My wife gave me permission to cheat on her during the holidays.
In fact, she facilitated it.
You see, before Ashley became my wife on July 23, 2020, she was my trainer for learning to ride horses. I took my first lesson with Ashley on May 30, 2015, and immediately fell in love with eventing on OTTBs. A few years later, I fell in love with her.
Ashley has remained my trainer, and, in some ways, the trainer-student relationship can be trickier than husband-wife. For Christmas and Hanukkah, Ashley arranged for me to take dressage lessons with other trainers.
As I've started to move up the eventing levels, my Achilles' heel has been dressage. That's the first discipline in eventing based on the movement and rhythm of the horse on the flat that sets a rider's initial score. After dressage, penalties can be accumulated for jumping or time faults in the cross country and stadium jumping phases.
I've placed in the ribbons in three of my last four events, even while moving up from the Beginner Novice level where the jumps are at a maximum height of 2-feet-7 to the Novice level of 2-feet-11. I've always been at or near the bottom of the standings after dressage. 11th of 16, 11th of 18, and 10th of 11. However, after clean jumping rounds in cross country and stadium jumping, I've improved those placings to 7th of 16, 6th of 18, and 5th of 11.
“His jumping has progressed so much, and dressage is what's keeping him out of the top placings,” Ashley wrote when she reached out to four different trainers in the area. “He is finishing on his dressage score; it's just a bad dressage score.”
“Dressage is the ultimate expression of horse training and elegance,” the FEI, the international governing body for equestrian sports, describes on its website. “Often compared to ballet, the intense connection between both human and equine athletes is a thing of beauty to behold.”
How is this achieved?
What your riders are trying to remember as they enter the dressage court to compete? Is there anything you would add?
Posted by Dressage Instructors Network on Saturday, January 9, 2021
That's 23 things! And we haven't even gotten to the actual movements in a dressage test, like a 20-meter trot circle, a free walk across the diagonal, or a serpentine. How am I supposed to “just relax”?! Not cool, Dressage Instructors Network.
Dressage serves as a foundation for proper riding that can apply to any equestrian sport. Putting in the hard work to establish a foundation will pay dividends in the long run for building a relationship, whether it's with horses…or humans.
Simone Windeler, The Elegant Rider
My first dressage lesson in this experiment Ashley arranged with other trainers was with Simone Windeler on Dec. 27. Simone arrived at our farm promptly for our 2:15 p.m. lesson, walked into our arena as I was finishing warming up my chestnut OTTB mare Sorority Girl (Jockey Club name: Grand Moony), and zipped up her blue “The Elegant Rider” puffy jacket with the same confidence that Superman would have used to put on his blue suit, ready to save the world — or in this case, me.
The author with Simone Windeler
Windeler's credentials also happen to match the aura she exudes as a dressage superhero. Classical German training. Graduate studies at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. Board member for the Rocky Mountain Dressage Society. Well-respected judge for dressage and western dressage. Windeler judged dressage tests of mine at the Mariah Farms schooling show series that represented my very first horse shows in 2016.
Windeler began our lesson by asking me to ride around the arena at the walk, trot, and canter to assess. After about five minutes of just observing, she called us into the middle of the arena. Her diagnosis: I ride with tension that inhibits my ability to communicate effective signals and cues for what I would like my horse to do. The tension affects my mare's ability to develop a proper frame and rhythm, and that ultimately will limit our ability to reach our full potential together.
Although Windeler was focusing on my dressage, her diagnosis applies my life in general.
So, Windeler went to work on me. We focused on breathing exercises and balance exercises. My hour lesson was ridden almost exclusively at the walk, with a few minutes of trot at the end. Nothing fancy, but instead focusing on how a solid foundation helps build a strong house and not a house of cards.
Windeler walked either next to or right behind Sorority Girl and me for most of our lesson. She helped me become less tense by having me follow a breathing technique of taking in multiple breaths through the nose and letting out that number of breaths plus one additional one through the mouth. She helped me become more balanced by having me imagine that the sensation of my two seat bones touching the saddle was like squeezing two pieces of whatever fruit I imagined. Then, based on my assessment of where those two pieces of fruit were positioned in relation to my body and the saddle, we adjusted my position.
It was all subtle, but so is riding a chestnut OTTB mare, where one slight shift in weight can make a big difference for the horse.
“You think you're leaning forward, but you're really just straight,” Windeler said during one of our better trot circles toward the end of the lesson.
Windeler helped build me up to a position that, while feeling different for me, was actually better for the partnership with my horse. My mare showed her appreciation for my ability to be a better partner.
Sara Storch, SS Equestrian
“That's a great wife; I wish my husband took dressage lessons,” Sara Storch said as our lesson on Jan. 12 at 2:30 p.m. began.
Now, I'm definitely a believer that these dressage lessons have more to them than just dressage.
