Riding By Torchlight


Are Classical Dressage Riders from Mars?



I. Am Not. From Mars.. Nor am I, though of female physiology, from Venus. I am an earthling who just happens to love real, traditional, down home dressage. AND!! Ready for this? I am not alone!

Have you ever felt like you were either the only sane person in the barn – or conversely, had to question if you were the only or perhaps, the most deluded? Have you ever wondered if your hard-bought and closely held philosophies were just flights of fancy and impossible dreams? Have you been ridiculed by others more willing to clip a heel and cut a toe? Well, I don’t know about you, but I have. A LOT! . So call me Cinderella. That still doesn’t make me a Martian.

Many of us who still believe in the core principles of dressage as a discipline with the potential to be an art form with rehabilitating values, operate mostly in a vacuum. We ride alone and we are alone in crowds of the more modern dressage persuasion. We struggle to find trainers and mentors who think like we do, and who not only have talked but walked the path and are willing to show us the way. We resort to books, DVD’s and ancient (OK, maybe not ancient, just 80’s) grainy videos and travel far and wide for a peek at a drop spilled from the chalice of the Holy Grail.

We interview trainers and get excited, thinking this one really believes as we do and holds the key to the knowledge we seek. Only to find within the first five minutes of the first lesson that talking and doing are two very different realities in this arena and perhaps we leave early, or grit our teeth and stick it out, only to apologize profusely to our horse later.

And when we do find that one horseman or woman who has not only the faith but the know-how, we will bend over backwards and bankrupt ourselves in our quest to share in their knowledge and experience.

Dressage is a discipline separate from other equestrian pursuits in that it seeks a higher degree of sustained collection than any other curriculum, not to mention varying and intimately connected expressions of that sustained collection. A jumper is collected before the jump only to explode into a soaring arc of extension, perhaps to hit the ground in a flat out run to the next fence before being collected momentarily once more, achieving a moment of supreme engagement as he bascules for the lift off. Certainly a well-trained jumper exhibits high degrees of collection and may be ridden in a balance more off his forehand than not, but he is not asked to sustain this balanced collection as a highly trained dressage horse is. A racehorse never even sniffs at collection, his whole life is a run on the forehand. A hunter lives his life in a horizontal, and if he’s lucky, level balance, and generally western horses are asked to exhibit a low head set and level frame that leaves them heavily front-end loaded if mechanically and powerfully engaged. Nowhere else is a horse developed to balance on his hindquarters without cease. To shorten and paraphrase Paul Belasik in his new book, ‘In Search of Collection’ – there’s riding, and then there’s collection.

As a dressage rider, what this focus boils down to is a pursuit that by its very nature requires a great deal of formal education to master. ‘Eyes on the ground’ are crucial to help guide a rider’s technical development and know-how. ‘Feel’ and talent are helpful, but nothing replaces a good teacher and endless practice under discerning and knowledgeable eyes to develop the skills required for this pursuit of equestrian happiness.

In other words, it’s a discipline that can be awfully intimidating and humbling if you don’t have access and opportunity to ride good schoolmasters with experienced instructors. And even then it will leave you in the dust again and again, wondering where you went wrong and if you will ever get anywhere.

With my gypsyish upbringing and roving life, that has certainly been my experience. I have been blessed with few really great instructors and more ‘project’ horses than you can shake a stick at. I could lose a few fingers and still count on one hand the well trained schoolmasters I have been privileged to ride. Now Nuno Oliveira said something like “Don’t ride easy horses, they teach you little, ride difficult horses, they will teach you what it is to ride.” and I can without pretense say that I have followed, if not exactly on purpose, that instruction to the letter and the ‘t’. But to quote Paul Belasik again, if you want to ride collection, ride a prospect, not a project. Now he tells me.

Lucky for me, now that I am finally getting smarter, I have in the last few years managed to organize some excellent and consistent formal education for myself, but there are days I can’t help wishing I had found it a lot sooner, and had a lot more of it. Because riding collection, as elusive as it is, when you accomplish even a moment of it, is such FUN. And with every such fleeting glimpse, I realize again how very simple it is, if not easy. It is we humans who complicate matters. And if you don’t have someone to hold your hand and whip your bottom, that teacher and mentor to help you sort out the mess that is you and your horse – well, it’s a loooong, lonely road. Torchlight is an excellent example. Riding him on my own for several years, he had pretty much convinced me I couldn’t ride worth a fiddle until my new mentor came along and told me I rode a very tough horse that few would have ridden even that well, if at all. Oh.

Then I returned to training for others, and riding other horses I discovered all the useful stuff Torchlight had taught me, through blood, sweat and a few tears. I also realized all the bad habits I had acquired, and how my seat had changed for the worse as I accommodated a tense and excruciatingly bouncy back whose trot I rarely was able to relax enough to try to sit. Perhaps most of all, I wide-eyed and wonderingly comprehended