Ideal outline for a horse, what’s your opinion?

daffy44 said:
10 is "excellent" not perfect, I'm with you, perfection doesnt exsist and I'm happy with that!

As to what judges reward or not, that is a whole other debate......
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But 100% is perfection - by mathematical definition, rather than the vagueries of dressage people!

I think that what judges reward is the problem - competitive people chase results, at the end of the day. If the judges reward the wrong things, you de-rail the entire sport. Or art. But that probably is another debate. Or maybe not!
 
There are people whom, unless they have a horse to sell, would not compete. Not in it’s current state. For certain they wouldn’t take their own horse through the FEI system.
 
the judging today is so random though. My trainer was riding a horse at prelim level in the championships, in a prelim outline for a young horse. and one of the judges marked down horses in a prelim frame, and marked up the ones who were totally over-collected and doing collected trot instead of working. I do affiliated dressage at times before eventing season, and the pure randomness of some of the judges marks are bizarre and make me half doubt anyone really has designed a decent level way of marking.
 
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paddi22 said:
the judging today is so random though. My trainer was riding a horse at prelim level in the championships, in a prelim outline for a young horse. and one of the judges marked down horses in a prelim frame, and marked up the ones who were totally over-collected and doing collected trot instead of working. I do affiliated dressage at times before eventing season, and the pure randomness of some of the judges marks are bizarre and make me half doubt anyone really has designed a decent level way of marking.
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This is a big bugbear of mine. A horse doing prelim in a prelim outline should imo get maximum marks. It should not be possible to gain higher marks by doing a lower level test to a higher standard than is expected at that level, but it happens all the time.
 
ycbm said:
This is a very intersecting discussion. As a result of being unable to put a 20x60 on my sloping field, I ended up, unwillingly, with a 30x40. But it's been fantastic, and in future I would choose it above a 20x60. It is so much more flexible for schooling exercises, and means I can avoid constant smaller circles. When I'm in a 20m wide school, particularly on a younger horse, I feel that it is far too narrow for the good of the horse.

I'm another who schools on hacks, too. You can school anywhere. Though I do think that sometimes hacks should be to allow the horse and rider to forget about schooling and just enjoy themselves.
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Whereas I absolutely hate our 30 x 40 to the extent that I never ride on the track, always 5m in, because I find it such an unhelpful size! The corners are too far away , no dressage test has an arena that wide and it's not long enough to do lots of the advanced lines 🤣 we have 4 mirrors on a short side but they're so far apart it's almost pointless. Horses for courses ;)

Hacks are downtime for my horses, general behaviour training notwithstanding :)
 
ycbm said:
This

This is a big bugbear of mine. A horse doing prelim in a prelim outline should imo get maximum marks. It should not be possible to gain higher marks by doing a lower level test to a higher standard than is expected at that level, but it happens all the time.
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it was crazy, the one that won the four year class was going like a gran prix horse
 
ycbm said:
This

This is a big bugbear of mine. A horse doing prelim in a prelim outline should imo get maximum marks. It should not be possible to gain higher marks by doing a lower level test to a higher standard than is expected at that level, but it happens all the time.
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But now we're back to defining specific outlines for all horses again 😉

What should the rider of a more naturally advanced way of going horse do in a prelim then? Deliberately ride it down in front? Genuine question, I think my horses are always at the lower end of the standards presented at each level but have accepted that's just because some people have either "better" horses or theirs are further ahead in their training compared to mine. I wouldn't expect them to dumb down to the level, shouldn't I be aiming higher?
 
milliepops said:
Whereas I absolutely hate our 30 x 40 to the extent that I never ride on the track, always 5m in, because I find it such an unhelpful size! The corners are too far away , no dressage test has an arena that wide and it's not long enough to do lots of the advanced lines 🤣 we have 4 mirrors on a short side but they're so far apart it's almost pointless. Horses for courses ;)

Hacks are downtime for my horses, general behaviour training notwithstanding :)
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I think we agree! If I am competing, as you are most of the time, I put boards out for a 40. If
I'm competing in a 20x60, I borrow one.
 
ycbm said:
Compete at a higher level or settle for equal first, imo.
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This is not what people do though. Where we are there are youngsters being trained at much higher levels (obvs with as much leather as possible) than they should be, with the aim of achieving full marks at 4yo classes. Locally people also know which class to do to get "the right judge" and follow judges around. These people should be reported but that's not how the horsey world works is it.
 
Tallyho I'm curious to know who they should be reported to?
I have a judge that I try to avoid because it's only too obviously that they don't appreciate small Welsh ponies one bit, it's so ridiculous it's almost funny the kinds of comments and scores I get and that individual is well known for this attitude towards non megabucks horses. Should I also be reported?

Or should they.
If these judges that people follow round are far off in their scoring maybe *they* should be reported too?
 
My trainer had started taking lessons with judy reynolds who had told her she needed to make her horse less collected and moving in a freer working trot., so she was RAGING when the judges marked the collected ones up!
 
milliepops said:
People will always strive to do better at a level though, isn't that the nature of competition? :)
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Of course. So it falls to the judge to do what's right. Fat horses win show classes, fat horses will be put into the class. Horses working at Novice win Prelims. People will wait until the horse is Novice to compete at Prelim, so they can win.

The whole game at the lower levels of dressage, especially in qualifiers, is completely corrupted.
 
daffy44 said:
I think is where ethics/morals come in, absolutely people will always strive to do better, it is the nature of competition, but, this should always be within the physical and mental limits of the horse, this is the essence of a sport where we rely on another living being.
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100% yes.

