Accept the challenge of training an advanced-level dressage horse! The demands on the animal are many: high obedience, a calm temperament, a powerful physique. How can you recognize which horse has what it takes to make the grade -- and ensure that it reaches its potential? A former Olympic rider shows you the ropes, backed by over 120 photographs. Review the all-important early training, which establishes a horse's basic work, and perfect all the routines you'll have to run through, at every stage. You'll find several options for going about your task. Choose the one that best suits your own and your animal's personalities. Anticipate potential difficulties and know how to correct them should they arise. You'll achieve a polished, precise blue-ribbon performance!

Over the course of her riding and horse training career, Kathrin Roida has progressively gained a deep appreciation for the benefits of gymnastic exercises, particularly those that can be taught to the horse from the ground. "In-hand" training has long been used to help develop the dressage horse, conditioning and suppling his body while at the same time preparing his mind to grasp the movements that may eventually be expected. Roida relies on these techniques when working with young horses, which she prepares for under-saddle training with exercises first learned on the ground, improving balance and enhancing confidence by refining the horse's sense of his body and where it is in space. Roida also uses in-hand techniques to vary the training of the fully schooled riding horse and to solve problems that may be more safely dealt with from the ground. In this book she details her methods, sharing the stories of a number of horses of different ages, breeds, and training backgrounds, and demonstrating the steps to teaching them: shoulder-in, travers, renvers, pirouettes, half-pass, piaffe, passage, canter work, the Spanish walk, and much more. Throughout her conscientious attention to what is best for the horse ensures that not only do the lessons result in a horse that is healthy in body but also one that is healthy in mind and happy in his work.

In Advanced Dressage Training, Grand Prix rider/trainer Angela Niemeyer Eastwood outlines the hows and whys of advanced training in a practical, logical fashion, with the aim of helping you to create harmonious partnerships with your horses. Dressage has moved beyond the basics of just riding and training a horse, and now encompasses many complementary disciplines, including psychology. This has always been part of the most successful athletes' repertoires and is now acknowledged as being one of the main contributory factors to excellence in any sport. Technical skills need to go hand in hand with mental commitment, discipline, dedication and resilience. Mindsets can be changed - what is needed is knowledge, support, imagination and perseverance. This book introduces the idea that aids are just that: they let the horse know what the rider wants. When this is understood, the horse should be allowed to do whatever has been asked of him - alone and unaided - until something else is required or the horse needs a reminder. The pursuit of excellence - not perfection - is what dressage is all about. Advanced Dressage Training offers advice and encouragement towards the improvement and development of you and your horse as an advanced partnership, taking you towards excellence in the process. This book will be of great interest to dressage riders and trainers and dressage professionals, and is superbly illustrated with 300 colour photographs.

A practical guide to using reward-based training techniques to create a true partnership with your horse. This leads to lifelong connection, effective problem-solving and joyful performance.

"This book is a must have . . . it really inspires you to greater things and encourages you to believe that anything is possible if you follow the book step-by-step!" —www.horsecity.co.uk

Working the horse from the ground—schooling "in-hand" as it has been known for centuries—has long been an integral part of classical horse training. Now, this gorgeously illustrated book explains in clear, step-by-step lessons how the modern-day horse owner can incorporate classical groundwork in her daily interactions with her equine partner—to both their benefit and enjoyment. Whether schooling green or young horses; retraining problem horses or those with poor foundations; warming-up advanced mounts prior to workouts; confirming lateral movements on the ground before attempting them on horseback; or supplementing everyday under-saddle exercises, work in-hand provides a wonderful way to advance the horse's education, as well as the standard of communication between horse and handler. Its gradual progression of work on the longe, double-longe, long lines, short reins, and long reins is the perfect addition to the training program that has grown a little stale or boring; the manageable solution to countless problems that commonly arise in daily work with horses; and by definition, an equestrian art form unto itself. With over 100 color photographs—including many detailed series shots—to demonstrate correct body positioning, and meticulously hand-drawn illustrations to guide you through the often-confusing land of lateral work, Horse Training In-Hand is the first book ever to help shed classical groundwork's mystique while conscientiously preserving its magic. Find out for yourself how schooling in-hand can give your training program a brand new look and feel, forever transforming "workouts" and "schooling sessions" into artistic endeavors that yield breathtaking results.