Everyone agrees that dressage horses should be elegant, powerful, even dramatic. But should they be happy too?

A brief glance at the new wording of Article 401.1 in the Federation Equestre Internationale’s dressage rulebook seems to suggest that dressage horses should have smiles on their faces as they perform Grand Prix tests, but that certainly wasn’t the purpose behind changing the language.

The first paragraph in the Objects and General Principles section used to read:

“The object of Dressage is the harmonious development of the physique and ability of the horse. As a result, it makes the horse calm, supple, loose and flexible, but also confident, attentive and keen, thus achieving perfect understanding with his rider.”

The new article, accepted in 2004, has been changed slightly. “The object of Dressage is the development of the horse into a happy athlete through harmonious education. As a result, it makes the horse supple, loose and flexible, but also confident, attentive and keen, thus achieving perfect understanding with his rider.”

“It’s been close to three years that we’ve been talking about this in the Dressage Committee,” said Mariette Withages, the committee’s chairman. “We felt that article 401.1 sometimes wasn’t well understood. We like the object, but we wanted to rephrase it, so that it would be better understood, especially for the different groups, including the younger people.”

Clearly, though, the “happy horse” isn’t the same thing as the “happy athlete.”

“The happy horse is the one who is in the field,” said Withages. “He is enjoying his food in the sunshine and a carrot here and there.”

But the happy athlete is one who feels good and enjoys his work. “If the horse, just like a human athlete, feels well in body and mind, it shows,” explained Withages. “We don’t want mechanized horses. We want enthusiastic horses. We want horses who like to do what they do.”

And perhaps happy isn’t the only word to describe the kind of equine athlete the judges are looking for. “You can also say a ‘content horse,’ ” said Grand Prix rider and trainer George Williams. “I think of it in terms of the horse being content with his work.”

No matter what vocabulary you use, the change in wording is just the beginning of a campaign to emphasize fairness to the horse.

“To me, a happy horse athlete is one who trusts his rider, therefore feels safe, and as a result performs willingly what is asked of him,” said Axel Steiner, an FEI O-rated judge from San Marcos, Calif.

“This new emphasis will hopefully deemphasize some of the sense of flamboyance we’ve seen in recent years. I hope that correctness and elegance again become paramount in our sport.”

Does Brilliance Mean Tension?

Dressage, like any kind of subjective sport, sees trends come and go, and currently judges appear to be leaning toward the brilliant or flamboyant horse over the obedient and fluid one.

Steiner believed the trend went too far at the FEI Dressage World Cup Final in April, for which he was a judge, and he scored accordingly. He placed Edward Gal’s Lingh and Debbie McDonald’s Brentina ahead of Anky Van Grunsven’s Salinero, the winner.

“Elegance [Lingh and Brentina] over flamboyance [Salinero]–If we as judges make this our goal, the riders and trainers will comply,” said Steiner firmly.

Although the other four judges’ marks didn’t agree with Steiner, that doesn’t mean they all think he’s headed in the wrong direction.

“In Las Vegas, Salinero was far more tense than in Athens,” said Withages. “And if he hadn’t been tense there, he would have had more marks.”

Walking the line be-tween a brilliant horse and a tense one can be difficult.

“For me, sometimes what’s lost through the brilliance is a happy athlete,” said Debbie McDonald. “You can’t expect the horse to have brilliance to a certain degree and be extremely happy and enjoying what they’re doing. There’s a form of tension there that’s no longer positive, it becomes negative.”

Martin Schaudt’s Wel-tall is often used as an example of brilliance versus tension. His extended trot is extraordinary, and he holds the world record score in the Grand Prix Special. But he is sometimes explosive–he basically melted down at the Athens Olympics.

“If a horse like Weltall does it, and he does it in a nice, relaxed fashion, and he’s happy about it, and he looks like he’s trusting the rider, then fine,” said Steiner. “But if you feel that smoke’s coming out of his ears and his eyes are flashing, then maybe he isn’t quite as competent and safe and relaxed as he should be. Same thing with Salinero.”

In an ideal test, the judges would like to see a horse who is both brilliant and obedient.

“But I don’t understand how that’s truly possible,” said McDonald. “There are the exceptional athletes that can appear to be enjoying what they’re doing and have the elasticity and the huge movement to give you that impression. But not every athlete is capable of giving that huge, extravagant movement and still being relaxed, with happy ears.”

