who had already done everything, and now he too knows how it should feel. Justin just earned his USDF gold medal riding Aconto, a horse who also earned gold medals for my brother-in-law and for my work- ing student Avery Hogan. Aconto really isn’t much of a horse—he’s not going to win any CDIs—but he won’t rear, he won’t buck and he won’t be a jerk. He will let the rider put the leg on. He’ll go up the centerline without any drama and he’s relatively honest. He can do all the movements and, while he’s not the best, riders are able to go in and do the pattern and ride the movements and when they get the right response they gain confidence. It’s less daunting, riding the Grand Prix on a horse like this, and so riders have the opportunity to achieve and attain their goals and develop the mental skills that they need to carry forward on another horse. Humans are creatures of imprint.
A lot of riders get to PSG/I-1 but then when they get to Grand Prix they have difficulties with piaffe. Every time they come to piaffe, they get the willies thinking this is the moment where the horse will run backwards or stand up—and they never get to do Grand Prix well. It’s always the piaffe that’s the problem. There are people who have a really bad imprint from a problem horse, and they just can’t get past it. It’s like kids; you imprint them with good manners. If they see their par- ents yell and scream, that’s what they think is normal. If their parents drink all the time, they think that’s normal. So you’re careful with what your kids see and do. It’s no different with riders and the horses they are exposed to. Sometimes a bad experience can hang over a rider forever. Some people are immune to this—no matter what happens on a horse, the next ride is totally different. But I think when people learn difficult stuff, like piaffe, it’s important to let them sit on horses that do it really well. Because then they are imprinted with the feeling of what it should feel like: how to sit and how the horse should feel. This person will then not feel that the correct aids create rearing, as they might with a horse that’s still learning. We have a horse that we call “the piaffe machine.”
Anybody can sit on him and feel the movement. Well- known comedian Stephen Colbert sat on Conchita and thought piaffe was easy! If riders can feel that some- thing is easy, like flying changes, they will approach that movement with their future horses with a good way of thinking. People have different fitness levels, strengths and so forth, of course, but so much of riding is mental. I might
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tell someone at a clinic, “You don’t ride any different from Isabel Werth,” and they look at me like I’m crazy. But fundamentally this is true: you have two legs, a seat, two hands, an upper body. Isabel doesn’t have 11 foot long legs! Edward Gall isn’t built differently from Justin Hardin, but Edward’s timing, confidence, his brain; they separate him from other riders. His way of thinking puts him above the rest. That’s what trained horses tend to give people. Up-and-coming upper level riders aren’t the only ones who can learn from well-trained horses. It begins— or it should—much sooner than that. It’s about what happens when a rider puts the leg on, when they pick up the reins. I often see people riding without a “road map.” They
“I might tell
someone at a clinic, ‘You don’t ride any different from Isabel
Werth,’ and they look at me like I’m crazy.”
don’t know what a horse is supposed to do when they take the rein. Rider XYZ in Small Town Wherever has never actually touched the horse’s mouth, be- cause he or she doesn’t know what a normal contact is and so they’re shooting in the dark. It’s like saying to someone who’s depressed, “Get happy.” They don’t know how to feel happy! The experienced horse—not necessarily a Grand Prix school- master, but a Second Level horse who takes a normal contact on the bit—can teach a rider how it should feel. The same goes for accepting the leg, moving sideways, opening
and collecting the gaits. The rider gets the feel for what a horse accepting the rider’s aid is, and that stays with him or her forever. It’s just so important to learn what correct accep-
tance of the aids feels like, and the best way to learn it is to feel it on a horse that is properly educated who responds appropriately to correct riding. The value of sitting on the experienced horse cannot be overstated, at every level.
An FEI dressage rider/trainer of Long Valley, New Jersey, and Loxahatchee, Florida, Michael Barisone has a thriving training business and several horses winning at Grand Prix, including HF Victor, Urbanus and Lauren Sprieser’s Ellegria. Michael was reserve for the 2008 Olympic team riding Neruda. He and his wife, Vera Kessels-Barisone, a Dutch native and Grand Prix dressage rider, purchase foals in Holland each year and produce all of their own Grand Prix horses.
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