July 31 through August 4 Murieta Equestrian Center in Rancho Murieta California  will be the site for the 2013 “Gold N Grand Cowboy Dressage Show.”  The show sports 42 classes with competitive divisions for open, amateur and youth riders who will be riding walk/jog and walk/jog/lope and Cowboy Challenge tests. As of this writing, there were 165 rides scheduled in three days!  Such a fabulous turnout for Cowboy Dressage in Northern California.  Show official Michele Dodge will oversee 3 rings over 3 days with riders from California, Nevada and Oregon as they compete for fun, skill development, on-site spending vouchers and 3 high point awards. The excitement around this discipline is just contagious and I look forward to bringing a full report to readers next week.

Important news from USEF includes the selection of the WDAA (Western Dressage Association of America) as the official recognized USEF affiliate for Western Dressage. This marks an important milestone in the official recognition of Western Dressage as its own discipline. Reactions are mixed throughout the Western Dressage community with concern for the future of the discipline expressed especially from the dressage contingency. NAWD President Jen Johnson has responded with her typical grace and forward thinking tendency as she says:

"When the USEF announced that they accepted the WDAA as the recognized affiliate, I received numerous correspondences expressing a wide range of emotions. The boyscout motto "be prepared", applies here as well. As Michelle said in last week’s blog, "Flexibility is the name of the game and, when combined with a little graciousness, amazing things can come out of seeming disasters." I certainly don't consider this a disaster. After all, our mission doesn't even mention competition. NAWD was prepared for this. We have a plan for the future, an amazing capacity to see the silver lining, and we believe in our mission. This will change our focus away from competition but it will bring it back to where it belongs, to where it began; to the horse, to the rider that wants to learn, and to the relationship that Western Dressage can help them build. We are pretty excited about that. "

WDAA has announced the release of a new video series showing all 16 WDAA western dressage tests. The videos show live action demonstration of each test with “patterns” for the Introductory Level, Basic Level, Level 1, and Level 2 tests. Readers can view the ridden tests which are presented as the western dressage ideal at http://www.horseshow.com/videos/western-dressage. I encourage you to watch at least the first and last videos on the page. It will only take you 13 minutes and in that short period of time see what the WDAA ideal is all about. Caution: Two hands on the curb reins prevail at all four levels. You dressage riders with concerns about a ruling that allows riders to take the same horse into the arena for unlimited number of tests, don’t worry, once you watch these, it will be clear why this is possible and so incongruent with the dressage rule that limits horse/rider combinations to just three tests per day.

Despite the action taken by the USEF, it is my humble opinion that there WILL be and SHOULD continue to be 3 expressions of western dressage:  1) Cowboy Dressage, standing on its own and growing so fast we can’t keep up  2) Western Dressage WDAA/USEF style which may thrive in the breed rings where stylized western pleasure work will prevail and 3) Western Dressage as a form of horsemanship that truly adheres to the principles of dressage as they have been practiced for centuries.

USEF/USDF dressage judges, it is really up to you. You are now the final authority on how the discipline goes. Your marks and comments educate, evaluate and provide directional guidance for the entire discipline. It is up to you to give scores that reflect your dressage training. While we hope to continue to see scores in the 70’s, please uphold dressage principles even if that means World Champion Western Dressage horses earn their titles with scores in the 50’s. It is up to you to preserve the principles of dressage regardless of the type of tack you see. It is also up to you to educate yourselves about movement styles and biomechanical idiosyncrasies peculiar to “western” horses. I hope you judge them for the quality of training they have received; training that preserves relaxation, rhythm, energy, swing, connection, balance, suppleness and true collection and expression in the gaits. It is a big responsibility, but one that I believe you are charged with by dressage master’s through the ages as well as today’s riders, trainers, instructors and competitors and most importantly, by the horses. 

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].

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."