Storch is a high-level dressage rider, recognized by her earning United States Dressage Federation bronze and silver medals. She trains at Happenstance Barn in Parker, Colo., and the four-mile drive there from our farm represented the first time I've ever driven Ashley's truck and trailer. Now that's some serious trust by my wife.
The lesson with Storch was about building a toolbox and pulling out certain tools to address situations that come up during our riding. What was educational and encouraging for me is that none of these tools force a result. Rather, they are actions that guide the horse toward the desired outcome.
Sorority Girl looks slightly skeptical of Horowitz's lesson from Sara Storch
For example, one was giving my reins, which encourages the horse to seek contact and round into a proper frame. I had been trying to force the contact and frame by pulling on the reins. Another was using the inside leg during a transition to guide the horse's body to steady contact on the outside rein.
My mare, whose name of Sorority Girl accurately represents her approach to being told what to do, responded positively to the signals I was giving. You can't actually force a 1,000-pound animal to do something they don't want to, such as when one of my favorite horses, the legendary Australian sprinter Chautauqua (hyperlink: ), ultimately refused to leave the starting gate in the final race of his career. So, what's more effective is figuring out how to build a relationship and take action together as a team.
Kim Wendel, Kim Wendel Eventing
Up until this point in my dressage lesson medley, my two lessons had been with dressage-specific trainers, meaning that their equine focus is dressage. However, dressage is just one piece of the eventing puzzle, and sometimes it's an overlooked one.
“When I was riding in the lower levels, I felt like [dressage] was something we had to do before we jumped, and it was a little bit of a burden,” Kim Wendel, my next trainer, said. “As time has gone on and I'm able to do some of the more interesting or technical moves, then I feel like I really start to enjoy dressage as its own discipline.”
Wendel has risen up the eventing ranks with her 2011 grey Thoroughbred gelding, Happily Twisted, whom I announced in his lone racing victory on Aug. 2, 2014, at Arapahoe Park in Colorado. Although she has more than three decades of riding experience, Wendel only began eventing in 2010. After buying Happily Twisted off the track in 2016, the pair has risen as high as the CCCI 3* level with goals of higher in 2021.
“For better or worse, he's my creation and I'm his,” Wendel said about how her relationship with “Happy” is more like family growing up together.
When Wendel came to our farm on the morning of Jan. 13, we spent about 10 minutes before our lesson engaged in a quasi “Dressage Anonymous” meeting where we shared about how we've come to appreciate dressage more through our struggles with it. On the other hand, non-horse people have an easier time appreciating what happens when a horse soars over a 3-foot jump than lengthens their stride at the trot, although the latter can actually be more difficult to achieve.
A lesson with Kim Wendel
“Dressage is kind of like the part everybody fast forwards when watching the [Kentucky Three-Day Event],” Wendel said. “When you splash through the water, wow, everyone likes the photo on Facebook, but then you put up a picture of you doing a nice half-pass, you get half the likes because it's not as dramatic.”
It's similar to how it's easier to define a couple's relationship by how they are at parties or on vacations around the world than how they are cleaning the house, or, in the case of Ashley and me, feeding horses and mucking stalls.
Wendel's lessons focus heavily on foundation.
“The beauty in it is knowing the details, but that's a hard sell,” she said. “For me, the biggest thing is we all want to be better riders. In order to be better riders, we have to affect our horses positively. In dressage, in learning how my riding affects the horse's balance is a really big one.”
During our lesson, Wendel's focus for me was on how I could impact my horse's balance — from front to back, back to front, side to side, going to the left, and going to the right. She showed me how subtle movements — like opening my hand to the inside, giving the inside rein, and more — can make a big difference.
“She's super because as soon as you pushed your hands forward, she relaxed,” Wendel said during one part of the lesson.
Ryleigh Leavitt, RTL Eventing
With my final lesson in this series of four with Ryleigh Leavitt on Jan. 22, I realized that all of the trainers were giving me similar advice but saying it in different ways.
“As a guy, I'm glad I'm hearing the same thing several different ways because now it will sink in about how important it is,” I joked, getting a laugh out of Leavitt, as well as my amused wife, who has appreciated the effect these lessons are having on me.
Leavitt is a native Coloradan now competing at the highest national eventing level, Advanced, aboard her 2007 bay Dutch Warmblood gelding MoonLight Crush.
“You want to look like you're sitting there looking pretty and making the horse do everything because that's the goal of dressage to show off the training,” Leavitt said. “You're doing a lot, but you're not showing it.”
Relationships with horses—and humans—are hard to build. When Ashley and I were married, our officiant joked, “You may now salute your bride,” and with that, I entered the dressage arena of marriage.
The post Thoroughbred Makeover Diaries Presented By Excel Equine: Dressage As Relationship Counseling For An OTTB And Her Human appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
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