The Art of Dressage

Image grabbed from BestHorse Photos

Dressage has been one of the sports that needs total patience and hard work as it is not easy to train horses with the art of this activity.  During dressage, there is an aim to control your horse with its movements such as in gaiting, hopping, turning, forwards and backwards and as well as in halting.  What made the sport more impressive is the ability of the rider to understand the movement of his horse and ride with him harmoniously together and not ride against his companion. 

The sport has been basically and literally a training as its French origin word suggests.  During the training, there is systematic and progressive activity of riding the horses for them to almost perfectly execute wide ranges of precise maneuvers. 

Campagne, is what they call for the first or elementary training served for the young horses.  Training is best learned when given since at an early age, just like with humans.  So, what champagne training does is to teach the young horse to be obedient, to be balanced and to be relaxed.  All these kinds of basics are needed in order to control and manage the animal's actions and to teach him focus.  To do this, the young is first taught through training rope then under the saddle.  Little by little, he is to do variety of gaits.  He is also to learn the half and full halts.  And there is backing and turning as well.  After he is able to complete and master these basics, the capable horse is then trained to do more complex movements, such as forms in diagonal, circles, eights and canter variations.

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Excel in training your horse for dressage events. Do not allow him to suffer from digestive ulcers. Use equine omeprazole during training to avoid ulcers in horses.

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The next phase to the training is what we call the advanced dressage termed as haute école (high school).  During this level, the horse is to be trained with two kinds of movements.  The first one is done where the horse does an activity with feet on the ground and jumps from a stationary position.  This training is simply called the on-the-ground moves and is associated with moves termed as pirouettes, piaffe, passage and levade.  The other one is what we simply call as the off-the-ground moves where the horse is being trained in opposite with the first one.  This training is associated with moves termed as courbette, ballotade and capriole.  During this phase, the horse is able to complete and perform his trainings even though there is no rider mounted on him.  This art of dressage has been part of the Olympic Games where the competition began since 1912 joined by notable equestrians.