Debbie McDonald admitted to feeling a little burned out. She and Brentina had anchored the United States silver-medal team at the 2002 World Equestrian Games and the bronze-medal team at the 2004 Athens Olympics, yet that prize of all prizes, an individual medal, had eluded them by the merest percentage points.

Even though she’s always in complete harmony with her rider, always showing a high degree of training and rideabilty, and always showing a willingness to please that borders on heartbreaking, the chestnut mare has yet to be fully acknowledged by the judges.

At the 2002 WEG, when she performed what McDonald said “was the test of a lifetime,” McDonald–and many others–thought that Brentina was still not given her proper due. She placed fourth in the freestyle, 1.07 percentage points behind the winner, and finished fourth overall.

So as McDonald contemplated what was next, she knew she had to do something different because dressage was becoming “un-fun.” With the FEI World Cup Final as her next competitive goal, the answer was obvious.

“It was just time to make a change. I had to find a way to bring more fun back into my freestyle. I had lost that joyful feeling I had back when I first started to ride my freestyle, and what I really wanted was to have fun again,” she said.

Completely changing her freestyle was a gamble, but she’s discovered that trying to figure out what the judges want to see and what they’ll reward is a nearly impossible mission.

“I made the [first] test difficult, thinking the judges would appreciate how demanding it was. But I saw what was rewarded at the Olympics, and I asked myself what was the purpose of putting my neck on the line?” she explained. “I really don’t know what the judges want anymore. Is it harmony? Is it extravagance? So in the new freestyle I veered a little off the difficulty path.”

Using a compilation of Motown and ’70s music, McDonald’s new freestyle expresses both her own and Brentina’s personalities and has a sly sense of humor.

She calls Brentina a “diva” in the barn because the mare demands attention. And, anthropomorphizing just a little, McDonald said, “She thinks she’s a little above the other horses, so using music from female artists like Aretha Franklin and the Supremes suits her down to the ground.

“I also want this freestyle to be fun for the audience. And if they know a little about Brentina’s [competitive] history, I hope they can see the humor in my musical choice–and I hope it brings a little laughter.”

McDonald also added, with a twinkle in her eye, that she hopes the judges have a sense of humor when she enters at A and passages down to X to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.”

The first thing the judges hear is Franklin’s now famous line “R-E-S-P-E-C-T–find out what it means to me,” and although the song was written decades before Brentina was born, it neatly sums up the prevailing feeling in the Brentina camp.

McDonald said she “thought up” her own freestyle–at least the idea behind the music–and then sought out help from freestyle specialist Terri Gallo to put the actual music together for her.

“You need to jump out there and show you can be creative. I take the artistic side of the freestyle to heart. I want my test to show the personality of both me and my horse and not just concentrate on the technical aspects of the ride,” she said.

She debuted the test at the U.S. League Finals on April 3, the final qualifying competition for U.S. riders for the World Cup Final (see p. 66). Scoring a 77.97 percent, McDonald won the competition, secured herself a ticket to Las Vegas, and tested the waters with the judges.

Another humorous moment in her musical choices comes at the walk, done to the classic ’70s song by The Commodores, “Brickhouse”:

“Ow she’s a Brick-house; she’s mighty mighty, just lettin’ it all hang out.
“She’s a brick-house; that lady’s stacked, that’s a fact,
“Ain’t holdin’ nothin’ back, ow she’s a brick-house.”

Brentina is a “buxom” mare, and she’s fit and supple, with a great, loose walk that swings her ample behind in a marvelous, provocative way.

While McDonald may have eschewed some of the more technically demanding “tricks” of her old freestyle–like performing a double canter pirouette straight from the first halt–her radically different freestyle is still a show of cooperation between rider and horse.

It’s more of a dance between horse and rider, and it flows across the arena in perfect timing to the changes in the music. McDonald garners technical points in the many and seamlessly performed transitions. Brentina gears up and down in tempo and collection without a flick of her ear, gliding from one-tempi canter changes to two-tempis, from passage to extended trot to piaffe.

This new freestyle isn’t intended to be a means of thumbing her nose at the judges, but it is a message, delivered in humor. One senses that McDonald is deeply bewildered and is at a loss of how to ask more from a horse who gives her all every time she’s saddled.

“I made this freestyle fun for me and I hope fun for the audience, because I didn’t know what else to do. I just had to have it be fun again,” she said.

The crowd at the U.S. League Finals leaped to their feet after McDonald saluted the judges for the last time, once again to Frank-lin’s “Respect.” It’s not a demand, but a strongly worded request.

As the great Motown diva sang, “All I’m askin’ is for a little respect!”