How To Make A Grand Prix Horse
Meet him at late 3 or early 4 years old. He’s keen-eyed and clever-looking, and he walks, trots and canters under saddle. He goes when you drive and whoas when you gather and mostly steers. He stands on the crossties and gets on the trailer and stands at the mounting block. He’s balanced and shiny and remarkably organized, with nice conformation and clean legs. You love him immediately, which is good, because two weeks later he’ll have kicked the stall and sliced his leg open, and grown an inch behind, and lost the capacity to turn right. Love him anyway.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!
I’d just taken Ella back to the stabling after our last freestyle of Florida 2016 and my phone beeped. It was a message from Thomas Bauer, who is a Big Deal Guy—he’s part of show management not only for the Adequan Global Dressage Festival shows, but also organizer for some major European shows, and a member of the FEI Dressage Committee. He says he needs to speak to me.
Being a dressage trainer in Northern Virginia means working with lots of riders with a jumping background, whether they’re still actively participating in the hunters, jumpers, eventing or foxhunting, or transitioning from any of those disciplines into being a straight-up dressage rider.