the gay part comes from, but then again thinking about it now, here I only see girls ride english, when it comes to western events in my area we only have the one gymkhana at the end of each month and all riders are female except for those over like 40.

 

[HorseFeathers]

I'd love to ride dressage, but require my own horse to be happy... I am a girl though.