And the trouble starts when riders try to turn their average horse into a brilliant one for the judges. “Riders start going after them with some artificial means at times or with tremendous emphasis that maybe isn’t warranted,” said Steiner.

As of right now, judges determine whether the horse is a happy athlete from just the six or seven minutes they see him or her in the ring.

“What [the judges] see, maybe that is what they judge, but they don’t see what it takes to get some horses into the ring, and I’m not even talking about the horses that are winning,” said McDonald. “If they’re going to tell us that’s a happy athlete, then they need to make sure that the athlete is happy throughout its entire preparation for that six minutes that they get to watch the horse.”

Opinions are divided about having judges in the warm-up, like they do in Germany. There, a judge who isn’t evaluating the tests monitors the warm-up ring, making sure no one’s cranking too hard. “If somebody’s doing something wrong, he can immediately stop this, and if it is too much, he can eliminate them,” explained FEI O-level judge Uwe Mechlem.

“This works very well, especially at small shows where the riders are not so experienced. They do something wrong without knowing how wrong it is.”

But Withages doesn’t like the idea of judging the warm-up. “Lots of people aren’t happy with what’s performed in the warm-up arena, and I agree a lot of times,” she said. “We are working on this, but we are the judges, and our job is to judge what we see in the arena.”

Most judges believe they can determine if a horse is a happy athlete by its performance in the ring alone.

“You only have a good horse if it’s cooperating with you, and it’s only cooperating if it doesn’t feel under pressure,” said Mechlem. “At the competition, you see immediately which horse is doing the movements on his own, and which is doing it only from the pressure. There’s a difference in the quality of the execution of the movements.”

But riders disagree. “It’s a lofty goal,” said Williams.

“But it doesn’t take into consideration that some of these top riders are superb competitors,” he continued. “Through their abil-ity as competitors, they’re able to get the most out of the horse and make it seem seamless or effortless. Some of that doesn’t reflect their training as much as their ability as a competitor. You can’t underestimate the role that that plays.”

McDonald knows that “people are showmen. That’s what we do.

“We learn to mask things that aren’t so good. That’s what separates the better riders. They’re able to feel their horse and know what they need to do and mask a certain situation. If you’re a true showman like that, you’re able to get away with in six minutes what you couldn’t get away with in the warm-up ring.

“I think anybody who has confidence that their horse is truly a happy athlete would welcome the judging in the warm-up arena,” she continued. “If your horse is happy and you have nothing to hide, then having a judge in that warm-up ring is only going to make things better for you.”

Are We Asking Too Much?

Although she doesn’t want to judge the warm-up, Withages was emphatic about proper training for the happy athlete.

“If you push a horse into brilliancy, then it’s brilliant in the wrong way,” she said. “You have to go the proper way. You need to start with the basic principles.”

Proper training and care is something the Dressage Committee’s members say they’re seeking to emphasize. “We want to make everybody aware that they deal with an athlete,” said Withages. “They have to make sure they treat these athletes like they should be–not overtraining, not overasking.”

She continued, “That doesn’t mean you can’t say, ‘Come on, go for it!’ Or ask for more–that’s different. But we have to respect the athlete.”

By encouraging riders and trainers to think of their horses as happy athletes, Withages and her cohorts hope that the training will fall into line with that ideal.

“As we become more competitive, the risk is always that people will resort to unethical means to try to be at the top,” said Williams. “Some people are more likely to take shortcuts, try to use methods that aren’t necessarily proper or in the best interest of the horse.”

He continued, “If you accept this word ‘happy,’ then I think it’s a good starting point. I would love to see that attitude carry over into the training and the everyday work with the horses. When that starts to happen, then I think it will truly be effective and play an important role.”

At the World Global Dressage Forum in 2004, discussion focused on judging which horses are happy athletes.

At the WGDF, participants watched videotapes of the top performers from the Athens Olympics. Salinero was judged the happiest, but participants agreed that Hubertus Schmidt’s Wansuela Suerte was very proud and happy to do her work. She was always in the comfort zone in her work, but she had limits to her natural ability, and thus her scores were lower than Salinero’s.

