Participants learned more than how to piaffe and passage as experts delved deep into the psyche of the horse and rider.

Nobody likes a good debate better than dressage enthusiasts, and this year’s Global Dressage Forum, held Oct. 30-31 in the Academy in Hooge Mierde, the Netherlands, gave participants plenty of oppor-tunity for discussion.

The experts ranged from top international riders to sports psychologists, horse ethologists and even horse whisperers. The forum’s focus was on developing and training the horse and rider, physically and mentally.

The time reserved for question-and-answer sessions was an improvement from last year, as was the fact that the speakers were available for questions during the coffee breaks after their speech. The audience made good use of this offer, resulting in many interesting conversations.

Hubertus Schmidt opened the GDF with an impressive demonstration aboard Cesar Parra’s 7-year-old, Rhinelander gelding F�rst Fabio (by Fidermark). He showed the structure of a training lesson and adhered to the classical guidelines by riding F�rst Fabio from his hind end through a swinging back toward a soft hand.

His horse responded by actively stepping under his body with his hind legs. An important tenet of his system of working a horse is riding each corner as a quarter volte with bending and flexion to make the horse smooth and elastic and also to ride the horse toward the outside rein.

It became clear that Schmidt’s focus is the easiness, the elasticity and the harmony between horse and rider, but not the spectacular execution of single movements.

He also went into the details of how he trains piaffe. He recommended not using the whip when training piaffe until the horse has already done some steps, and then using it only to keep the piaffe active.

“Considering that a whip isn’t allowed in the international classes, one should not always use a whip with a horse that’s just starting to piaffe,” he said.

Dr. Rico Schuijers, the sports psychologist for the Dutch Olympic dressage team as well as other Dutch Olympians, followed Schmidt’s demonstration with a lecture on performance, stress and relaxation.

“He discussed the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems within the body and showed how stress can elevate the heart rate, breathing and disrupt the digestive system,” said GDF participant Stephanie Law.

Schuijers used many demonstrations to illustrate his point. He showed participants a game where a subject is hooked up to a heart rate monitor and watches a screen with a hot air balloon on it. To make the balloon rise, the subject must keep his heart rate down. Most people look at the balloon and try too hard to make it rise, whereupon it promptly falls and the heart rate shoots up. The idea is to learn how to accomplish a goal by relaxing.

Another demonstration involved throwing coins into a hat. He gave Laurens van Lieren 10 coins and told him the goal was to throw all 10 into the hat on the floor. He only got four coins in. When Schuijers let van Lieren set his own goal, he chose six and only threw two coins into the hat.

Then Schuijers suggested that van Lieren think about what his arm felt like when he made a successful coin toss instead of focusing on the goal of getting the coins in the hat. He promptly threw seven of the 10 coins in.

The point of the demonstration was that when you get too focused on your goals or your scores, it may detract from performances. It takes mental training to develop skills and stay focused on the process.


Natural Horsemanship In The Mix
U.S. trainer and horse psychologist Monty Roberts made his dressage debut at the GDF. The 71-year-old, natural horsemanship legend demonstrated in an impressive manner how a horse, which used to shy and wasn’t willing to go on a trailer, could be brought within 30 minutes to accept the human being as the leader and the ‘animal’ to trust.

After this short period, Roberts was able to touch the horse all over her body with a plastic bag and to lead her on the trailer without any problems. Although Roberts isn’t as familiar a figure in the dressage world, he didn’t hold back from sharing his controversial opinions.

He stated that he believed Salinero panicked in the prize giving at the World Equestrian Games because he had a lack of confidence in his rider, Anky van Grunsven. Van Grunsven wasn’t thrilled with this suggestion, but she agreed to look at his methods for the future.

He also made the radical suggestion that piaffe be taken out of dressage tests. “For me, the piaffe is the movement in which the horses look the least happy and content,” he said. “I think learning to piaffe causes the horse a lot of problems with other movements.”

On Tuesday morning the forum was continued by a theoretical and practical performance of the Australian horse ethologist and neuroscientist Andrew McLean, who rode successfully at the international level in eventing, dressage and show jumping.

McLean explained the potentialities and limits of the learning ability of a horse, which has an excellent memory.

“He said a horse that had learned a relatively complicated process of switching and pulling levers to get food was able to immediately repeat the routine after four years,” said Law. “This is something to keep in mind when you are about to lose your temper and add pain to an already confusing or scary situation for a horse. That memory will not be forgotten the next time the situation arises.”

