There is no mystery why I get up and ride every day. The reason I get up early and work so hard to fit in my riding is because of the love I have for horses, especially the ones I am responsible for.

I am freshly home from the wonderful Dressage by the Sea at Willinga Park. What an amazing setting for this year’s FEI World Cup Pacific League Final. Roger Fitzhardinge asked me one morning after I had ridden my horse for arena familiarisation, “What motivates you to get up early and do this, fitting it in around work and all the other things you do, year after year?”

The first answer that came to mind I discounted as too trite, so I gave him a longwinded reply about training a succession of Grand Prix horses. But I want to set the record straight. The reason I get up early and work so hard to fit in my riding is because of the love I have for horses, especially my own riding horses.

I love to see my horses in the morning and care for them. I love that they recognise me and seem to want to see me – even if it’s because they know that I have carrots in my pockets, especially since I have become more committed to positive reinforcement training.

I love to get to know them as individuals, their quirks and likes and dislikes. I love to get to know how they react to new things. All horses are naturally curious, but some are braver in approaching things, some are more timid, and some are quick to run away. Some seem to want to do the right thing, some are grumpier and need to be helped to learn that, really, they do want to do the right thing.

I love to help them become strong and gymnastic, see them become more beautiful as the correct work muscles them up and they become rounder, more powerful. A well-trained horse becomes more confident in themselves, and sometimes a clearer personality shines through as the horse matures.

The thing I love the most is building a relationship with a horse. Trust is the foundation of all relationships, the way I see it. I want my horses to feel safe and secure with me. I want them to feel that I am someone who helps organise their experience – a secure base to explore from and a safe haven to come back to if they are stressed. I want to be attuned to their experience so that I can respond to them in a sensitive and reciprocal way. As I become attuned to them, they will become attuned to me. I will be able to get a reaction to a smaller aid or signal to get a response.

BECOMING ATTUNED

A young riding horse learns to stop and go and turn from signals with the reins and the legs. As you train a dressage horse to respond to the subtler aids to build balance, suppleness and obedience, they become more attuned to you, the rider. They come to respond to the half-halt, that I understand as like a ripple of energy across the horse. First, a little balance with the rein and second, a moment of push with the legs followed by a softening to encourage him to find self-carriage with the little bit of energy you have created.

As the horse and I become more attuned to each other and his capacity to balance develops, he will become less and less reliant on the rein and leg aids. He starts to react to what I am doing with my core muscles. He will do with his body something like what I am doing with mine. If I want him to balance on his hind leg, I balance myself more on his hind leg. If I am working on laterals like shoulder-in or pirouettes, I want him to bend, so I turn my shoulders towards where I want him to face, perhaps with a twist so my hips will be parallel to where I want his hips to face. If I want more expression in the pace, more cadence as we build the steps towards the piaffe and passage, I might make my core more like a spring and ask him to follow this energy.

With this kind of more advanced training, it starts to feel like he is reading my mind, because he will respond to what I do with my deep core muscles automatically when I think of a movement before I have consciously asked for it. This is a magic and very elusive feeling. Of course, we both get a big hit of dopamine in our brains and we want to do it again (the research suggests that trained animals get a hit of dopamine when they successfully do something they are trained to do).

I believe that the Grand Prix horses do respond more to what riders are doing with their core muscles than what riders are doing with their hands and legs. For me this is the real beauty and attraction of Grand Prix dressage. It requires a high level of attunement to perform the Grand Prix with softness and suppleness. There are many paths to the Grand Prix but they all require a lot of work to the horse, from the gangly baby to the Grand Prix. The feeling of attunement is not exclusive to dressage, but the Grand Prix offers opportunity to develop it.

This is my own experience as an amateur trainer of dressage horses. That is all I can talk about – my own experience. I am not an expert, just a person on a journey of discovery. My own experience is with a very small sample size of horses that I have selected myself. I think that when you select a horse, there is some left-brain analytic thinking that goes on (the pedigree, the conformation, the quality of the paces) and some right-brain unconscious process, which I think is more about how the horse feels. And for me, I think it’s about, can I feel the capacity to be attuned to my core? This is why I think that a double bridle is unnecessary on a so-called finished or trained horse. The bit becomes less important as the dressage training advances. Sadly, those who write the rules seem not to have had these experiences as they seem to think the finished horse needs all that metal in their mouths.

I cannot say that this true for every horse or rider. But this feeling, this relationship, is what motivates me to get up in the morning to ride early, to make time to ride five or six days a week, to go to the gym to keep fit enough. This is what motivates me to start the work of making a Grand Prix horse and get on that younger horse who challenges my ageing ability so much.

My motivation is that I enjoy the journey of building the relationship of mutual trust that leads to a place of attunement when the horse responds to my core. The feeling is like being a centaur, two hearts together. A romantic ideal that is attainable, but only with hours and years of building a horse, building a relationship, finding the keys to each horse, making many mistakes, owning and correcting them. Trying to have integrity, valuing the journey – and every now and again feeling that you have arrived at a destination.

I hope I have the opportunity and privilege to go along the path with a few more sand-dancing partners. EQ

Have fun!

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