How old is too old.....

[anuvb]

To teach a horse to do passage and piaffe?

Three hypothetical situations here about the stages in a horses training. The length of time to train a horse to do either, will obviously depend on how fit and supple the horse is and for example situation (3) I wouldn't expect the horse to do either without getting it to stage (1) first.

What I'm wondering is what about when you go to buy a horse?Different horses are at different stages in their training and fitness, if you went to buy the following horses and they all had good dressage type conformation, how old would they have to be before you discounted them as being able to do more advance moves? How easy it to determine whether a horse is capable of doing either passage or piaffe when they aren't already doing it when you go to view them?


(1) Horse is working very well, mastered the collection and extension, working on renvers, travers, half-passes and canter pirouettes, will offer piaffe and passage naturally, but has not been taught to do it properly in hand or with a rider.

(2) Horse has really good paces, quick to learn, and developing it's collection and extension, supple and could move on to learn things like renvers, travers etc.

(3) Horse is stiff, but show some promise.

PS - this may not be the right forum for this so if one of the mods wnat to move it then feel free to do so. I just wasn't sure where best to put it.

[Sarah]

hello!

I wonder if maybe there isn't an answer to your question! If you asked 'how old is too old to start training for the London marathon' you'd get a lot of responses about people bing in their 30s or 40s, then a few people will haev a great uncle Jummy who did it when he was 80!

I think it is maybe more important to think about what natural ability does the horse have, does he show natural collection which would help with both these movements, or is he more of an extending horse?

In your hypothetical situation, I'd say there may be no reason why any of those horses can't do piaffe or passage, get a horse excited in teh field and often they will passage around anyway and show many horses a dragon when under saddle and you end up with piaffe (or is that just Tango!). Case no. 3 may be the hardest to train as you have further to go as int eh horse isn't supple, but there is no reason why with suficient training the horse shouldn't be able to do piaffe and passage - they are natural horse movements after all, but it is just that some horses do it better than others!

Anyway, I'd be very interested to see what teh more knowledgable people think!

bye!

[anuvb]

Ooh, this is interesting - I now appear to have two of my thread! :D

[Lgd]

My friend's 22yo is doing his first Advanced test next month :D

He could do all the 'tricks' but thanks to an incompetent riding school manager he had his back damaged.

Sarah took him on as a 14yo and has gradually put all the problems right and has got him back. That said he will not get to competitive GP level now as he is getting a bit stiff - not enough to affect his ability to do the work, but he would get marked down. She got him as a schoolmaster and he has certainly been that.

Realistically only a small percentage of horses have both the physical and mental ability to piaffe and passage competitively.

It is not unusual now for retired advanced event horses to take up dressage. Top level eventers compete at a level that is comparative to Advanced Medium. Shining Pupil ridden by Ruth Friend was placed in the regional championships at that level and she can do a fairly decent PSG test as well. The mare is still competing at top level event so could feasibly have the ability to go further.

No. 1 would probably be the easiest to develop and is ready to learn.
No. 2 would probably be 1-2 years off being ready to perform.
No. 3 - probably run out of time before you get there.