G-Spot will be the "phrase of the day."

play Harvard in The Game...

god, this is funny...

not out of touch
i never even knew horses did this
i thought it was all jumping
this sport is a combo of
got horses/money/time to waste
is it even a sport? maybe like nascar is

It is a really beautiful sport that is difficult to master as a rider and takes years to teach to a horse.

teaching a horse to prance like that combine to make it laughable in the context of most Americans' lives.

Of and by itself, it's fine. Context is everything, doncha think?

but one could say the same for gymnastics or ice skating (and they wear silly outfits too). I am really not trying to be a problem on your thread, and I certainly don't mean to defend Mrs Romney. Dressage, though, is actually useful for horse people of all stripes, many of whom never wear a top hat and go to the big dance. I used to show hunter-jumpers (kit is just as silly, but a tiny bit more practical). I am just a horsey person who really likes a well trained horse.

on edit... dyslexia

ice skating, so they can relate. Dressage is pretty foreign to their experience and makes people wonder who has the time/money to do this. Plus, of course, it's EUROPEAN (eek!)!

but don't discount the "back yarders" of the world. There are a lot of ponies and horses in kids' back yards, even dirt poor country folk. This top-hat-grand-prix level stuff is one thing, but just about any rider (any style) who has ridden for any amount of time knows how to neck-rein, leg-yield, and bend their horse around their leg..... all basic dressage whether english or western.

stuff like this and fox hunting idylls in New Jersey (a la Jackie O).

Horses, in particular, are associated with rich useless people, but the vast majority of horse people are not wealthy. Which is all I was trying to get at... sorry to take so long in getting there.

BTW, I was born and raised in Texas. I'm not unfamiliar with horses and horse people...

share the same foundation training that dressage horses get. Virtually identical, with the same European roots. At least the top reining horses do.

When I was in my late teens/early 20s, a rider by the name of Sydley Paine re-trained her national reining champion quarter horse, Scarteen, to grand prix dressage. She was a top contender for the USET Olympic team, but didn't quite make the cut.

There are a ton of backyarders out there who are quite familiar with dressage. Some of us were first exposed to it as children, when Walt Disney made the movie The Miracle of the White Stallions, the story of how George Patton helped save the Spanish Riding School lipizzaners from falling into the hands of the Nazis.

Some of us dreamed of learning to ride and train dressage from that time on, scraping together what experience and instruction we could. We make huge sacrifices.

My last apartment could fit into the tack room of one barn where I boarded my horse at. The tack room was actually quite a bit nicer. But, priorities.

When I was growing up there was an expression about quarter horses: they can stop on a quarter and give you 15 cents change. Your post about reining made me think of that, altho my family lived in the city and had relatives out in the country.

Last edited Wed Apr 25, 2012, 05:54 PM - Edit history (1)

Some of them are wealthy...but a whole bunch are far, far from it. They absolutely love horses and various equestrian pursuits (including dressage and eventing), and make some pretty serious financial sacrifices to further that passion. I'd bet that for every millionaire equestrian there's at least one who's more like Ree Dolly in the film Winter's Bone: asking for help from their neighbors to keep their horses fed while they struggle in this crap economy.

Edit: typo fix

Duchess. She was a great rider and had been riding her entire life. She didn't live long enough to "age out" of horseback riding, so she loved it all of her life...

Lots of little girls take classes in those.

Horseback riding and gymkhana also pretty common among the middle class, but dressage?

Who is going to put a 10-year-old on top of a $200,000 horse?

Dressage is one of those few sports that is ONLY practiced by the rich.

I'd put polo and fox hunting in the same category.

All three sports involve having a specially trained horse, leisure time, and buckets of money to throw away.

I played polo. I never earned more than $12k a year at the time. Watching it is pretty cheap too - never paid anywhere near NFL prices to watch the pros play. Are all baseball fans and players at all levels Steinbrenner-rich? WHY, precisely, are equestrian sports only for the rich?

and many of us train our own. I rescued an arab from neglect and starvation, started him under saddle myself and trained him to schooling all the FEI movements. I currently have a young arabian mare -- this time I rescued her backyard owner/breeder who had more horses than stalls headed into winter -- that I will be starting this spring. She has shown signs of piaffe and passage while out playing, and I expect her to be capable of most if not all the FEI movements.

I'm saving now to hopefully get a warmblood foal to raise and start all over, since they are temperamentally easier (and I'm older, so bones more breakable).

It is only if you are planning on competing on the "A" circuit at the upper levels that you need to spend a lot of money. Otherwise, it is all about hard work, discipline, passion, love for the horse.

It is not cheap,, but it is doable. And here is something else; it is *far* more rewarding to bring along your own prospect, in your own back yard, caring for every detail, then it is to pay out a zillion dollars for a horse that somebody else trained. It took Anne 10 years to learn to sit correctly and ride a GP test. Big fucking deal. I had one fucking year of lessons and had Fritz Stecken, at the time considered the top dressage trainer in the world, tell an entire clinic that I had an "excellent seat on a horse." I was allowed to ride other people's Grand Prix horses after only 2 years of lessons. I was one of 4 students chose to ride in a lesson in front of the Director of the Spanish Riding School. I was not rich. Anne might be able to buy those experiences will her millions, but they would be simulations.

