I listened in on a webinar last week with a Q&A session hosted by an FEI dressage judge who had some, hm, strong perspectives on the future of the sport. Granted, a lot of horse people have strong opinions, and judges are quite literally tasked with, ya know, judgement.
welcome to another episode of two dozen pivo screenshots!
So it’s not surprising when they take advantage of a presentation platform to get up on their soapbox and expound upon the issues they see as most critical. All that to say — as with anything, we listen with open ears and open minds and also a grain of salt at the ready.
here’s the video if you’d rather see it in motion.
only about ~8min this time
It was timely for me, tho, bc I’d actually just recently scribed the dressage at a USEA event for a judge whom I’ve known for years. Lovely lady — witty, clever, and realistic about horses and riders presenting at all the various levels of skills and experience.
not sure what it’s going to take to make me shorten my reins LOL
Naturally she and I chatted throughout the day about all sorts of topics. Our impressions of the 2026 tests, the various local pros and their up and coming horses. Her past experiences, my experiences with Doozy and our dressage struggles etc. All the things. And the change in scoring formats for the test collectives came up too.
happier about my posture in a lot of these moments tho
I may or may not have even whined about how Doozy and I consistently get nailed in the “Harmony” collective. That instead of the score reflecting more or less our test average, judges often use it to make a point about their overall impression of how we go. Which this particular judge (having, ya know, not seen us go but just chatting with me) agreed seemed harsh and maybe unfair.
lots of halt transitions throughout the video
So fast forward a couple days to this webinar with the FEI dressage judge who… Honestly kinda blasted my whinge right out of the water. She got up on her soapbox and practically shouted at us that “the harmony collective isn’t going anywhere!” And that even in the FEI classes (she was particularly preoccupied with pure dressage in the Olympics) the general impression scores are shifting to prioritizing harmony.
then right back into forward again, really pleased with basically all of our canter transitions
She predicted that judges at all levels and in all aspects of dressage will be increasingly using that collective score to “make a point,” and that the “wow factor would not win over harmony in the future.” Short necks, open mouths, BTV frames, a lot of tension… The more prevalent any of that is in a test, the lower the score will go.
we’re still mostly bracing and above the bit, but she was decently relaxed anyway
Which. Ya know. It’s so funny how the world works sometimes, right? To go literally from one day complaining about how the scoring seems unfair or impossible for our sensitive reactive hot house flowers… To just days later sitting in on a webinar where the message is a loud and clear, “Buck up, buttercup, and do better!”
emma. shorter reins WILL help you communicate better, i swear!
And so. As one does, I updated our “vocabulary word of the daymonthyearlifetime” exercise with Doozy. Now we have two vocabulary words: Composure. Forever, obvi. And the newest addition: Harmony.
trying to ride forward into organization, not backward!
And a new measurable goal to go with that: I’d like to ride our dressage tests such that the Harmony collective actually DOES represent a more positive reflection of our scores. So like, if we ride a wild ‘n woolly test that nets us a 45% penalty score (55% in pure dressage), then yea a Harmony collective of 5.5 is expected.
i’m actually happy with some of our canter moments for once!
But historically, a lot of judges have rounded that down to a 5.0 for us, based on their general impression of how we go. Looking forward, I’d like to prioritize a style of riding that makes it more likely for a judge to round up to a 6.0, with some sort of sympathetic comment like, “Unfortunate tension today!” lol. A girl can dream, right?
doozy thinks the halt transitions are stupid, but she squared up anyway!
Right lol. To go hand in hand with my new goal, I’m bringing a fresh newfound zeal to my persistently terrible upper body posture. Bc damn, it just seems CRAZY to me that despite literally a decade of bitching about it here on ye olde blogge, zillions of lessons, and now doing yoga basically every damn day… I STILL sit like a friggin potato on the horse.
and forward again, good girl
And it turns out… Most dressage judges are all too eager to blame the rider’s poor position and use of aids for a messy test or horse who isn’t going well.
don’t look now, but somebody is developing a little elasticity!
