Western Dressage

Some may be familiar with the spectacular "Sliding Stop" seen at Western riding shows and often claimed to be it's trademark and used in "F1" discipline of "Reining". Many Western riding trainers use the figure of a sliding stop as their logo.

As with all competitive sport, especially where money is involved, there are two sides to the story:

1) Western riding is supposed to emulate the work of the cowboy and his horse on the ranch. One of the tasks required is a very quick short stop and then turn, to head off a cow breaking away from the herd. So in fact, the long sliding stop really shouldn't be promoted but for show purposes, a "longer-the-better" sliding stop is now a key criteria in the discipline "Reining".

2) To do the sliding stop, the horses have to be shod with special, long flat irons which are, to all intents are purposes, unrideable on anything other than a flat sand arena with a slippery base, certainly unusable on a cow trail.

3) One of the illegal training methods is to ride at full gallop towards a barrier and then giving the stop command -  getting a good result is relatively easy. Many years ago I spent a week filming a western tournament (even shown daily on a national sports TV channel). At night when the spectators were gone and we were packing up the TV gear, one saw some of the tricks one or two of the "professional" riders got up to in the semi-darkened arena.

Today's Blip is of Rosie our American Quarter Horse and "the" breed for Western riding. However she isn't being trained for a sliding stop by being sent at full gallop against a tree, she's simply getting up after an afternoon nap.

Angie used to do some small tournaments about 20 years ago when we only had our Arabian Asyr. He was OK but neither had the build or relaxed temperament needed. If she had her way, Angie would have liked to have got Rosie to do a "Reigning" discipline in the following manner.

The name Quarter Horse is supposedly because they are the fastest horses over a quarter mile (400 m). Not sure this is true as our Arabian, Sultan is pretty quick getting in to the stables when he sees we have a bucket of feed for him. The breed has the largest registered number of horses worldwide. The horse per se was extinct in the US when the Conquistadors arrived in 16thC. The QH developed out of the horses they imported such as Arabians, Berbers and Andalusians and these crossed later with English thoroughbreds and Irish ponies, led to the breed in the late 18thC.

The Mustang is taken to be the wild breed of America but in fact, they are a "biological invasion" of escaped Conquistador stock!