Tanya Vik so loved her FEI-level partner, Mouse, that when she retired him she kept him as a schoolmaster for her students, rather than sell him. Her heart told her it was a good decision, although her business brain told her it was a bad one.
“What you earn using the horse for lessons barely covers the cost of keeping him. He can only do so many lessons,” said Vik, who’s based at Riverside Equestrian Center in Petaluma, Calif.
On the other hand, she could have sold Mouse for tens of thousands of dollars. “There are so many people looking to own a good second or third level horse, and one that’s honest and easy to ride is hard to find. Any horse qualified to be a schoolmaster is far more valuable as a sale horse than as a lesson horse.”
America’s top dressage riders may now be a force on the international dressage scene, but below this top rank are the mass of up-and-coming young riders and the ever-growing numbers of adult amateurs all working to advance their riding skills. They’ve been told they’ll learn better on a ready-made schoolmaster. But they ask, “Where are these schoolmasters on which we could learn?”
Dressage instructors know they’re in short supply. And while their students are far better off learning to ride on a schoolmaster than on a green-broke youngster, when it comes to the issue of access to schoolmasters, their perspective is a bit different than that of students. To them, schoolmasters are so rare and valuable that one must work hard to earn the right to sit on them.
“Most trainers do have something of their own that they will let students ride when students have gained the skills and the trust of the trainer,” said Charlotte Bredahl-Baker, an instructor, judge and trainer based in Solvang, Calif.
Until she retired him, Bredahl-Baker, who was a member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic Team, allowed students to ride her Olympic partner, Monsieur. But the right to ride him, she said, was something that they had to earn.
Veteran instructor and show manager Judith Noone, of Abington, Mass., whose most famous student is her son, Grand Prix rider Tom Noone, agreed. “The best thing is for a rider to be with a trainer who has upper-level horses and then earn the right to ride them,” she said.
In such cases, a good relationship with instructors–built up over the years–can really pay off.
Down Through The Generations
Classical dressage trainer and rider Bettina Drummond goes even further–she’s actually given schoolmasters to students so long as they agree to seek her help when problems emerge. She believes that an important role of the schoolmaster is to teach students the correct feel and to help them with particular problems in their riding.
“If you have a student who has problems with flying changes, then you put that student on a horse that specializes in flying changes,” she said. “It’s just as important to hand ‘feeling’ down through the generations as it is rules and regulations. This is a responsibility of instructors to their students.”
Only if students have an opportunity to feel what’s correct can they then replicate that feeling on other horses. The result, Drummond said, is that these students will make fewer mistakes with future horses.
For most instructors, the decision to allow a student the right to ride a schoolmaster comes when the student is capable of actually feeling what’s right and what’s wrong.
As Noone said, it doesn’t do much good to put a rider on an upper-level schoolmaster until the rider has the ability to feel a movement in order to duplicate it. “Granted, there are many students who are with trainers who don’t have such horses, but many of these students aren’t ready for such horses anyway,” she noted.
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Noone’s view is echoed by a number of other instructors, some who note the impatience of American riders who haven’t mastered the basics but want to hop on an FEI-level schoolmaster. As Hilda Gurney bluntly stated, “beginners ruin horses.”
Gurney, a trainer and judge based in Moorpark, Calif., and who has represented the United States in two Olympics, does have FEI-level schoolmasters that she uses for lessons.
Gurney cites high maintenance as a major reason why trainers at her level don’t often keep FEI-level schoolmasters around. “Horses are trained every time they’re ridden,” she said. “FEI schoolmasters are a lot of work to maintain. I’m constantly retraining them after students have ridden them.”
Because an FEI-trained horse is so sensitive, it doesn’t take much error on the part of a student rider to set off the horse. Gurney recalled one rider who got on one of her schoolmasters and couldn’t control her bodyweight. The horse felt the imbalance and took off doing tempi changes around and around the ring.
Noone said the Europeans who created the International Academy for Equestrian Studies in Warendorf, Germany, in 2001, learned this lesson the hard way. She and her son visited the academy and witnessed first-hand what happened to the school horses after a class of student riders finished their program.
“The academy trainers discovered that these student riders didn’t have good seats, aids or legs and the horses were shot after the students rode them. They really had to get after these horses to get them back to where they were. The horses lost their training because they became confused,” Noone said.
And it’s not fair to subject horses that are highly trained and sensitive to poor riding, she said, because trainers must be that much harder on the horses in order to fix them.