Now it IS true that part of the problem is just my own personal conformation. I have a short torso, short arms, and the sort of bust line that, when taken all together, really amplifies any impression of slouching. But… It’s also true that even when I really am trying so god damn hard to sit up straight with shoulders back… I’m just like, not. My body is lying to me, I swear!
lol @ her face…. “halt is my least favorite speed” — doozy, 1,000%
Recently, tho, one of the yoga teachers at my studio did a multi-week class focused on “grounding,” emphasizing a strong energetic connection and downward flow through whatever body part was in contact with the ground in each pose — feet, hands, spine, sit bones, etc.
we hit the block, whoops
And it brought a different awareness and feeling for me. Most often, I’ve thought of stretching ‘up,’ sitting ‘up,’ feeling lifted and tall. But this yoga flow was all about the energetic push down to find the full expression of the posture. Ymmv, but for me, this is a really helpful new way to think about finding that strong open and tall core — pushing down into the sit bones to find the strength and stability to lengthen into a taller frame.
“false alarm, everything is fine!” — doozy, composed just one step later <3 <3
It’s not a silver bullet, obvi. At this rate, so many of my muscular postural habits are very very deeply ingrained. But maybe it’s helping?
proud of the pivo for coping despite not being alone in the ring!
Idk. All that to say, this most recent Pivo-recorded ride had a few fundamental areas of focus:
- Lateral suppleness with lots of inside leg even when Doozy tries to convince me I should take my leg off lol…
- HARMONY
- And, lastly, sitting tall (but-i-fucking-mean-it-this-time) for the camera
determined to work on my canter lol
Oh. And not shying away from working on the canter haha. And transitions too. Bc apparently none of it gets better if we don’t practice. Go figure!
pretty much satisfied with our how we finished the ride
And guys, Doozy is loving my newfound embrace of riding forward. There’s a lot more smoothness in all of our transitions — particularly trot to canter, but also the downwards too. Especially if I remember to keep my leg on, she really seems better able to get her legs up under her and hold a more comfortable balance — vs spurting off onto the forehand or snowballing into an avalanche of a pulling match.
one last halt with lots of pets, obvi
We still see a fair amount of bracing especially through the underneck, but I’m inclined to think that’s mostly a strength thing in the downward transitions, and maybe a lack of good preparation + reins too long for the upwards.
still lookin pretty relaxed after all that! <3 <3
Again, tho, that’s also kinda the beauty of the Pivo LOL. Like, to spend as much time studying / editing / screen shooting that video as I do, and be thinking ‘ugh Emma shorten your reins!’ the whole time? Perhaps that’ll be the lesson that sticks lol.
We’ll see, I guess! Anybody else working on any positional breakthroughs, or general feelings on the future of judging in the sport?
Happy Monday, folks! In what is likely to become a recurring feature around here, I’m gonna do another deep dive into a recent schooling ride, recorded with the benefit of my new favorite device, the Pivo!
warm up walkies!
Don’t worry, tho. It’s mostly just a lot of screenshots, not too too many words. I promise! Sorta! Plus there’s video to keep me honest — virtually the whole ride, minus the walk breaks and the first 2-3 minutes of trotting.
if you’d rather just skip to the video, here it is!
I recognize that going super micro on a ho-hum run-of-the-mill schooling ride can a be a little… hm… inaccessible or less relatable to the average reader. But for me, it’s like extracting triple the value from a single experience.
representative picture
Bc I just have the one horse, ya know? This ride clocked in at about 26 minutes total (edited down to ~18min of action in the video), and let’s say I do that 4-6x a week, more or less. It’s just… not actually all that much time properly practicing, right? Especially if you believe the whole “it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill” thing…
Brett Parbery says most horses banana better to the left than the right. doozy agrees!