But the horse doesn’t have the ability to reason, to reconsider experiences made in the past or to project them to the future. They are always living in the here and now.

He discussed different methods of learning and went into detail about operant conditioning, noting what he felt were correct negative reinforcements. “He said that pressure and the release is a good negative reinforcement when done in a measured way with an emphasis on correct timing,” noted Law. “As an example of incorrect negative reinforcement he said that beating a horse with a whip to get them into a trailer will have a totally opposite effect of what the person wanted because the horse will then most likely focus on the whipping, kick out at it, rebel even more and forever associate pain with the trailer.”

McLean also explained the term “learned helplessness,” which means that a horse is exposed for so long to a stimulus or pain or to contradicting stimuli that it doesn’t react anymore and is made helpless. The levels of stress hormones cortisol and prolactin may rise so high when the horse is forced to feel totally helpless that they will induce brain atrophy. This will also cause symptoms of chronic stress including permanent stomach and digestive damage that can, of course, be fatal.

Mariette Withages, the chairman of the Federation Equestre Internationale Dressage Committee, took the chance to announce that the FEI will commission a year long study of this training method.

One test McLean suggested for controlling the self-carriage of the horse was to include in a Grand Prix test the ‘�berstreichen,’ or loosening of the reins by moving the hands forward over the horse’s neck, for at least two steps.


The Audience Judges
Withages led the next item on the forum’s program, in which three Grand Prix Special rides from the WEG were examined: Mexico’s Bernadette Pujals on Vincent; Denmark’s Andreas Helgstrand on Blue Hors Matine and Germany’s Isabell Werth on Satchmo.

Their rides were shown, compared and the marks were discussed. Withages, herself an O-rated judge, made it clear that the piaffe and passage shown by Matine have a very high potential and were performed with ease. The young mare was willing, but she didn’t have enough power in her back to perform these movements in an ideal manner at that time.

The forum ended with a theoretical speech by Sjef Janssen and the biomechanics researcher Ren� van Weeren, as well as a practical demonstration of a training session by Janssen and van Grunsven.

Van Weeren and his colleagues conducted a study on the effect of different head and neck positions on the thoracolumbar kinematics of the unridden horse and presented their findings at the FEI conference on hyperflexion in Lausanne, Switzerland, in January.

He recapped their findings that the position with lowered head and neck and nose behind the vertical decreased stride length and increased range of motion, lending credibility to the idea that this position could be valuable in training, depending on how it was applied.

Janssen and a heavily pregnant van Grunsven went on to present a demonstration of their training system. Van Grunsven rode Painted Black while Janssen explained that they do a long, relaxed and quiet warm-up and don’t start doing hyperflexion, or low, deep and round work, until later in the ride.

“It could’ve been the same warm-up as Hubertus Schmidt,” said Law. “But I saw a big difference when Anky picked up the reins for collection.”

Van Grunsven did demonstrate hyper-flexion, placing Painted Black’s neck in a fairly extreme position, but she did very little bending and took many breaks.

Janssen repeatedly emphasized during his speech that the most important benefit for him of low, deep and round work was that the rider was able to bring the hind legs under the horse’s point of gravity and that the method should not be copied by amateurs.

He also stressed that low, deep and round is just one of the tools of his training method, and that the warm-up, the transitions and speed control within the gaits are all equally important.

Finnish dressage trainer Kyra Kyrklund admitted to not understanding the system and wondered if it could be applied to normal horses, or was just useful for extraordinary ones. “I prefer a method that can be applied by all riders no matter what their level,” she said.

Van Grunsven explained that she uses this method because, “Without hyperflexion I was a good Grand Prix rider, but I became really successful with this method.”

A representative of St. Georg magazine said it looked like van Grunsven was pulling her horse into this frame. She replied that she was not a strong woman and couldn’t force a horse into this position.

Dr. Hilary Clayton, of Michigan State University, who was on the discussion panel, also stepped in and said that the horse’s mouth and tongue are like a person’s fingertips. They are sensitive, but can withstand a lot of pressure. Clayton said it was physically impossible to force a horse into this position either from the ground or from the back with just a bridle and reins.

Another audience member asked if it was possible to do a scientific study on the stress levels of the horse when it’s placed in this position. McLean said it was certainly possible because one could measure the cortisol and prolactin levels as well as place monitors on the horse to measure the heart rate. He said he would be happy to help structure a study that did just that.

Birgit Popp and Sara Lieser