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From: wilpolt@pbsvax.DEC (Carrie Wilpolt)
Newsgroups: net.rec
Subject: Instruction in EQUESTRIAN activities (LONG)
Message-ID: <1110@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Oct-85 12:16:15 EST
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Posted: Mon Oct 28 12:16:15 1985
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Re: Dressage and Combined Training instruction 

 [ Boy, net.rec is getting fun! (climbing, riding, when do we get
	to whitewater?) Of course, the problem with climbers and
	horse-enthusiasts on the net is that their submissions tend
	to be LONG.  My apologies; I think this is because the sports 
	are somewhat complex, and because the contributors are so excited
	about finding others out there who share an interest in their 
	(relatively uncommon) activity.
 ]

Outline: (you KNOW it's long when...)

	1. My background (novice, combined training)
	2. My experience with instruction
		(I agree with initial observation: lower level
		riders in CT can get excellent instruction)
	3. Three reasons I can see for dressage/CT instructors
	   to take on novices:
		a) Financial
		b) "Newness" of sports relative to Europe.
		c) Attention to basics in dressage/CT.
	4. True beginners really can't expect to get olympic-level
		instructors, despite all my arguments.

---- begin lengthy exposition:

	I have been riding for about five years, off and on (so to speak).
I have never owned a horse, but have always had instruction, and for the
past two years competed at lower levels in Combined Training events. 
I rode for one summer in the Chicago area, and since then in Massachusetts,
with progressively better instructors.  I still have a long way to go,
but I was able to place in many of the events that I competed in, despite
using a scruffy, chunky 14.2 hand QH-cross schooling horse.

	I, too, was impressed that an instructor as good as my last was
willing to take on beginners, and would go so far as to lease her school
horses to her students, and to TAKE them to horse trials.  While not 
nationally known, Janet knew many international level competitors
personally, often because she shared instructors with them, some who she
apparently met while getting British (pony club?) teaching certification.
I hesitate to mention names (since "quality" is in the eye of the beholder
anyway), but she studied with an internationally well-known rider in the past,
and until recently with a (lesser-known?) nationally ranked rider (but I
doubt that the move was a step down).  In her case, reasons for taking on
beginners were both financial (see below) and small-operation limitations. 
However, before moving out of my area, she told me that if I had a reasonable
horse, I could take lessons from her instructor!  Finally, I also know of 
riders who have had the chance to study dressage with top GERMAN instructors
(Spanish Riding School quality) who were living in this area.  

	I can think of a few reasons why dressage & combined training hotshots
are willing to take less advanced students than other trainers.

	Both dressage and CT, from what I can tell, offer significantly
less in monetary awards (if anything!) than the hunter/jumper show circuit. 
As a result of the cup/stakes awards, perhaps instructors in the h/j circuit 
come have come to feel that it's not worth investing their time in riders
(and horses!) who don't already show enough talent to do well in the compe-
tition.  It's probably a perpetuating process, too: Morris instructs the
up-and-coming hot-shots, who continue to earn more money to pay Morris.
Coaching takes a lot of time, so probably once he's got a few winning students
who have thus shown their dedication to the sport and their willingness
to give him lots of money, he doesn't need to make time for novices.  
So this first possible reason is that there is a bigger chunk of the 
equestrian population that is interested in competing and paying for coaching
in circuits that offer monetary awards. Dressage and CT hotshots, though, 
don't get swept up into the monetary awards, since there aren't any.  
Both are "younger" sports in this country, in that they have only recently 
begun to attract any significant fraction of the equestrian world.  Thus,
there are not only fewer competitors and instructors, but fewer students 
as well.  To make a living, even the hotshots need to take on students, if
they need any money at all. (I think there's an element of elitism here, too:
if you don't have the bucks and the time to buy a fancy horse and dedicate
yourself, how can you expect to make yourself a peer of these riders who 
spend their time travelling around to shows?  I think of dressage and CT
as a little friendlier world, certainly a smaller world, where weekend 
competitions are not so strongly associated with a "circuit", so there are
fewer "circuit" riders, who might otherwise band more tightly together to 
dominate the scene.)

	This leads me into a second possible explanation, related to the
above-mentioned "newness" of dressage and CT in this country.  Because 
American riders are only just now becoming good enough to compete with 
the Europeans, and because there are simply fewer people involved in the
sports, there is less of a range between novices and experts, and so there
is room for "new blood" even near the top.  Don't get me wrong:  dressage
especially is a sport that takes YEARS of dedication, and thus it takes
a LONG time for a novice to become an "expert" (longer than any other sport
I can think of).  However, in this country, the experts just aren't as expert,
nor as numerous, as in Europe, so they have good reason to take on students
of almost any ability.  Many of our top dressage and CT riders are simply 
not as well established as their h/j counterparts, and they are only now
beginning to restrict the kinds of students that they will take on.

	A third explanation I'll call "dedication to correctness". Dressage
demands precision, and at every level in dressage, the basics of straightness,
suppleness, and impulsion CANNOT be overlooked or underemphasized.  The
dressage community has finally begun to impress upon other disciplines
that without a strong balanced seat in a good frame on the flat, one cannot 
expect to be able to ride with control over fences or around barrels (the 
principles, by the way, are the same whether english or western, though the 
aids and the emphases may vary).  So perhaps dressage and CT instructors
are happy to get lower level riders, so that they can teach the basics before
any bad habits are learned, and perhaps they consider even some of the riders
with more experience to be virtually novices, since bad habits must be
broken and the SAME exercises on the basics must be done (over and over
again(!), though perhaps with different emphasis each time).  

	Last, remember that you're living smack in the middle of "Olympic
country", so there are probably more top-level instructors around here 
than in, say, Oklahoma.  

	On the other hand, it's not as if Olympic level riders are taking on 
students who have never been on a horse before.  Your wife and I may both
be impressed that we can ride with the stars, but then, we've both been
riding for a few years, right?  I'm still very impressed, but I also know
of dressage snobs who won't give me the time of day for another few years,
unless I bought a warmblood (preferably too big for me to ride) tomorrow
(and then they'd be disappointed for the warmblood!).

--carrie wilpolt
	...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-pbsvax!wilpolt
	wilpolt@dec-hudson.arpa