What great accomplishments you have had.... your ride at the Spanish Riding School must have been truly awesome! Good luck to you on your quest to acquire a warmblood. That will be a great project. If I had the land and/or the financial means, I would LOVE to find green babies off the track and train them on the flat... dressage (warmbloods would be ideal, but I gotta start in the bargain basement/rescue ). I don't have a lot of interest in hunters and jumpers anymore due to a spectacular crash I had back when I was 16 (A circuit junior jumpers), and the brittleness of my aging body lol.... but I too have (had?) a good seat and good hands and a love of horses that I just can't shake

Yikes! I didn't get to ride at the SRS, lol. Except maybe in a dream or 2.

It took until I was 50 to get the land to bring my old guy home. It has been an adventure...the worst part was discovering the fraud. Thought I had bought 5.7 acres, only to find years later that it was 2.5. (I remember many years ago overhearing 2 people at work in the hallway. While rolling her eyes, the women said, "well...Maine acres" and she and the man she was talking to burst out laughing. Funny the memory clips that resurface decades later when they suddenly have meaning...)

When I was 14, we boarded our family horse (a semi-retired polo pony) at a nearby farm where new owners brought in a string of horses straight off the track. My first riding job -- my best friend and I cleaned tack to ride, reschooling the racers for show hunters. Then they saw me jump my polo pony over a 3' coop bareback. And suddenly I was taken off tack duty and given 5 fillies to train. I would get out of school and head straight to the barn, ride until 9, make myself dinner, do homework until 11 or so, every day. I would actually end up working with up to a dozen, my own, the 5 assigned, plus helping the other riders out if they hit stumbling blocks. Heaven for a year. Then the farm owners fell on hard times. I can't stand to think of what became of those horses.

I realized my mistake after I had posted and left the house again. Wait a minute, s/he said the "Director of" not "at". Oh well, that is still quite an honor.

I was fortunate in that my folks could pay for lessons when I was little, and bought me a large pony to get started showing for real when I was about 13 (and a fabulous aunt that loves horses as much as I to ferry me to and fro. I rode at a big stable and my trainer had a lot of horses in training. I got to ride a lot of them.... sometimes as punishment and sometimes as reward. I also rode my fellow juniors' horses a lot too because I was ALWAYS at the barn . I managed to do well enough at shows to keep my habit going, but the crash really ended it... flipped my horse at a big oxer in a speed class. I lost my heart for show jumping. I tried to get back for a while. Trainer put me on his retired grand prix horse, presumably to get my confidence back, but it never came, and I quit the show ring. I carried on a bit longer doing the riding team stuff at school, and did well, but it wasn't enough, plus I ran out of money, and got out of school. Can't stay on the A circuit without a bankroll, as you or perhaps someone else, mentioned. I do want to go back to riding, but not necessarily being on the road every week etc doing the circuit(even if I had the cash). Teaching babies how to be good horses on the flat would make me happy... their next owners can do the events, shows, rodeos and whatnots. I do not know a lot of heavy duty dressage, I mean the official movements etc, but want to learn more than what was useful for jumpers and the USET medal class at every show.

After a big crash, while in the hospital they (she, her husband/trainer and possibly her employer) put their heads together to figure out what to do. She switched to dressage. The rest is history. If she can do it, so can you.

I started out dreaming about dressage after I saw Miracle at age 11. Convinced my parents to buy me my 1st book on dressage, Seunig's Horsemanship, for $8. And then was self taught on our family's hand-me-down, retired polo pony. At 12-13, I was too short to reach her back with the saddle, so would climb the fence, hop on bareback and gallop around with halter and lead shank. Sometimes not even with that much tack, lol! At 14 we moved her to the barn with the race horses and I got my year of on-the-job training.

When I was 16 my 2 older sisters decided to take riding lessons together and asked me where to go. I sent them to Fox Hollow Farms, which had Lockie Richards as their new resident trainer. Lockie had recently moved up from (I forget the name of the big farm) in Maryland or thereabouts. It had been the model used when Disney made another horse movie about a riding school with Annette Fullofjello (forget her real name, that's what my sisters called her!). Dam, I can't remember the name of the movie now... The Horsemasters I think!

Anyway, once my 2 sisters were taking lessons there, it was easy to get my parents to let me join them for our own small group. We started with one of Lockie's assistant instructors, but after about 3 months of lessons, one day we were riding inside and she had me jump a big oxer-type -- it was about 4'6 I think. She ran out and got one of the other instructors to come and watch me. And then I got moved in with Lockie's top junior group (B-level pony clubbers) and a second lesson with a professional group. Lockie won his 2nd national 3-day title that year with Star Task, who was sold to the USET. He was simultaneously reserve champion on Hull, who went to the Canadian Team. Locke left to become principal of the American Dressage Institute, which shared stables with Skidmore College.

