Blog
October 2006
Per Request: Books on Dressage
Riderone’s request for information about books on dressage comes at a good time, because I’ve been thinking about this topic lately. I actually don’t own any instructional horse books. I don’t know why I don’t, and lately I’ve been pondering the same question: what books to buy first?
Funny but true: the only instructional horse book I’ve ever owned was called Judging Hunt Seat Equitation or something like that, and it was given to me for Christmas when I was a teen. I promptly “lost” the book, because I was certain my mother and my trainer were plotting some devious scheme to make me actually judge a local schooling show (one the older teens put on every year for the young kids). It never occured to me that my trainer might have recommended the book simply because it was a good overview of what judges look for in equitation. Boy, talk about distrustful teens!
Anyway. Dressage books.
Fortunately, I have a solution for us both. I lurk (and sometimes post) on the Chronicle of the Horse bulletin board. In the dressage forum, someone else recently started a post called “If you could recommend ONE dressage book…“. The votes for books (and some of the comments as to why) are:
- Dressage in Harmony (Zettl)—5 votes
- Podhajsky --; 5 votes (not everyone gave a book title, but his name comes up several times)
- The Principles of Riding (Handbook from the German National Equestrian Federation)—3 votes
- Dressage with Kyra (or similar title, by Kyra Kirkland)—2 votes
- The Dressage Manual (by Benjt Ljundquist)—2 votes ("understandable")
- Riding Logic (Museler)—2 votes (and one poster who thinks some of the examples are wrong)
- Horsemanship (Suenig)—2 votes (and another poster who likes the book but wouldn’t recommend it to a beginner)
- Basic Training of the Young Horse (Klimke)—1 vote
- Dressage: A study of the finer points of riding (Henry Wynmalen)—1 vote
- The USDF Book of Dressage—1 vote
- Dressage in Lightness (Sylvia Loch)—1 vote ("some very good descriptions of how a horse interprets the aids")
- Common Sense Dressage (Sally O’Connor)—1 vote (recc’d for the exercises)
- Dressage Forumla (Erik Heberman)—1 vote ("great concepts to take down the road")
- Real Life Dressage (Carl Hester) --1 vote
- Riding and Jumping
Personally, I lean towards Podhajsky and Zettle, as these are the names I see most frequently in “recommended reading” discussions (in addition to this thread).
(And if I somehow got the vote count wrong, forgive me. I’ve been known to count my fingers and get eleven, sometimes.)
Is dressage fun? And other questions
Occassionaly I check my site statistics to see what search terms people are actually using to find my site. For the paranoid among us: don’t worry. My stats are aggregate and I don’t know who typed in which term.
Lately, I’ve been getting some interesting search terms, including a few questions, so I thought I’d help clear up confusion.
Search Term: halt near x
Dear People Trying to Find this Site’s Credentials:
It doesn’t have any.
Love, the pseudo-anonymous Halt Near x
Search Term: gold buttons coat fashionable
Dear Fashion Conscious:
I am so sorry you found this site in a fashion-related search. For what it’s worth, I think gold anything is a bit tacky. Give me silver or platinum any day. I’m also partial to bronze.
But keep in mind that what I know about fashion would take an entire season of “What Not To Wear” to fix, and at the end of the season the hosts would have to be locked in a dark, padded room for six months to recover. I doubt even the Fab Five could help me.
Love, “What is this ‘fashion’ thing of which you speak?” Halt Near X
Search Term: Is dressage boring compared to jumping?
Dear Jumper Fan,
You have, like, eight to twelve jumps in the arena, right? What do you think you’re doing in the space between all those jumps?
Ok, think of it like this:
The whole time you’re jumping, you have to think about your line, your impulsion, rating the horse, lead changes, getting to the right spot, bending through the turns, etc etc etc. Right? The actual jumps are sort of incidental. Fun–but incidental. Most of the work is spent on getting to/getting away from the jumps–not going over them.
Dressage is just like that, but without the jumps. Of course, if you just thought, “What is this bending thing of which you speak?”, then dressage might not be for you. But if you enjoy the technical aspects of jumping, you might be pleasantly surprised by how much fun dressage really is.
It helps if you’re a bit obsessive/compulsive, though.
Love, the very obsessive Halt Near X
Blowing the budget, for a good cause
We all know I’m on a budget, saving for The Wonder Horse To Be. I even cut back my book buying, which is a Big Deal. I buy books like other people buy cigarettes.
I’ve also been on a long, slow lifestyle adjustment. This time last year, I was fifty pounds overweight. Not a national crisis, I agree, but I could feel the effect of the extra weight in my back. Not good.
Also, I went to put on my field boots and they didn’t fit. Not even close. Ditto my full chaps. One or two other things convinced me that I would be happier if I could lose even forty pounds.
Because I know myself well, I knew a quick, dramatic diet was not the answer. It had to be the whole “lifestyle” thing, and I don’t change habits easily. I knew this would be a long, slow battle.
