“You can spit in their ear to get them to canter,” a former coach of mine, Robert Hall, used to say, when emphasising how easy it is to train a horse if you use any aid consistently. In a demonstration I will often demonstrate this point by doing something silly, like pulling the hairs behind the saddle as I give the normal aids for canter. I do this about ten times, then take the leg away completely and just pull the hairs and most horses…

This is my ten year old son on his 24 year old 11.2 pony - both of whom need to be carefully minded. They are jumping a fairly substantial fence. Quite a challenge and quite a risk many would say, but the two of them can do this time and time again with little risk. In fact my son can ride down to this fence like an international rider, in terms of getting his balance right and presenting his pony at exactly the right take off point, despite…

I remember the occasion well. It was the Fourburrow Pony Club camp in Cornwall, in the south west of England. I was 12 and a typical thin gangly kid. As you can see in the photograph above I was six foot tall on stick legs and all curled up on a 14.2 pony....my brilliant mare Charlie's Aunt. So what did my coach do? She took away my irons and made me ride and jump all morning with no stirrup irons, just like so many coaches have done before…

I see no difficulty in bringing together good dressage, jump and cross country training. Indeed I believe it produces a better, more efficient and humane training programme....a point also made by Dressage legend Reiner Klimke who also evented and show jumped to a high level as a young man. I believe the dressage helps the jumping which in turn helps the dressage. It is all about having the flexibility to choose from the fullest range of exercises to benefit each rider and horse…

I am very disappointed to hear that a number of people have inaccurately interpreted the messages in my last blog to the extent that I am being portrayed as anti-dressage.



I LOVE DRESSAGE



Let me make it 100% clear that I love good dressage at any level, and I am in love with seeing a rider and horse working in harmony and with real quality...to me each moment is then something of great beauty and still gives me enormous pleasure on a daily basis. Good dressage training…

On February 8th Hartpury College in the UK are hosting an International Eventing Conference entitled ‘Training for Safety’. An admirable aim without doubt and some great sessions are scheduled for the day, so the organisers are to be congratulated. However the description of one of the presentations worries me greatly. The title is Dressage – the relationship with Jumping. The description explains that Pammy Hutton FBHS will dispel the ‘myth’ that the higher level of dressage can be…