(alright, I'm still not comfortable with perfection. 99.9% yes!)
 
i feel very sorry for people who do dressage full time and have to work within the system. You hear of so many people who withdraw from shows if a certain judge is judging. thats just crazy when you think the amount of time, effort and training that has gone into getting to that show.
 
But isn't that down to the rules then to define who is eligible and who isn't? Judges can only apply the rules and guidelines as they are written? If someone presents a horse that is trained better than the others in a class, how is a judge to draw the line and say "that's not fair" and send them out of the class on the day? We're dependent on the rules to get people into their correct "stream" of competition imo.

Eta. Though I benefit from it personally, I find the idea that some people are too good to be allowed to compete against me to be a bit bonkers. I find the idea of being the winner of the second or third best section lacks the kudos of winning overall... Once upon a time everyone was lumped in together and the horse points just made them ineligible after a certain amount of competition success... it's not fair, no, but it's competition 🤔
 
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Thinking further, I think BD have done something right with prelim. You only get one go at the champs at prelim in your career if you're someone who wants to go up the levels. So the people doing the prelim qualifiers should be mainly amateurs or those starting out with their first horse. Prelim gold is fairly pointless now (Though it's quite irritating as the owner rider of very ordinary horses, the principle is sound imo)
 
milliepops said:
Tallyho I'm curious to know who they should be reported to?
I have a judge that I try to avoid because it's only too obviously that they don't appreciate small Welsh ponies one bit, it's so ridiculous it's almost funny the kinds of comments and scores I get and that individual is well known for this attitude towards non megabucks horses. Should I also be reported?

Or should they.
If these judges that people follow round are far off in their scoring maybe *they* should be reported too?
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Hi Milliepops, BD have a complaints procedure. Non-affiliated competitions should also have a procedure set out by the organisers. They absolutely should be reported. In any other walk of life, if you thought you were being unfairly judged, you would say something I’d hope. Personally, I think many of the problems we see are because people don’t speak up. I’ve had friends who’d rather move comp venue than go to the local one as they find it cliquey or intimidating in some way. I don’t think that’s on...
 
while i can see that using comp dressage is a type of platform in the discussion, as it supposedly has set rules on the way of going which includes outline, it does not cover the broader and much bigger overall picture, comp dressage is small in whole horse world, it does not define all areas of training for different activities

maybe the system of tests and judging is outdated, and far too confining, expecting horses to conform within a system is far from the ideal, proof of that is seen in the end result, top level,i find a lot of it very uninspiring, i don`t enjoy looking at it, because at that level i want to see art, i want to see the beauty of the horse at its best revealed, and surprisingly unhorsey people can see it too! so why can`t the judges and bd? perhaps they are too embroiled in a system and can`t see their way forward or out the structure they have created.
 
IMO they are like 2 different disciplines, and almost best thought of like that. the element of competition and people being dependent on results for their livelihood means that will always be the case. I don't think that good training is incompatible with competition, at an amateur level that's where I sit after all. But to try and say that competitive dressage ought to do away with systems and getting horses to conform is a bit nonsensical to me, how do you rank a horse and rider's performance without these expectations?

The artistic bit of dressage has somehow to be quantified and measured, in order to make it a competition. This is on the one hand clearly impossible, and yet on the other hand lots of us try to do it anyway. Hence it's not perfect, nor can it ever be. You can either be in it, and in whatever way you can, promote the good bits, or you can sit outside it. JMHO :)
 
There’s no simple answer to BD, BE, BSJA, FEI rules or the blatant blind eye to completely unethical ways of training. The point is, it trickles it’s way down to grassroots and pervades common perception of what is accepted e.g. outline in every discipline. There’s no alternative so we are stuck like you alude to milliepops. Even top judges that speak out, get sacked. There will always be the disenchanted and the competitive. I just wish the chasm in between wasn’t so wide.
 
I think I find it hard to get so very riled about the affiliated bodies because my experience is that horsemanship aint much better at the grass roots :(
I did some volunteering with my RC and was glad to walk away as I couldn't watch what some people were doing with their horses.
Whatever BD or the FEI do is so irrelevant to them, it's unreal. I live in a very horsey area, my RC puts on lots of training, it's run by competent people. I don't think I'm looking at a load of local yokels who are not able to access quality instruction...
I don't know what the answer is. I think my dad is right, really, and we shouldn't be allowed to ride horses. I would support some kind of enforced training and exam licencing system but I know that would never happen.
 
milliepops said:
I think I find it hard to get so very riled about the affiliated bodies because my experience is that horsemanship aint much better at the grass roots :(
I did some volunteering with my RC and was glad to walk away as I couldn't watch what some people were doing with their horses.
Whatever BD or the FEI do is so irrelevant to them, it's unreal.
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I don’t think this is an amateur / professional or FEI vs grass roots issue. I think there is good and bad training, and that sometimes the bad training is rewarded over the good in competition - and I think this is a bad thing. That’s not to say that those who aren’t in competition are necessarily doing stuff which is good, or that they will be improved by better examples in competition.

I do, however, think that better judging could improve how some horses are trained, and that some ideas which are engrained at grass roots levels may be less popular if the examples at higher levels were more appropriate.

Of course, a licensing system is very appealing too. In my dreams!
 
Where do we get these "good" judges? Even so, who's to monitor what goes on behind the yard gates.

I too would support with a compulsory horse ownership competency licence. Just like I supported a similar one for dog ownership. Like its ever going to happen!! :D:D
 
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