Thanks to everyone who took the time to send emails to USEF and for sharing your thoughts and feelings about the direction Western Dressage should take. It is so important to hear and listen to different ideas from all directions as the discipline develops. At this point all there is to do is continue to ride and train and show, and most important, to have fun with our horses. 

With another show coming up this weekend for us, I have put a lot of thought into the questions the last show brought up for me regarding riding and training our western dressage horses. There is no doubt that western horses should jog. There is no doubt that dressage horses should trot.  Ultimately, the western dressage horse should have both wonderful ground covering, relaxed, sittable jog and lope, as well as trot and canter that promise to help us develop our horses through the progression of training that leads to the upper levels of dressage. In my mind, that makes the job of the western dressage horse more difficult than either discipline alone, as both expressions of the gaits should be asked for in the upper levels of the discipline.

The trot is a two beat gait, on alternate diagonal legs, separated by a moment of suspension. The trot should be active, free and regular, and the horse should step willingly forward and smoothly into it. The quality of the trot is judged by its regularity, elasticity, freedom, swing, suppleness of the back and engagement of the hindquarters, and by the maintenance of a steady rhythm and balance before, during and after transitions. A good trot reaches freely forward with the front legs while the hind legs swing well forward under the body and the lower limb joints flex easily. This gives a moment of suspension and a feeling of lightness and airiness to the gait. When the horse is connected properly from back to front, energetically stepping through, it is smooth and easy to sit, not a jarring bouncy nightmare for both horse and rider.

In my ideal western dressage world, the jog is a soft slow trot that maintains some of the lift, spring, swing and expression of the trot but covers less ground at a slower tempo than the working trot. It should be balanced with the hind legs providing potential thrust and the front legs bending slightly at the knee while swinging softly forward. A correct jog has some spring and resembles the trot from which it is derived. A correct jog is not a diagonal walk that lacks impulsion or in which the front feet take short strides that stab or poke into the ground or in which the hind legs drag. It is all too
common now to see a jog that has no suspension at all and is so slow and mechanical the horse’s natural movement is completely destroyed. Training techniques like “hot nailing” and “beaming” do still exist, cause pain and sometimes permanent damage to the horses body and movement, and create an artificial way of going that should not be acceptable in any WD show ring.

If the western dressage horse is not asked to make the connection over the topline into the bit properly from back to front by stepping energetically forward in trot, and lifting through the withers, the upper level work ultimately achieved will lack the expression, adjustability and balance that are the hallmarks of good dressage. Why? The torso of the horse hangs in a sling of muscles between the shoulder blades and, since the horse has no collarbones and hence no bony attachment between the torso and the front limbs, the relative height of the wither is changeable and becomes the result of the training done. That training either elevates the wither up from between the shoulder blades or depresses the torso downward, effectively blocking the front end’s ability to elevate. The position of the wither relative to the haunches has a direct effect on balance and expression as well as long term soundness in both limbs and spine for all horses, not just dressage horses. Western horses CAN work like this too and in fact must!  The topline of the horse should be maintained in a convex shape from poll to tail. Pulling or jerking on the reins is counter-productive to the development of that shape, as is asking the horse to lower the head and neck in such a way that the nuchal ligament actually becomes concave, collapsing the neck from the withers forward. Even if the rider “maintains the contact with the horse stretching into the rein” but the “stretch” has depressed the wither instead of elevating it, the horse stays on the forehand, behind the leg, and if the head is brought up through use of the reins, the base of the neck stays down and connection across the topline is interrupted effectively preventing engagement of the haunches. These factors can help explain the differences between typical western work and dressage as well as the differences in ideal expression of the gaits in both disciplines.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this blog and for your interest in Western Dressage. I welcome your input regarding anything you have read in this blog, your rescue horse’s story as well as your western dressage story at [email protected].

For more information about Western Dressage, to read articles, explore the 2013 Rulebooks, see the tests, or start your memberships visit NAWD at http://www.northamericanwesterndressage.com, and join them on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/groups/NorthAmericanWesternDressage.  Find Cowboy Dressage online at www.cowboydressage.com, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/eitanbethhalachmy. Locate International Performance Horse Development Association at http://www.iphda.com/ and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/IPHDA1. Finally, WDAA’s website is http://www.westerndressageassociation.org/.

Michelle Binder-Zolezzi is the founder of the Relational Riding Academy. Relational Riding is a program that utilizes dressage as fundamental training for all horses performing in all disciplines. She has been an ARIA certified Instructor since 1989. She is currently working on her second book “Relational Riding: A Horsemanship Tutorial,” and has completed work on two professional video productions, “Any Horse, Any Rider: Relational Riding: A Universal Foundation” and "Understand Riding From the Ground Up."