“You have horses that are very obedient, trainable and responsive, but they don’t have this brilliancy that you expect,” explained Withages. “You have to go down on the score because they are not brilliant enough, but you go up because they are obedient enough. That’s always a balance, and it’s not the same every day of every competition.”

This year, FEI officials will present an award for the Happiest Grand Prix Athlete from last season at the CDIO Aachen (Germany) in August. Nominations will come from judges, stewards, veterinarians, and the media.

“It’s not appropriate that only a horse with the best paces and the greatest impulsion should win such an award,” said O-rated judge Voker Moritz. “The collective mark for submission in standard Grand Prix tests or for harmony in freestyle tests is much more decisive. It’s not the most successful horse that should automatically get the award for the happiest athlete.”

And if the FEI judges can’t decide which is more important to them, then McDonald doesn’t want any part of it. “They’re making so much emphasis on this happy horse deal, but they still don’t seem to be judging it the way they say they want,” she said.

“It’s confusing to us, as the riders, and it’s very confusing to the public,” she continued. “The public does not get it. If we lose what we’re just starting to gain in our crowds, we’ve lost the sport. They need to figure out what they want to see, and then they’ve got to prove it to the public.”

It’s Not Just The Top That Matters

Proper training goes hand-in-hand with breeding. Today’s top horses have been bred specifically for dressage, through generations of carefully documented pedigrees.

“The breeding is such that these horses are becoming tremendous athletes, and I think realistically our training methods have to adjust accordingly,” said Grand Prix rider George Williams. “You don’t lose sight of proper training techniques, but they do get adjusted to refinements as you go.”

“The horses are more brilliant today; they’re sharper,” agreed Mariette Withages, an O-rated judge from Belgium who’s chairman of the FEI Dressage Committee. “It’s easier to drive a diesel than a Ferrari. I think you have to be more aware, sharper, more delicate with a Ferrari. Our horses are becoming more and more Ferraris, which makes the sport interesting.”

But one of the problems with breeding Ferraris is that the divide between horses bred for dressage and those that aren’t has widened and deepened. And a horse that will be competitive at the international level of dressage isn’t necessarily one that an amateur will enjoy riding.

“Let’s not think about the horses we saw at the World Cup,” suggested Axel Steiner, an O-rated judge from California. “Those are not really the important ones. What’s important is what happens at home on the average horse, what happens at every small or large show around the world–that horses are shown to their ability and not forced to show beyond their ability.”

So part of keeping the average dressage athlete happy is understanding his limitations. “Dressage can improve any breed, but that doesn’t mean it should be the ultimate discipline for every breed,” said Williams. “The backyard horse will benefit from it, but to try and force them to go up through the levels and be competitive would not be in their best interest.

“The Weltalls, Gigolos, and other horses throughout history–those are special athletes that are unusual. They’re in the top 1 percent of their species–they’re abnormal,” added Williams. “It’s the same with human athletes. It doesn’t mean that those who run shouldn’t run, they just might not go to the Olympics.”

OK, so not all horses are destined for Grand Prix. But of those that are, it’s still not clear how important the happy athlete factor will be as they climb the ranks.

“There will be no effect on judging at all,” said FEI O-level judge Volker Moritz of Germany. “We as judges always had to answer the question, ‘Which horse fulfills the criteria of the training scale in the best way?’ There will be no difference in the future.”

Avoiding The Anger Of Animal Rights Activists

There was another pressing reason for the dressage world’s renewed focus on horses enjoying their job. Some extreme animal-rights groups would like to remove the whips, spurs and bits from riding altogether.

“We felt that as we get a lot of pressure from ecological groups, green groups, etc. that through this wording they might come to understand what the horse means to us,” said Mariette Withages, chairman of the FEI Dressage Committee.

“We really need to look at ourselves, and how we can handle our sport, and how we train our horses so we stay above it and end up policing ourselves, not leaving it up to some other group,” agreed George Williams.

In order to make it clear to spectators that dressage horses are happy in their work, the word “calm” was omitted from the Article 401.1.

“You have to be calm anyway. Calm is one of the words that was understood in the proper sense before, but now people have a different implication of it,” said Withages.

Withages said that, to some, “calm means not fit, not vivid, no spring, not interested.” But those qualities–fitness and enthusiasm–are “all the things we want to see.”