So the more I can learn from each experience, the better, right? Maybe? Sure. Let’s go with that haha. The ‘data,’ so to speak, includes how I felt about the ride - either in the moment or from memory; what it looks like on video (which I may or may not watch multiple times); and then finally what comes through in this act of putting it all into written words.
legit cherry picked so hard to find one decent canter snap, and in the interest of honesty: my butt is only even really semi-seated bc i’m about to ask for a down transition
As nice as it would be to hear, “you’re doing that wrong,” and suddenly be like, “Aha! Amazing! Telling me that fixed everything!” Well… Sadly, it’s a slower accountability loop around here.
I’ve got to do the thing (probably badly), study it, try again (very likely still badly), study some more… on and on and on like this for what I can only hope will continue to be many more years of horsey pursuits.
meanwhile. youtube’s ai thumbnail generator is like, “pshaw, girl, you sit the canter great! also, your mare gelding has two hind socks now. just go with it!”
So in today’s episode ride recap, we get to see how things went when I focused on two main priorities: 1) prioritizing riding forward, back to front, into contact; and 2) working on the canter.
back in the real world, here i am totally bending my elbows
A sub-component was to try to stay intentional about lateral suppleness throughout. Which, natch bc I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, I'd completely forgotten about for the first few minutes whole haha. As one does.
i will say, tho, pole work and transition practice go hand in hand!
Oooh, and I also set up a long line of poles spaced 9’ and approachable from both directions, with the idea of using it to help organize* our canter stride.
*Foreshadowing: It did not.
and here we are, trotting our poles! ahem, cough cough, i said **trotting**
To be honest with you all, I’m not totally sure we’ve got the whole “riding forward” thing fully calibrated yet either. It was equally clear both while I was riding and watching the video that we’re definitely a bit strung out and running at times.
ahh, see, there we are! totally trotting
Notable, however, was that things didn’t seem to ‘escalate’ as we went. Doozy was honestly pretty relaxed, all things considered, and stayed that way. And it didn’t feel like I ever really got into a pulling match trying to slow her down.
halt straight at the strategically placed block!
In the grand scheme of all the various ways we can go, this feels like a promising direction. The hard part for me is, as always, trying to find that good balance between riding forward while still maintaining an elastic steady contact that keeps the energy and impulsion contained.
lather rinse, repeat, amirite?
In the video, it’s clear that — as usual — my reins are too long and my tendency is to drop my hands and straighten my arms. And tip forward, obvi.
she legit loves being told how smart she is
There are times, tho, when the pieces get a bit closer to what I’m trying to achieve. The feeling right now that seems to work best is to think about having an “alive” contact. Something about that word for me helps me remember to be more following and steady vs sorta dead and hanging (or allowing gaps of slack into the contact).
most moments don’t look like this, but there are decent moments!
Remembering to be intentional about lateral suppleness, with lots of inside leg and correct bend, helps make the message clear for Doozy too. Tho we currently still have a lot of lateral asymmetry here — she’s really happy to overbend to the left (while her right shoulder careens away— see gif below for example!); while we have a much harder time not falling in while tracking right.
oooh and we did canter the poles on purpose too!
All things considered, tho, I was particularly happy with how things came together in our canters for this ride. Not bc it was perfect or whatever — obvi— but it definitely was NOT a disaster. Small steps, y’all!
it, uh, generally did NOT go to plan OMFG LOL
Tho… Ha. In retrospect, the ground pole exercise I set up was perhaps a bit aspirational. And despite a lot of careful thoughtful repeated practicing of the pattern, with halting straight and all the things, well… I’m not sure the ground poles added much value LOL.
sure sure it doesn’t look that dramatic in motion… but still, c’mon
In my head, I was thinking back to what Boyd and Peter were talking about at Windurra camp, about how they like to use bounces to help improve a horse’s flatwork and to sorta reorganize in the middle of a jump course…
this is why we practice tho, right?
But I think that idea is gonna have to go on ice until Doozy is ready for elements with actual height haha, bc her freakish ability to sorta just skitter and skate over the surface of these poles rendered the whole thing a bit laughable, whoops!
“my way was better.” — doozy, nonplussed
It wasn't a total wash, tho. At least imho. In particular, the pole exercise was set up with a corresponding block to help us remember to halt straight… so we ended up doing a TON of transitions. Like, WAY more than I’d have done otherwise.
was pleased to still be able to trot around even after the drama tho!
