Photos and text by Amber Wiseman
“Be confident about educating your horse.”
These were the words that began the Devoucoux Dressage Showcase at the FEI World Cup Finals in Fort Worth, Texas.
Despite there being no dressage competition taking place on Friday, April 10, dressage enthusiasts had the opportunity to attend a one-hour educational dressage showcase with none other than Thursday night’s Grand Prix winner, Becky Moody of Great Britain.
The showcase consisted of two demonstration pairs: Jessica Blackmon-White aboard Lisa Blackmon’s Westfalen stallion Diamor 4 (Desperado – Fee, Furst Piccolo), and Nicole Acosta with her own American Warmblood gelding, Cali (Limet Hurry – Utrecht, Taxateur). Each pair had 30 minutes of time to work with Becky in front of the audience.
While Jessica and Diamor 4 warmed up, Becky addressed the crowd and discussed the Pyramid of Training. Then they jumped into exercises to improve Diamor 4’s response to Jessica’s leg aids. Becky placed an emphasis on tempo control and adjustability for the session, noting that we should not be “niggling” in the paces; we need to give an aid, get a sharp reaction from the horse, and release the aid, she said. A quick leg aid should result in a quicker tempo, while a slower aid (wrapping the leg around the horse’s barrel) should lengthen the stride without increasing the tempo. Important to consider is the temperament of the horse: A hot horse may need to learn to be a less reactive to slight aids and may need to be ridden with the leg a little more “on” during training sessions, while a less-reactive horse needs to be ridden with the leg “off” in order to retain a sharpness to the aid being applied.
Quick transitions between gaits are beneficial in working on sharp responses, Becky said. Going from trot to walk and back to trot in a quick, organized fashion instills a half-halt, which can then be effectively implemented to subtly adjust the horse’s weight onto the hindquarters and to increase his responsiveness to the forward driving aids. However, it is paramount to ride an organized downward transition for this exercise to be effective; “flopping” into the walk will not result in a horse that “sits” in transitions and lightens the forehand.
A common refrain from Becky was that riders must always pay attention to the quality of the walk, even during breaks.
“A good walk in the test comes from a good walk in training,” she said. Admitting that she is guilty of it on occasion, too, she explained that riders tend to use walk breaks as personal breaks, checking their phones or otherwise not focusing on the horse—and before they know it, the walk has slowed to a meandering pace. If we’re not careful, our walk breaks can undo all the work we’ve just done, she said.
Another error that many riders unintentionally make is teaching the horse to stop as a reward for giving the correct response, especially when learning a new concept, Becky said. How often has your horse given you a flying change or done an exceptional feeling movement that you’ve been working toward, and you immediately drop the reins and allow him to stop to give him lots of pats and praise? We all do it! But the horse will quickly learn that performing a movement correctly means that he gets to stop working. Instead, she said, train yourself to reward a correct response with a pat and an aid release.
Nicole entered the ring with a plan to work on attaining more “spring” in Cali’s work. As she told Becky, Cali is a forward-thinking horse with a strong engine, but he sometimes falls into going forward and down rather than forward and up. To address the issue, Becky had the pair begin by working in shoulder-fore positioning. When a horse’s tendency is to drive himself downward, she explained, we need to “harness the engine” to help him push more up into the hand, resulting in better self-carriage. If attempts to collect the gait take away from the quality, she stressed, it is not true collection.
Alternating between shoulder-in and travers (haunches-in) on a large circle, Becky had Nicole work to maintain “spring” and the quality of Cali’s canter. The shoulder-in positioning, she explained, helps to keep the horse between the aids and to give the rider control of the shoulders, while the travers rotates the horse’s pelvis and allows his inside hip to lift and move more freely.
Becky recommended that riders refer to the dressage tests and to practice some of the patterns and movements during training sessions. She explained that the tests are written such that each test builds on the previous ones as the horse progresses through the levels. For instance, a horse that relies on his rider to hold him up instead of demonstrating true self-carriage can benefit from Third Level Test 2’s 20-meter canter circle showing a clear release of both reins for four to five strides over the center line. Nicole incorporated this into her canter work, demonstrating whether Cali was in true self-carriage.
While Cali and Nicole took a walk break before preparing to work on flying changes, Becky told the audience that flying changes are like jumping. As in jumping, a flying change has three parts: the approach, the execution, and the exit. Becky had Nicole canter across the long diagonal, executing a single change near the center line while prioritizing straightness in both horse and rider (with no walk break when Cali made a good change!).
As Nicole and Cali are working at the Prix St. Georges and Intermediate I levels, they also worked on four-tempi changes along the long sides of the arena. Becky, moving to watch the pair from the C end of the arena, was able to see a consistent one-sided “hold” on the reins and offered a correction based, she said, on her own tendency toward this same issue: Patting the horse with the “holding” hand forces the rider to let go while simultaneously encouraging the horse to maintain self-carriage, similar to the way that the release on the canter circle does.
As the hour wound down, Becky reiterated that the gaits cannot come at the expense of self-carriage, encompassing the work that had been demonstrated over the course of the session.
