The second in a series of guest blog posts from Michelle Binder

I started formal riding lessons when I was four years old.  English riding lessons.  The doctors told my mom it would be good for me.  It was 1969. The Academy where I learned is now a national historic landmark.  By the time I was 6, I was riding with double reins.  My introduction to western riding came when my parents purchased a POA stallion for me the summer of my sixth year.  That pony could buck my dad off!   ‘Nuff said.  When I was 8, they took me to see, yes, you guessed…. The Royal Lipizzan Stallion Show!  We sat in the freezing cold evening air watching the white stallions and I was transfixed.  Dressage! THAT was what I wanted to do!  Needless to say, I did NOT get a Lipizzan stallion… Still don’t have one.  But I read about them and dressage in everything I could find at our library.  For the rest of my riding career I had many horses but have always carried in my mind the ideal that was given to me when I was 8.

Last week I confessed to riding “western dressage” for twenty years.  There was no name for it really.  As a teenager, I got a book from the library called The Schooling of the Western Horse by John Richard Young.  It was published in 1945 (practically the dark ages) and outlined progressive training for western horses.  Critically important to my young mind, he included two things: 1) a picture of Podhajsky in piaffe on a Lipizzan stallion which he described as the height of collection and 2) a picture of Chief Malheur, an Appaloosa stallion in his chapter on choosing a breed for riding.  I put two and two together and determined that I COULD INDEED do dressage on my Appaloosa.  So I did.  Errrr, I tried.  Fast forward to the late 80’s (you know the song…). I saw two more things that made western dressage a reality in my mind.  The first was Lynn Palm and Rugged Lark.  The horse had a reining spin AND a canter pirouette, half passes at trot and canter, went bridleless, wore a stock saddle and had AQHA papers.  How cool was that?  The second was a bridleless dressage demonstration ride Andzrej Salacki of Poland performed before the Queen of England and which was televised on national TV.  Even more cool.  Still cool when I finally went to Poland to study dressage with him in 2010.

It does not take a genius mind to put two and two together. Many professional horsemen have been getting four for decades.  It didn’t take genius to say the two words together to describe what we do as Western Dressage trainers.  It took courage, perseverance and the ability to stand for something, to stand for something we know is right and good for horses, ALL horses.  It takes courage to ride and train the way we do and to stick to our guns when the western pleasure world takes low and slow to the death and while the dressage world takes forward to flying.  Somewhere in the middle, thanks to North American Western Dressage, the discipline will reside as a tribute to the history of good western horsemanship, to classical dressage training and exist as a reality for anyone who rides any horse in a stock saddle. NAWD is committed to progressive training with the training pyramid and progressive tests through six levels as our guide.  Because of this work, young riders will have the benefit of participating in a respected equestrian discipline.  They will start at four and they will have a map, a pathway if you will that we earlier riders didn’t have.  Look for discussion of survey results, and the rules  and tests that govern the development of Western Dressage (North American style!) in future  posts.  Over time, NAWD will standardize the discipline in a way that there is an ultimate destination toward which we move in harmony with our horses.  In our stock saddles and comfy blue jeans.