I followed Lockie to Skidmore and rode for one year with him there, where I got to ride all their horses, from the youngsters in training to the actively performing and competing GP horse (Goldlack, he's on the cover of Lockie's book Begin the Right Way), and the semi-retired GP horse. All thoroughbreds.

I gave it up temporarily due to money and personal issues. It was a long time to get it back. It has been a long, hard slog. My parents never really supported imy riding My father got the family horse to "keep the girls out of trouble." They made one, semi-serious foray into it when the bought me a competition prospect picked out by Lockie, but then crapped all over it the way only the GOPers can. My beautiful Teago paid the price with his life.

Lockie went home to New Zealand, founded the Kiwis, gave Mark Todd and others their foundations, but is largely unknown and forgotten by the current people.

There are things I wish I'd done differently, but when I put myself back there and remember, I know why I made the choices I made. I just wish some things had worked out differently. Still, I have my beautiful, albeit tiny, arabian mare with big, gorgeous trakehner-type gaits to play with. And hopefully will be able to save enough or somehow come into the money to get a second chance at an FEI prospect...

family farms in the area. Plenty of those people had horses. None of them were wealthy, and lots of the girls did dressage. I used to go see them at the county fair because a co-worker's daughter always entered.
To me, that some consider cheerleading a sport is laughable.

I haven't seen them for the last several years. What happened? They used to have these beautiful horses (cold bloods) competing. Their drivers were people of the land, farmers and horse breeders, ordinary folks. Women competed too!

It's an antique farm implements festival of sorts. Thresheree.

I forgot that that is what it is called. I guess I just stopped going to them. There's lots going on there in the summer what with the symphony, all of the Door County artists' exhibits, musical theatre, and plays. Quite a vibrant art scene...

I'm going back in June for my son's wedding. I can't wait.

I lived there for 15 years. My ex father in law had a place in Egg Harbor.

Fil place was right on the water.

Looking at this minus the political context, I agree with you.

Not sure, however, how the top hatted guy riding a dancing horse is gonna play out in the land...

You know, I think wind surfing is a great sport and technically difficult, but look what the pukes did to John Kerry...

came from the battlefield. Much like those events in rodeo come from the old days of cattle drives and ranching. Just as jousting events came from practice for the battlefield.

That aside, I'm more interested in getting people to realize that there is something to be said for having more than just the daily grind in their lives. That all people, regardless of credit rating or job title, should have in their lives, art, music, sport, literature, and so on. When we started losing that ideal, that one works to live rather than lives to work, is when it became possible to treat people as nothing more than easily exploitable cogs.

I don't know much about wind surfing. I do know it doesn't matter what a Democratic candidate does for leisure; the political machine will use anything, even outright lies, to ridicule any Democrat. I just wish we could get back to the idea that leisure is as valuable as work. And you know, some days I say we fight the repubs at their level and some days I think we are better than that. Today I am in the later state of mind.

As you probably know from my Challenges, I am an avid art lover, probably "a fine madness" in my life. So I can relate exactly to what you are saying...

and short stories and other writing as so much scribbling.

Or when I hear people ridicule various art forms as not being "work" or productive or worthwhile.

And, speaking of work, I now have to leave for same. *sigh*

Of fancy pageant walking

Top dressage horses go for hundreds of thousands of dollars, minimum. To compete at a Grand Prix or top level, horses can cost millions. How can we find out?

about Ann's dressage horses and their upkeep. They'll probably just try to pass it off as "Ann, the animal lover" or "Ann, the horse lover." Terms like that are "safe" with the American people.

I don't suppose this is much of a sport in, say, Rwanda.....

My daughter did dressage for years. We're not rich, we don't own a horse. She went to a local pony club which has a number of horses. She paid a monthly fee (nothing exorbitant) and as part of the deal she had to brush down the horse and clean the stall.

She also did some show jumping at the same club.

I enjoyed it, altho the school was not for me and I transferred out after my freshman year. None of the other young women I rode with were very rich. I'd say middle class. No dressage tho.

at the apex is the Spanish Riding School where many of the "airs above the ground" are actually tactical war moves utilized to take out opponents.

Its really useful for virtually all horse sports, english or western, as it teaches the horse to be obedient and responsive regardless of whether they have the athletic abilities to master the moves at the highest levels.

The old military equestrian test used to last 3 days and included dressage, show jumping, and cross country jumping. A modified form of the old military test also still exists in modern form as combined training or eventing. Many of the western show classes at rodeos are also testing field skills for ranch hands.

These are simply sports that have persisted from the past. Honestly, I'm glad there are people who care enough to keep these old "arts" alive and thriving. Like fencing (another venerable sport) it's a remnant of an older era.

Edited to add that I don't begrudge Ann Romney her passion for dressage. What's aggravating is that she tries to portray herself as just another SAHM - dressage queens are anything but that....

Actually, I don't begrudge Ann that either and I agree with your assessment. The whole thing with Hillary Rosen just infuriated me.

Oh well, after the election, Ann can return to her hobby and not have a worry in the world. Unlike the moms, working and SAH alike, who will still have to struggle.

Great info and yeah, I'm with you on Ann Rmoney.



Julie