Dressage

Dressage: a French term, most commonly translated to mean 'training'; an equestrian sport in which the horse and rider perform a specific test of movements; often referred to as 'equine ballet'.

Image courtesy of Game Ready Equine

I'm not a dressage person. Even though it's the first test of a three-day event, even though its principles are used in every riding discipline, even though it's beautiful and exciting at the highest levels of the sport, I am not a dressage person. To be honest, I've always found it kind of dull. Cantering in circles, lengthening the trot- where's the fun in that?? 

In the right horse and right instructor, that's where. Yesterday I had a genuine dressage lesson on Gina with one of the program's volunteers, Anne. Anne is a dressage person- she competed on fairly advanced levels aboard her horse Sophie (who died several years ago) and studied with some of the country's best trainers. She offered to come out and give her opinion on Gina's dressage abilities, as well as offer any tips for improvement that she could think of. I was more than happy to have her out, as my experience in the discipline is limited to short stints of flat work in between schooling jumps. Anne ended up working Gina and me for an hour, putting both of us through our (pretty basic) paces. It was an amazing lesson! Gina is much more advanced in her training than I had originally thought and it's my opinion that she will be a phenomenal event horse once she's back in shape. Anne was so happy to have a protégé and to feel like she was helping. She offered to give me lessons on Saturdays, and I couldn't be more excited. I don't know if I'm a dressage person yet- the heart-pounding excitement of cross-country jumping is hard to resist- but I'm definitely more excited about it than I used to be!