And not a ***single one*** of those upward transitions was hectic, frazzled, sideways, inside out, pogo-y, explosive, or any other word of choice.
lol, tho obvi the drama continued anyway
Which… Actually, is kinda amazing. Possibly a fluke, since that sorta behavior generally happens in our jumping lessons when we have to pick up for our turn, and this ride didn’t necessarily have exactly the same feel or flow to it.
“your attempt at influencing my stride length amuses me” — doozy, reinterpreting distances as she sees fit
But it IS interesting to me. My initial thought is that by prioritizing riding forward first, Doozy therefore has less anxiety or annoyance about being immediately slowed back down again.
ZOOM ZOOM
Which, like, duh haha. But it’s historically been hard for me to let off the e-brake when Doozy is so hard to slow back down again, ya know? Except going back to one of my first observations in this post: by starting the ride with a forward commitment, we seemed to actually avoid the whole escalation / snowball sequence. Well. Mostly, haha, the above picture notwithstanding!
good girl, but whoa dammit haha
For real, tho, I think that’s the trick tho — always trusting the forward first, even when it feels a bit running and strung out — bc Doozy seemed much more relaxed and reliable with that approach. You can see it in the video too — I interspersed a few random sequences of just trotting around in between trips down the poles mostly just to see if we could do it, and she totally could!
finished with a little quasi baby stretchy trot, good girl <3
AND! She finished the ride with a nice genuinely honest attempt at stretchy trot. Not perfect, obvi, but trying.
So even tho it was sorta a ho-hum ride, with plenty of obvious low-hanging fruit in terms of “room for improvement,” I’m actually really pleased with some of the incremental gains. Small steps, y’all!! Plus a little #PivoAccountability haha.
The recent break in the weather meant basically errybody at the barn was trying to get out into the fields and woods to soak up the pleasantness. And naturally Doozy was super jazzed to join the parties!
I’m sometimes a little hesitant to take her out in very mixed company bc she’s so animated and energetic I worry she could trigger a nervous horse or instigate a race to the front.
But that hasn’t happened yet! Most of our riding buddies either share Doozy’s electric joie de vivre or are satisfied to mosey along and occasionally trot to catch up LOL,
Doozy, for her part, doesn’t really seem to care one way or another what the other horses are doing.
Tho she definitely seems to generally prefer company.
And actually I think she likes following too. We often end up in front on the narrow paths in the woods just bc she’s the fastest walker, but if there’s a horse who wants or needs to be in front, she’s happy to relinquish the spot even if it means being stuck behind a slower walker.
There are a couple trees down in the woods right now actually that look like they’ll be fun to jump - hopefully they’re still there when Doozy’s ready!
Once we’re back out into the hay fields tho it’s easier to sorta mosey along as a group vs single file.
And natch, easier to get pictures of everybody LOL!
Doozy is so funny too… she obvi knows the route bc we take the same loop more or less every time, but she’s often her slowest when we turn toward home.
The happiest clam, I think she would have strolled along behind these horses forever haha.
Tho obvi it’s nice to be back at the barn too bc that’s where the #snax are lol…
“garçon! my snax!!!” - impatient mare
But there’s always another day, esp when the weather is this nice!
Doozy was super happy to go strutting off into the woods all proud of herself the day after her grand return to horse showing at Tranquillity haha.
Honestly, what a gorgeous day!
Tho Doozy was slightly sad that they’d been thru to cut and bale the hay already, it made her “grab ‘n go” snacking technique a little more challenging on the steep hills haha…
All good tho, obvi we stopped often anyway esp for pics!!
All my friends have phones with cameras so much nicer than mine, it’s insane.
Like honestly LOL… I knew my phone was old and clunky but maybe it’s finally time for an upgrade so I can return the favor of getting such nice pics (odd outfit choices aside!) haha.
As it is, tho, ain’t a bad way to spend a summer day, amirite??
