Quality Is Job One

Trainers Conference demonstration rider Sophia Schults on Samour M rides shoulder-in, the movement US national dressage young-horse coach Christine Traurig called "the mother of all good things" in dressage. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

This slogan might sound vaguely familiar to some of you. I had to Google it to identify the source: It was the Ford Motor Co.’s 1980s-era attempt to counter perceptions that its cars were, ahem, not of good quality.

That slogan percolated up from some recess of my memory as I watched US national dressage coaches Debbie McDonald, Charlotte Bredahl, Christine Traurig, and George Williams work with eight horse-and-rider combinations on the second and final day of the 2019 Adequan/USDF FEI-Level Trainers Conference. Although the four trainers have quite different teaching styles, a common theme pervaded their instruction, usually phrased as some version of “If it’s not working, get out.”

What that means is: Never sacrifice the quality of the gait in your quest to produce a movement. It’s an easy trap to fall into: Focused on riding a shoulder-in or a half-pass or a flying change, we’re concentrating so much on bend and angle and timing that we fail to notice that the tempo has slowed or that the impulsion or the straightness has been lost. Problem is, not only will a movement produced in this manner score poorly because we’ve lost the quality of the underpinnings, but the movement itself will not go well—because good execution requires those basics as prerequisites.

In the first conference session of the day, US dressage national youth coach George Williams helped junior rider Tori Belles on Romulus get acquainted with that essential building block toward collection and flying changes, the simple change. A simple change is a canter-walk-canter transition from one lead to the other with no trot steps and just a few walk steps in between. After several attempts, Romulus began to express his displeasure with the increased effort required, backing off and becoming balky during the walk segments. Williams stepped in quickly.

“We need to leave it because he’s getting frustrated,” he said of the horse. He directed Belles to ride some brisk long sides in medium canter to freshen the energy (and Romulus’s attitude) and then went into some work on flying changes. 

Too much repetition and drilling can sour a horse, Williams explained. As a trainer, sometimes you need step away from a topic that is frustrating the horse. Come back to it later in the session or perhaps on another day when the horse has relaxed in his mind and body. 

Build rock-solid basics across the board; they will serve as a dependable foundation for consistent performance, Williams advised the conference audience. “Start with a very solid foundation and consistent tests—sevens, or ‘very good.’ Then we can work on making things better,” he said, the icing on the cake being the “wow” factor that might take that 7 up to an 8 or a 9.

True suppleness—correct “softening” through the horse’s ribcage area in response to the rider’s inside bending leg, not through manipulations of the horse’s head and neck with the inside rein—offers many of the keys to the kingdom of solid basics, according to the clinicians. 

“Ribcage. Ribcage,” Traurig reminded demonstration rider Michael Bragdell. Bragdell’s mount, SenSation HW, was last year’s national US Equestrian Five-Year-Old champion—but Traurig’s keen eye noticed every moment that the gelding was not quite supple enough on the inside. 

“Gymnasticize your horse. [German Olympian and former US dressage-team coach] Klaus Balkenhol used to say, ‘Mobilize the hind leg’ all the time when I was training with him,” said Traurig. “I love that word, mobilize. By mobilizing the hind leg we can make the space between the hind legs a little narrower,” a key element in straightness and collection. And that narrowing is developed “through the mother of all good things, the shoulder-in.”

 

Ali Potasky on the five-year-old mare Irintha shows what a mobilized hind leg looks like. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

Shoulder-in, shoulder-fore—we saw these keystone gymnasticizing exercises with every horse in the conference, from the five-year-old mare Irintha, ridden by Ali Potasky, through the Grand Prix-level horses. These movements seem so simple but are frequently performed incorrectly, the clinicians said, with haunches falling to the outside, horses’ heads and necks pulled too far to the inside with an overly strong inside rein, and no bend, which renders the movement a tail-to-the-wall leg-yield instead of a shoulder-in or shoulder-fore. There also needs to be a distinction between shoulder-in, which is a “three-track” movement (the horse’s legs traveling on three distinct “tracks” or lines of travel, with the inside foreleg and the outside hind leg on the same track), and shoulder-fore, which is a two-and-a-half-track movement, Traurig explained.

 

US national dressage development coach Charlotte Bredahl helps Melissa Taylor with her canter pirouettes aboard Ansgar.  Photo by Jennifer Bryant. 

As some of us have learned the hard way, failure to follow the “quality is job one” mantra will come back to bite you somewhere down the road. One of the chief roles of a dressage trainer is to apply critical thinking in analyzing the horse’s performance: what was good, what was lacking, why it was lacking, and what exercises will address the deficiencies. This process requires attention to the smallest details.

As she worked with Potasky, Traurig noticed every time Irintha’s tempo changed during transitions. “We are working to create fluent, effortless canter-trot transitions with no loss of rhythm, maintaining the nose out with a consistent stretch to the bit,” she said. Later, schooling shoulder-in and half-pass, Traurig said: “If you lose something in the lateral work, do a circle. Don’t stay in it.”

 

US national dressage technical advisor Debbie McDonald helped demo rider Kerrigan Gluch take the Grand Prix-level Bolero CXLVII's movements, like this trot half-pass, from "very good" to "wow." (No, "wow" is not the technical score verbiage!) Photo by Jennifer Bryant. 

US national dressage development coach Charlotte Bredahl delivered a similar message to demo rider Melissa Taylor on the small-tour-level Ansgar. As Taylor practiced tempi changes (flying changes of lead in sequence), Bredahl reminded: “If the horse loses his balance, straightness, or impulsion during the tempis, don’t keep going. That’s what I call setting the horse up to fail. I like to set the horse up for success.”

Even at Grand Prix, the training is all about emphasizing quality over quantity. As demo rider Chris Hickey worked to improve the green-at-Grand-Prix Contento Sogno’s passage and piaffe, national dressage technical advisor Debbie McDonald said, “Get out, get out,” every time the gelding’s impulsion and tempo began to wane. Hickey would do something to refresh the energy—ride a few steps of medium trot, go on a curved line—and then reenter the movement. 

 

Debbie McDonald coaches Chris Hickey on Contento Sogno in piaffe, calling the gelding a horse with an exciting future. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

“Don’t get greedy,” McDonald counseled. “Be happy with just a few steps.”

Sure, the tests call for more than just a few steps. But dressage is hard work, and correct work is challenging when a horse is still developing strength and balance. So go slowly, be patient, keep your standards high, and praise your horse’s honest efforts, however small—“Pet him!” was another common conference refrain. Incremental improvements help keep horses happy and confident in their work.

“And at the end of the day, that’s what we want to see,” said McDonald: “that our horses are happy athletes.”