The Art of Natural Dressage

Hello everyone.

I have just found this site and hope that I can learn a lot from the posts here.

I'm 28 and mostly been a happy hacker since I was a kid. I've had my horsey for about 5 years now - she's a Traditional Cob, 15 years old.

I discovered 'natural' and 'classical' horsemanship a few years ago and it has opened my eyes to what you can achieve with your horse in an empathetic, happy way. I was starting to get rather negative about riding as all I saw was 'dressage' people pulling their horse's heads in and I didn't want to ride like that (especially after having two lessons where I was made to do that - hideous!). Now that I have found what I was unknowingly looking for I am starting again from the ground up. I am re-educating myself in any way I can (my stack of books to read is huge and goes from Natural Horsemanship to Biomechanics to Equipilates), and am trying to re-start my horse so that I can enjoy as many years with her as possible.

Hazel.

Welcome to the forum Hazel!

It seems you follow a similar path as many of us here and I'm glad you want to share your journey with us. I also try to suck up as many books on the matter as I can, so I can understand that you want to put that into practise with your own horse.
I'm curious, what exactly do you want to change by re-starting your horse?

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Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Hello.

Thank you for the welcome.

When I say re-starting, I mean that I'm going back to basics with aids and my position, trying to improve my seat and how I affect my horse, at the same time as working through everything with my horse in-hand and in walk before attempting the faster paces.

We've mostly done hacking and a small amount of walk-trot dressage. I had a couple of awful lessons a few years ago where I was taught to play with the bit and 'make a mouth' with my horse. My horse showed a 'nice' shape of neck but was stressed by my contact (puffing & sweating in WALK!), wasn't using any other part of herself correctly and it was just awful. I haven't got brilliant hands and when told 'now her head's there play with the bit to keep it there' I just hated it. To add - this isn't the same instructor as my current one, far from it!

Hence my search for something 'else', that led me to Classical. My best friend is very into natural horsemanship (of all kinds - she is an open book and doesn't just subscribe to one 'type') and together we're on a journey of learning and compassion.

Sounds like a wonderful endeavour. And one I will follow with interest - after all I'm in the middle of the process of figuring out the riding aids together with my horse. So your experiences will be most interesting...

_________________
Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Yay another person in the uk !! welcome