Given the “long, slow” bit, you’d think I’d have gone out and bought some temporary field boots or half chaps or something, right? Oh no. See, I keep my old boots and chaps in the closet and tell myself “I’ll wear these again some day, so no need to buy new ones.” Some people have “skinny” jeans; I have “skinny” boots and chaps.
I’ve been riding with sherberty pink polos wrapped around my legs.
Oh, I know. Believe me, I know. If I had to go the polo route, at least I could have shelled out ten dollars for cheap black ones, right? I mean, I hate the sherberty pink color. I think it was supposed to be a regular reminder of what I was working for, but… oy. I’m lucky my instructor just let it slide. I’m lucky the junior riders thought it was a cool fashion statement.
It’s been a year since I started this weight-loss thing. My boots and chaps still don’t fit. But!
But I have lost twenty pounds. A pant size and a half (I’m in that icky in-between stage). An inch and a half off my calves. I couldn’t fit into extra-wide half chaps last fall; I tried on large half chaps at the store this weekend and they fit.
I just couldn’t help it. I bought the chaps. They are purrrrrrrrty: full-grain leather, close contact, brand name $$$ chaps.
At least when I blow the budget I blow it big. And for a good cause.
In which I ride a school horse and feel like an idiot
I rode the Fourth level school master this week. I always feel like I’m going to break him, which is ridiculous. The horse not only has my number, he also has my address, banking information, and email passwords. The only one about to be broken in this situation is me. Fortunately, it’s only my pride we’re talking about.
Case in point: the very simple instruction to “turn left.” I couldn’t do it.
The problem is that he’s a school master, through and through. Very well trained–so he does exactly what you ask for. Exactly. What’s asked. Not what I want, even though I’m sure he knew I didn’t really want to do a quarter spin, reining-horse style. Or a turn on the haunches. Or a turn on the forehand.
Good grief. Turning is one of the things you learn in your first lesson, right after the instructor says, “Here is the horse. These are his ears; this is his hind end” and right before she says, “I did tell you that he would jump over that oxer if you didn’t turn. Now, would you like to get up out of the dust, hop back on, and turn this time?”
Eventually, we did turn. Fortunately. I don’t think my ego could have handled it if we hadn’t. It’s bad enough that I can’t get him to halt properly. Stop, yes. But he parks out behind like an Arab halter horse. Which would be fine, if he were an Arab halter horse. But he’s a dressage school master, and he snickered all the way back to his stall. My goat, the cows, the chickens… heck, the whole farm. He’s got it all.
He’s just a very different ride than the two horses I normally ride. They’re greener, so we can muddle through things together. If my aids are a little fuzzy, it’s ok–because their responses are a little imprecise. The school master? Exactly what’s asked. As soon as it’s asked.
It means I know immediately if my aids are wrong–and I know immediately if they are right. Instant feedback is a good thing. It also helps that he is so clear about what is right and wrong; there is no middle ground. It’ll make a difference when I go back to the other two horses. One would hope, anyway. I also realized my seat and legs are definitely better than they were last time I rode him–even on my once-a-week schedule, there IS progress.
Progress is always good. Maybe next time I’ll even be able to halt.
Winter. What’s so wonderful about it?
I didn’t grow up in the Great White Winter Wonderland, but I spent enough years here to know how to deal with ice and snow. I used to laugh at my Southern friends for being winter wimps. They still talk about my “miracle drive”–a whole seventy miles in three inches of snow. Three inches! It was practically Armageddon! Heh. Dude: you put the car in a lower gear and you drive. It ain’t hard.
I can’t believe I just typed out “dude.”
Anyway. Although I escaped the Winter Wonderland for seven or eight years, I’m back. And it’s that miserable time of the year again, when the snow starts creeping down the mountain and the school buses start carrying their snow chains with them and advertisers start pushing engine block heaters and remote starters. (Other people call this “Fall.” We call it “Winter-proofing Season.”)
Everyone else just pulls out a jacket and gets on with life.
Me? I’ve been corrupted by the years in warmer climes. I’ve pulled out two jackets, six pairs of wool socks, the warmest skiing gloves I could find (perfect for barn work, by the way), two wool hats, all the scarves I own, and I’m considering buying all the silk underwear from the local sports store. What I can’t wear, I can stuff in the sleeves of my jackets for extra insulation.
And I’m still cold.
There isn’t even any snow on the ground! How in the world am I going to survive when it hits that “my eyeballs hurt” temperature? (That’s a real temperature, by the way. It’s colder than the temperature that makes you put on a knit hat even though you look like an idiot with a pom-pom on your head, and warmer than the temperature where you throw a cup of hot coffee on the ground and it freezes before it hits the sidewalk.)
Fortunately, I work from home. Most of the time, I won’t have to out into the deadly cold. But I am going to have to go to the barn regularly. So, just in case: if I stop posting for any length of time, someone call the barn. Tell them to check the fenceline. I’ll be under the unnaturally large drift. They’ll recognize me by the large “SOS: Need ticket to Florida” sign I’ll have carved into the snow right before I died.