Within the span of two weeks in September, I had the opportunity to be part of the CDIO*** in Luxembourg as a judge and Dressage at Devon CDI*** in Pennsylvania as a competitor. And the proximity of the two shows gave me a chance to compare notes between two well-established events on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

The Mondorf (Luxembourg) show organizers had given up their CDI status for some years, but renewed sponsorship inspired them to make it a CDIO again. I don’t think they had to regret their decision, since 10 foreign teams and some very prominent riders showed up to compete.

The show grounds are really not show grounds at all, but the front yard of the Casino 2000. As is often the case in Europe, the entire event is created literally from scratch. Enormous tents and an armada of trailers are brought in to create offices, lounges, dining rooms, vendor’s areas and spectator seating. From my hotel room, I could watch the main ring, which was so close that I could tell who was warming up and check out their pirouettes while brushing my teeth.

The show grounds have become even tighter since construction has started behind the warm-up area, where there once was a decent-sized field available for hacking. Still, there was ample space for warm-up on good footing.

The main ring had all the “bells and whistles” in computer equipment and decorations, including some impressive “instant” trees, between which the horses emerged after the starting signal. The Grand Duc Henri and his wife attended the Sunday freestyle performances, as I was told they usually do.

Consequently, the organizers tried to keep us judges in our boxes during the entire class. Well, that worked until the later breaks, when judges and scribes started to creep out for a smoke or a breath of air’all but me, who was at E, right in front of the grandstand and ordered to stay put. It almost killed my scribe, who was suffering from nicotine withdrawal.

For me, the most exciting “new” horse at this show was Bonaparte, ridden by Heike Kemmer of Germany. The horse displays three flawless basic gaits and has a great “range of motion.” Once he gets the piaffe (which was temporarily out of order) figured out, he’ll be the one to beat!

Christilot Boy-len from Canada on her leggy bay mare Lucky Lemon started her freestyle in a most impressive manner, and then the mare checked out mentally in the last third of the test. That’s another pair to watch, however, since the horse has a lot of elegance and ability, and Christilot sure knows how to guide a horse through the program.

Germany’s Hubertus Schmidt is also mounted on a mare, a big chestnut I remember from Stuttgart (Germany). Although this is not one of my absolute favorite horses, Hubertus’ riding is so sophisticated that he always brings to the foreground the horse’s strong points, which are the piaffe, passage and extended trots. And he rides them to the limit!

Ulla Salzgeber is second to none in complete control of every part of the test, and still her big bay Wall Street had a couple of hiccups in the freestyle, including a spook that marred one of the pirouettes.

Ulla was the official winner, but my horse for the day was Beauvalais, who never put a hoof out of place. From where I was sitting, on the side, he had the most effortless and yet powerful performance of the lot. I was pleasantly surprised, since the impression I had from last year’s World Equestrian Games of Beatriz Ferrer-Salat and her horse was a little frantic. Gone was the “chased” look. Instead, Beatriz and her horse were absolutely in tune with the music and each other.

A little more than a week later, I arrived at Devon in the role of competitor.

Dressage at Devon has established many traditions over 25 years, and I have hundreds of memories from the show, since we’ve shown there at least 20 of those years.

The spacial situation is somewhat similar to Mondorf in that every inch is precious. Still, the trade fair at Devon puts Mondorf and many other shows to shame. It offers a great variety of items, not limited to tack and jewelry. The audience at Devon, especially at night, and the atmosphere in the Dixon Oval is hard to duplicate, and other than the big indoor shows and Aachen (Germany), I cannot think of a better venue to showcase dressage.

Just like the large European shows, Devon is run by a team of professionals who are right on top of things from the arrival of the first entry to the time the last van leaves.

One big difference between most other FEI-sanctioned shows and Devon is the breeding division, which grows every year. From Tuesday on, the grounds are alive with the complaints of the weanlings, the calling of the mares to their foals, and the trumpeting of stallions beating their chests.

I am a big believer in holding breed shows in conjunction with performance shows, since some of the riders need to understand “where horses come from.” It’s a great opportunity for the breeders to show what they’ve accomplished, and winning or placing at Devon makes their slow and often unappreciated labor more worthwhile.

This year, however, the integration went too far. The national performance division started at 8 a.m. on Thursday, and the CDI classes the same time on Friday. Many of the horses in this part of the show arrived Wednesday to be ready to perform or jog in the vet check on Thursday. The breed show went on in both rings until after dark on Thursday, which prevented any opportunity to school in the main arena until Friday morning, for 45 minutes after dawn.

In the meantime, the performance horses were relegated to one regular-sized dressage arena and the “playpen,” which is useless for anything but hacking. The footing in both gets pretty beat up, and working it becomes difficult when all other areas are full of horses in hand, unless the performance horses are able to levitate.

Actually, Cesar Parra’s stallion demonstrated that skill when he first caught sight of all those “naked” horses in the breeding division. He soared through the air with the greatest of ease, and it was more than scary, since he then galloped riderless right through the crowd of horses and handlers.

If you’ve never been on board a breeding stallion, you may not be aware of how they react to horses surrounding them. Most stallions are quite civilized around horses that are being ridden. But horses without tack, especially mares and foals, are fair game, and the presence of them can turn even the kindest stallion into a monster.

During Wednesday and Thursday, I saw five horses running loose, and I heard they weren’t the only ones. In the name of safety, and fairness to the performance horses, I believe that the Devon organizers need to rethink the scheduling of these events.

Thanks to the cooperation and support of Patsy Albers, the USAEq National Junior Championships again found a home at Devon, and there is no place that excites the kids like this show. Of the original 12 invited from the entire country, with at least half coming in from the West Coast, not one declined.

Their team tests were ridden in the Dixon Oval, where they also received their awards. The juniors were stabled inside Devon, which made them more visible. They had the opportunity to listen on the headphones to the expert judge’s narration of the Grand Prix, to learn how to properly jog a horse from FEI veterinarian Midge Leitch, and to watch the freestyles on Saturday night.

That evening is usually magic, and it sure was again this year. The weather was perfect, the standard of the rides was high, and there was George Williams on his big-eared wonder mare, Rocher, to top the evening off with a lovely winning performance.

Riding there under the lights at Devon is one of my own fondest memories. One of my students, who had that experience for the first time this year, couldn’t stop bubbling about it for days, and her enthusiasm drove home to me how very special Devon is.