From An Amateur’s Perspective
By Pamela Page
A relative newcomer to dressage, I spent my twenties and thirties focused on hunt seat and equitation, successfully competing throughout New England. My nomadic career as a documentary filmmaker forced me to give up riding for twenty-five years. The isolation of 2020 brought about by COVID led me back to horses. I began riding dressage at 65 years old, and I’ve fallen in love with being an amateur dressage rider.
- Dressage is the foundation of all good training. I’m proud to be learning a form of horsemanship that has been refined through many traditions in many places across the centuries. Dressage is a discipline whose practitioners can trace their approach back to the 4th century B.C.E. writer Xenophon, who encouraged riders to treat their horses with kindness and respect.
- There’s nothing instant about dressage. It is a long, slow, systematic process. Stephen Forbes, one of my favorite writers, has compared making a Grand Prix horse to building the Cathedral of Notre Dame. You lay a foundation and you gradually build on that, stone by stone. My horse is close to achieving this hallowed status thanks to the partnership he and my trainer have forged. My goal with him is more modest. Every time I touch, however briefly, the essence of the art— true collection, sustained lightness, a lovely halt— I am thrilled. The smallest achievement becomes a mystical experience.
- Five days a week, I enter my barn, look toward the end of the aisle, and see my horse. He raises his massive head, and his oversized ears rotate in my direction. (This one part of him probably weighs more than I do!) My heart rate slows, my blood pressure drops, and my mind stops racing. I can breathe deeply.
- Learning to write and speak Mandarin or joining a band might preserve my cognitive function, but I’m pretty sure memorizing a dressage test does the same thing. It’s also worth mentioning that when I’m sitting astride a 1,400-pound animal with a mind of its own, I’m constantly making moment by moment decisions that strengthen my neural pathways, improve my coordination, and preserve my spatial awareness and proprioception. I could be practicing a Tom Petty song instead.
“I won’t back down. No, I won’t back down.”
Riding ensures I won’t fall either.
- Dressage involves a uniform; one I can style in endless ways. When it comes to showing, yes, it’s possible to spend Prada prices on expensive competition attire, but is it necessary? Assuming your hair is in a neat little bun, your breeches and boots look clean, and your coat is correctly buttoned, trust me, you’re good.
On lesson days, I can coordinate my breeches and training shirt to match my horse’s saddle pad and brushing boots. Each new season, equestrian designers spin the color wheel, carefully avoiding the primary hot colors —which I assume they choose to leave to Formula One, alpine skiers, and other fast-paced sports. No “Wasabi,” “Lava Falls,” or “Screaming Yellow.” No, no, no! This segment of the fashion industry favors more calming tones. Why? Because dressage calls for relaxation and tranquility. This group gravitates toward deep hues. Because dressage is deep.
- If you think about it long enough, it really is. Some say, “Dressage is the art of going around in circles.” The circle represents eternity, unity, infinity, and wholeness. Yet through its core concept —throughness —dressage also takes me beyond the geometry of physical space and asks me to reach deep into my horse’s own physical and mental circle, or “the circle of the aids,” where the energy flows from back to front and front to back as my presence penetrates all of his being. It’s deep on so many levels.
- Dressage is an excuse to avoid men and hang out with the superior race—women. Like my mother’s bridge club that kept going for sixty-plus years, I’ve made lifelong friends. And as with my mother’s bridge buddies, although my fellow riders possess different skills, life experiences, and beliefs, they are loyal, kind, and supportive. My barn family is the kind of family I always hoped for.
- Musical freestyles! Horse and rider dancing to music together! Having once been a filmmaker specializing in music documentaries, I’m able to create the musical scores for the only dressage competition the public easily appreciates. How lucky am I?!
- Dressage can be an expensive hobby, especially competitive dressage, but so is skiing. For now, I like to compete. Many others in my barn do not. They pursue this complex, demanding but magnificent art form for the sheer joy it offers. That could be me some day.
Dressage competitions mostly feature baroque horses and warmbloods. Spanish horses come in a wide array of colors and make a lot of my fellow equestrians happy. Warmbloods don’t come in as many colors, but they are much bigger and seem to float above the ground. Many of my friends prefer warmbloods. My horse is a sometimes black, but mostly brown, mystery breed. He wasn’t made for dressage, and cost me far less than most warmbloods. It doesn’t matter. My horse is teaching me everything I need to know, and more.
I like that fully understanding dressage could take a lifetime. And towards the end of said lifetime, when our combined age is 100, I like that I will be able to invite all my friends to celebrate the occasion with a Century Ride!
- Having spent my twenties and thirties focused on hunt seat and equitation, I knew very little about dressage until recently. Late in 2020, I decided I wanted a companion with whom I might escape Covid’s claustrophobic grip. Perhaps a trail horse who would also allow me to return casually to the discipline I was familiar with. I watched sale video after sale video, until I found a horse that appeared steady, unflappable— the gentle, calm type I was looking for —and bought him.
Unfortunately, the real-life horse bore little resemblance to the character he had portrayed on screen. He was young and green, with way too much “go”. He was also about to become not just ‘large,’ but ‘extra large.’ One cold, terrifying December night, he showed me who he was. A test of sorts one might say. A test I survived.
- After that ride, I turned to professionals in the dressage world. Most of them told me such a horse was ill-suited for an amateur rider who’d been out of the tack for twenty-five years. Plus, a carriage horse doing dressage? This made no sense to them either.
But I believed in Blackberry. I believed in who he could become, and in the partnership we might eventually have. And after a long search, in June of 2022, I finally met a trainer who recognized our potential. Jannike Gray became our saving grace. Janni and Blackberry’s subsequent success at the FEI levels has taught me the value of trusting my instincts. In my own lessons with Blackberry, I’m learning that fear is fleeting, that courage is empowering, that less is more, and that things are better when I stop pulling on the left rein and start sitting still.
I’m learning that communication and connection are prerequisites to harmony, that without harmony there cannot be beauty. Above all, I’m starting to grasp how essential it is to listen and to feel, and how the ability to do so echoes beyond the arena.
Would I like to be out on the trails? Yes. Do I wish I could be jumping again? Definitely. But this is very compelling.
“Can you feel that?” my trainer patiently asks as we leg yield for the third time.
“Yes, I can! His right hind is coming under. I can feel that. I can really feel that!”
And that is what I truly love about dressage.
