101 Dressage Tips : Essentials for Training and Competition

Balance, impulsion, responsiveness--these hallmarks of a well-schooled horse are the goals of dressage, a French word for training. Although a dressage education is often done with an eye toward preparing horse and rider for competition, this systematic approach also serves to improve virtually every horse, regardless of discipline or potential.

101 Dressage Tips offers suggestions for achieving this goal, together with ways to recognize and solve basic and advanced horse and rider problems encountered along the way.

For example: circles. Riding a perfect circle takes precision and practice. Measure a 20-meter circle (65.61 feet in diameter) by drawing or scratching a line in the surface of your ring. Then place a cone at each quarter mark just inside the circle. As you perform the circle--at the walk, trot, or canter--think of it as broken into four equal parts and concentrate on making each quarter the same rather than focusing on the whole circle. (Be sure to keep your inside leg at the girth as the pole around which your horse is bending, and put your outside leg slightly behind the girth to keep the haunches from drifting out.)

If this doesn't work for you, trainer Eleanor Russell suggests that you place five-gallon drums on each side of the line around the circle, about two feet apart, and ride between them. You can make a game of it by penalizing yourself a dollar for each time your horse touches a drum. When you feel good about the circle at the walk, try the trot, and then the canter. If you feel your horse is supple enough, move on to increasingly smaller circles of fifteen and ten meters.

With advice on selecting a horse, stable, and trainer, buying tack and other equipment, taking lessons and clinics, and preparing for and taking part in dressage competitions, 101 Dressage Tips provides practical and encouraging advice for riders at all levels.

Barbara Burn Dolensek, who recently retired after a distinguished career in book publishing, now devotes much of her time to dressage with her young Lusitano mare. The author of A Practical Guide to Impractical Pets, Mutt, and The Horseless Rider, and coauthor of the best-selling The Whole Horse Catalog, she lives in New York City.