Noone believes the maintenance work involved in retraining schoolmasters played a role in the failure of the Warendorf School, which closed in 2003 due to financial reasons. It has since reopened as the International Equestrian Academy managed by É´oile Riders Resorts and is attempting to combine instruction with a horse-sales program, consulting services and management instruction.
High-Maintenance Issues
Another problem with schoolmasters is that often a rider isn’t ready for the horse she hopes to ride, said three-time Olympian Lendon Gray. Most instructors will eventually allow students on their own horses, but “kids today have no patience,” she said.
Having said that, however, Gray notes that schoolmasters are also in short supply due to insurance rates. High rates in the United States are what drove her to sell her own upper-level schoolmasters.
It’s a claim the insurance industry doesn’t dispute. Mary Phelps, a Markel Equine Insurance agent based in Florida, said rates are often higher here than in Europe.
“The difference in liability insurance costs for lesson horses and programs between Europe and the U.S. is primarily due to the larger volume of lawsuits in America and the larger settlements awarded,” said Phelps. “In America, it’s necessary for one to protect assets against the threat of lawsuits, whether the lawsuit may be frivolous or not. For example, in England, people are less reluctant to file a lawsuit because if they lose, they have to pay the legal costs of the person that they’re suing. If they do win, the settlements are generally much less than in the U.S.”
In addition, schoolmasters tend to be older horses, which are more costly to insure, Phelps said. Liability rates are also lower for instructors if they teach people on their own horses rather than on horses designated as school horses.
Even if it were financially feasible for dressage instructors to keep a few upper-level schoolmasters around, they would still not be that easy to find.
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“Schoolmasters are a commodity we lack,” said Vik, who believes that a far greater need exists for lower-level schoolmasters. “We just don’t have many upper-level horses in this country in general. Go to a big horse show, and you’ll hardly see any horse in the Intermediaire and Grand Prix classes. So where will our schoolmasters come from? We just don’t have the numbers yet because we’re still a growing sport in this country. It’s not like in Europe, where there are so many FEI-level horses that they have shows that are only for the FEI levels.”
No-one also noted that just because a horse knows the movements, he’s not necessarily a schoolmaster.
“So many people run to Europe and buy a Grand Prix horse and bring it back here,” she said. “But most aren’t schoolmasters, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’ll be a bad first level horse in no time. A real schoolmaster is very forgiving. It keeps trying to give you what you want. It has an attitude of, ‘Oh, they must want this.’ And so it gives it to you, even if you ask wrong. That’s a real schoolmaster, and they’re invaluable.”
Vik said that what makes a good horse is its level of sensitivity, and an FEI-level horse is usually very sensitive. But this trait is also what makes most of them unacceptable as schoolmasters.
“A good schoolmaster has certain walls and defenses and tunes out all the moving about of the rider,” Vik said. “He happily trucks the rider along until the right button is hit and then he says, ‘OK.’ “
They’re One-In-A-Million
Trainer Hilda Gurney, Moorpark, Calif., chooses the word “tolerant” to describe the ideal schoolmaster.
“It takes a very good-tempered horse to be a schoolmaster,” she said. “The horse has people on his back with no idea of what they’re doing, and the horse is trying to figure it out. Not many horses will tolerate that. A lot will just get upset and try to kill the rider.”
Many instructors believe riders need to be proficient in the basics before sitting on a schoolmaster, and most instructors are willing to provide an occasional lesson on their own mounts. But what happens when one is ready for regular lessons on a schoolmaster?
“That’s when you buy your own and learn on it,” Gurney said. “Dressage is not for beginners, but for those who have reached a certain point in their riding. Those who are then serious about dressage must buy their own schoolmaster.”
That personal schoolmaster will not only help riders learn to feel the advanced movements, but it will also teach them how to train a horse and the importance of building a relationship with one’s own horse, Gurney said.
Buying one of these schoolmasters might mean a trip to Europe, where there are far more of them, and it’ll certainly mean putting out some serious money–around $25,000 and up–but instructors note it’s the best way to gain access to one. And very often, good schoolmasters are near at hand, although acquiring them takes a bit of patience.
Many instructors will shop for a young horse who will one day make a great schoolmaster. For the student, this may mean a few years of waiting, but it can be worth it in the end.
Veteran trainer Judith Noone, Abington, Mass., has another piece of advice for those hoping to one day own a schoolmaster: “Take a look at what’s under your nose. There’s a very good chance that another student in your trainer’s barn has a schoolmaster that will one day be on the market. It’s just a matter of waiting.
“Good schoolmasters rarely leave their barns,” Noone added. “When their owners advance and move up to another horse, the schoolmaster is simply sold to another one of the trainer’s students.”