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August 2007 • VOLUME 24 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
Albert Ostermaier worked with many different breeds including, of course, the Lipizzaners which his family brought over from Germany after the war. Coming to North America, he discovered the Saddlebred, a horse that he believed was extremely athletic and well suited to the rigours and demands of dressage. Albert was also a keen believer in the authority of the seat, believing that a horse should not need to be pressed up against the bridle to learn the upper levels of movement. Albert was willing to prove that he did believe in training from the seat, and that while the bridle could be used to refine the movement, it was not necessary to the movement. Willing to take the bridle off and hold it up, and without a bit, without a bridle, without a neck rope, take his horse and show him - back up, move forward and even beyond that, demonstrate passage and piaffe and the transitions in between!! He did this for fun, to show that it could be done. A lesson to all of us who believe that we cannot control, collect or work with our horses without the pressure of the bit, encouraging others to believe the words of the masters that have, through the centuries, taught that the seat is of prime importance. Imagine for a moment that you are on your horse and that your instructor walks over and rips the bridle off your horse's head and hands it to you. You sit there dumbfounded as your instructor demands that with the bridle in your hand and not on your horse's head, that you ask your horse to back up! Imagine for a moment that you try applying your legs to your horse's side. How would you stop your horse from moving forward? Then with your horse in walk, your instructor asks that you go into passage. More leg yes, but.... How are you about to explain that you want the lift and energy demanded from passage - a very advanced movement - and not race forward in extended trot instead? Even more difficult would be a demand to go from passage to piaffe! How could you possibly ask your horse to go from the moving forward from passage to not moving forward for piaffe without a bit in his mouth? Difficult. Impossible? Join us in watching a special demonstration of a rider who can reach down and pull the bridle off his horse, and while holding it up in one hand, continue the work he was doing just a moment before.
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