Different ear positions (of the horse silly!):
1. frontward position: I like you (or if you’re unlucky; I’m-gonna-spook positon)
2. sideward position: just-try-to-make-me-move
3. backward position: just-you-watch-what-happens-next
Posted by ML
1. If you really want to get better at dressage, take it up at an earlier age - and grow an extra 3 inches of leg.
2. A test that starts with an arrow straight centre line and a square halt signifies the start of a Hickstead Speed derby.
3. A dressage test is a test of your skill against another competitor’s luck.
4. Dressage is about achieving a harmonious working relationship with your horse, whose only idea of harmony is eating grass in a field with his buddies.
5. If you want to end a drought or dry spell, wear a new jacket and Patey hat to an outdoor arena.
6. Untalented, difficult, aggressive horses have robust health, good hocks and long lives.
7. Talented tractable horses are accident prone and have OCD lesions.
8. You will ride the best test of your entire life just prior to being disqualified for not wearing your gloves.
9. Never keep more than 300 separate thoughts in your head before a test.
10. Never keep less than another 300 separate thoughts in your head during a test.
11. Horses do not improve their paces because you are wearing expensive German breeches.
12. If you chose a disco theme for your dressage to music test then the judge will be more than 90 years of age and Swiss.
13. The less skilled the rider, the more likely they are to share their critique of your test.
14. If you are considering the services of a horse clairvoyant to help you with training then you have reached the point of total desperation - try the German breeches.
15. Your horse has never heard of Podhajsky let alone read the book.
16. No matter how badly you ride a test, it is always possible to ride a worse one.
17. If it ain’t broke, try shifting your position and it will be.
18. Judges only suffer from temporary blindness (or kindness) when they are judging someone else’s test.
20. If you fall off your horse in the arena you will have paid to have the test videoed.
21. If you are feeling confident before a show then three of the British dressage team will turn up to give their young horses some “experience.”
22. Your horse will perform its best piaffe ever when you ask for extended canter.
23. Since runs of bad competitions come in groups of three, the fourth competition is actually the beginning of the next group of three.
24. No one cheats at dressage because no one has worked out how to do it.
25. It is surprisingly easy to end a test with a perfect square halt once you have scored a four for every other movement.
26. The result of an expensive lesson from a top pro is that you will stop believing in that tiny piece of innate ability that was holding your riding together.
27. Remember when buying a dressage horse advertised as “needs experienced competitive rider” this really means “needs the skills of Phillip Dutton just to stay on board.”
28. If you think your test was better than someone elses, it probably wasn’t.
29. If you pay 60,000 for an imported WB, you will be beaten in First Level 4 by a quarter horse.
30. Clinics given by someone with an interesting accent are not necessarily superior to those given by the homeboy.
31. If you go to the expense of raising an expensive WB foal, he will have a talent for jumping and no walk worth talking about.
Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francesca Bannana Fanna Bo Besca the third
Jackie Smith
* Believe in the 11th Commandment: Inside leg to outside rein.
* Know that all topical medications come in either indelible blue or neon
yellow.
* Think nothing of eating a sandwich after mucking out stables.
* Know why a thermometer has a yard of yarn attached to one end of it.
* Are banned from Laundromats.
* Fail to associate whips, chains and leather with sexual deviancy.
* Can magically lower their voices five octaves to bellow at a pawing horse.
* Have a language all their own (”If he pops his shoulder, I have to close
that hand and keep pushing with my seat in case he sucks back”.)
* Will end relationships over their hobby.
* Cluck to their cars to help them up hills.
* Insure their horses for more than their cars.
* Will give you 20 names and reasons for that bump on your horse.
* Know more about their horse’s nutrition than their own.
* Have neatsfoot oil stains on the carpet right next to the TV.
* Have a vocabulary that can make a sailor blush.
* Have less wardrobe than their horse.
* Engage in a hobby that is more work than their day job.
* Mucking stalls is better then Zoloft any day.
Thanks to Joanna Kelly for sending me this!
A horse.
Posted by Courtney.
The horse stopped with a jerk.
The jerk fell off.
Posted by Ang.
