Contents
Introduction
Part One—General Principles
Introduction
The Purpose of the Training Level Tests
The Rider's Posture
The Seat In Motion
The Rising Trot
The Circle of Muscles
Bit Contact
On the Way to the Half–Halt
The Release of the Aid is the Aid
Asking and Receiving
The Training–Level Frame
The Road Ahead
Part Two—The Training Level Tests
The Movements
The Working Trot
The Halt, or the Trot/Walk/Halt Transition
The Circle at Working Trot
The Trot/Canter Transition
The Circle at Working Canter
The Medium Walk
The Free Walk
The Change of Rein at the Working Trot
Riding the Corners
The Canter/Trot Transition
The Stretching Circle at Working Trot
The Loop at the Working Trot
The Tests
Training Level One
Training Level Two
Training Level Three
Training Level Four
Part Three—From the Judge's Box
Part Four—Gymnastic Exercises for Horse and Rider
Introduction
Exercises
Appendix I—A Lunging Primer
Appendix II—Charting Your Scores
Introduction
In 1949, a lone horse and rider pair entered the pitch-dark stadium of White City, in London, surrounded and followed by four bright spotlights. The rider was a gifted horseman from the recently fallen Austro-Hungarian Empire; the horse was a Lipizzaner by the name of Neapolitano Africa. In front of a packed crowd they rode their program in a bubble of light that extended just two feet around them. Only when the arena perimeter appeared in this light did they know that they had run out of room; flower pots along the perimeter were the only markers to help them navigate.
Imagine the precision necessary to ride such a program. The ability of a horse and rider to perform the high school movements of piaffe, passage, canter pirouettes, and so on is of course remarkable. But think just how incredible it is to command such straightness in a horse, such mathematical precision in the lateral work, and such correct and unswaying lead changes so as not to miss a flower pot marker and be absolutely lost. Add to this the trust and confidence a horse and rider would need to have in each other to set out at an extended trot or canter into utter darkness. A storm of applause greeted them when they came to a halt.
Colonel Alois Podhajsky tells about this experience in his wonderful book My Horses, My Teachers. Shortly after this incredible event, Podhajsky came down with a severe bout of hepatitis and later that year Neapolitano Africa caught a mortal lung disease. Though Podhajsky recovered and spent many years as director of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, that night in London was the pinnacle of success for that horse-and-rider pair.
I think of this story almost every day. Exaggerating Sally Swift's concept of "soft eyes," I try to allow my mind to concentrate on and my body to feel all the subtle changes in movement and balance in myself and in the horse beneath me as if I too were riding in utter darkness. And I think in wonder not at the fancy movements of upper-level horses, but at just how amazing it is to make a simple straight line or a perfect twenty-meter circle.
This volume hopes to encourage a deep appreciation for riding that straight line and perfect twenty-meter circle. It also hopes to act as a handbook to help the horse-and-rider pair to compete successfully in the training-level tests through the use of proper horsemanship. It is not a collection of tricks and short cuts for the sole end of acquiring blue ribbons, but a tutoring guide that has as its cornerstone a belief that the dressage tests as laid out by the United States Equestrian Federation are created in a way to support and award correct and beautiful riding. By following the training steps inherent in these tests we also follow in the footsteps of great horse-and-rider pairs like Colonel Alois Podhajsky and Neapolitano Africa.
Part 1 discusses a number of general principles that should be foremost in the rider's mind at this level. Part 2 dissects the four training-level tests, movement by movement, and gives both technical explanations for each of these movements and tips on how to segue from one to the next. Part 3 gives an explanation of what the judge is looking for in the tests and how each movement is scored. Part 4 offers a number of gymnastic exercises for horse and rider to be used as a guide for training and in preparation for these tests. A brief lunging primer is included as an appendix to this volume. This primer is fundamentally concerned with understanding what we see when we watch a horse at work, and can therefore be of interest even to those who do not lunge.
|
