his horses were calm and showed impeccable manners. They even knew how to lie down and demonstrate rever- ence (bowing). Oliveira became a self-taught professional and fol-
lowed the method of Baucher’s “second manner,” out- lined in his book of the same name: the elevation of the neck from the beginning of training that was popular in Portugal at the time. As he was hard-working, talented and effective, the Lisbon high society started to study with him.
One of his students, Manuel de Barros, opened his
considerable library of French equestrian books, which also included German au- thors like Gustav Steinbrecht, known for Gymnasium of the Horse. Oliveira studied these books attentively and formu- lated his own method by try- ing out in his morning rides what he read the night be- fore. He understood both the usefulness of Baucher’s ideas and the counter-productivity of certain excessive method- ologies. He did the same with
Gustav Steinbrecht (1808-1885)
Steinbrecht’s book and La Guérinière’s advice in École de Cavalerie Complete Part II. The uniqueness of Oliveira’s work is based on his syn- thesis of the authors that preceded him. This approach required a considerable curiosity, dedication, reflection and, as Michel Henriquet said in his book Henriquet on Dressage, “the greatest equestrian intelligence of the twentieth century. It made Oliveira an innovator, though he always insisted that he “had not discovered or invent- ed anything new.” This humbleness is misleading: he trained hundreds of horses very successfully, some quite complicated, and did not waste any of them through lameness or replace them by buying easier ones. To train all horses to their potential requires ingenuity
and reflection. Oliveira often commented that ‘there may be a thousand solutions available to a horse trainer and if he/she knows the 999 that are not relevant to the prob- lem at hand, the horse won’t be trained until that solu- tion is found.’ Reading the right books and looking for the stories of past trainers revealing similar problems or re- flecting on the missing underlying principle that may not have been respected in our approach is always helpful. Some of his Portuguese students, who came to him with a solid horsemanship basis in cattle work,
bullfighting, hunting or show jumping and studied for long periods, became noted dressage trainers and teach- ers. They include Dom Jose Athayde (my other teacher during my years at the National Stud of Alter); Guilherme Borba and João Filipe Graciosa (first and second direc- tors of the Portuguese School of Equestrian Art); Dom Diogo de Bragança, noted au- thor of Dressage in the French Tradition; prolific trainer Pro- fessor Celestino da Costa, who had learned with Miranda in his youth; and João Trigueiros d’Aragao and his brother-in-law, the late Miguel Tavora, whose excellent book Dressage Princi- ples and Techniques: A Blueprint for the Serious Rider was just released. The foreign students who spent summer weeks there without a full immersion in the Portuguese equestrian culture skimmed the surface of the master’s technique and fared less well. Over the last 5,000 years, all the sensations com-
Miguel Tavora (1943 - 2017)
ing from the horse have been felt by somebody, all the tricks and techniques have been stumbled upon, many of the explanations have been made in one form or an- other and everything “new” has been simply a better it- eration of something “old,” an original construct made of old stones, used many times but not always well under- stood. We can only help the progression of horsemanship by following this process: study the old masters, try their ideas and observe the results, simplify the method and try to figure out the why of the how.
The Technology Aspect The classic authors, Xenophon, Grisone, Pluvinel, La Guérinière, M.C. D’Andrade, Baucher, Oeynhausen, Udo Burger, Raabe, Decarpentry, Oliveira etc., have made great efforts observing horses’ movement and behavior in a domestic herd or in a stable. Their reflections inspired the training methods described in their books. They rec- ommended that all riders should do the same. We need to follow that fundamental advice without the distorting filters of pseudo equine science agendas and a Disney version of anthropomorphism. Through their writings, those empirical observations have taught us a lot about the horse’s biomechanics, physiology and ethology (the study of social behavior of a given species, as in the work of Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz).
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