Clinic

CONVERSATIONS ON TRAINING

Be Your Horse’s Mentor

For Olympian Sabine Schut-Kery, correct training is all about communicating with the horse in a way that he can understand

By Beth Baumert Photographs by Meg McGuire Photography

Sabine Schut-Kery turned heads all over the world with her performance aboard Alice Womble’s Sanceo at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, where the US won a team silver medal. But Schut-Kery’s road to this pinnacle achievement was long and flavored with a career of extraordinary exhibition riding.

Indeed, the first time I ever saw Schut-Kery was in the late 1990s at Dressage at Devon in Pennsylvania, where she wowed the spectators with a riding and driving demonstration in which she drove one Friesian while riding the other. I had never considered such an extraordinary possibility and was beyond impressed.

Schut-Kery was classically educated as both a rider and a driver in her native Germany. She moved to

EDUCATED: Jami Kment rides Gatino Van Hof Olympia, her 11-year-old KWPN gelding by Apache, in a lesson with 2020 US Olympic dressage team silver medalist Sabine Schut-Kery the United States in 1998 to be the head trainer at Proud Meadows in Texas. There, she competed horses of all ages, from young horses to Grand Prix, and she became well known for those fabulous exhibitions. She’s no stranger to appreciative crowds!

In 2005, she moved to California, where she trains and competes horses of all levels. In 2015, she was a member of the gold-medal-winning US team at the Pan American Games in Toronto. Soon thereafter, she was awarded The Dressage Foundation’s prestigious Carol Lavell Advanced Dressage Prize two years in a row, and she used the funds to take Sanceo to Europe for training.

Today she continues to advance her education under the brilliant eye of Olympian Christine Traurig. Schut-Kery’s own boutique dressage-training business, as you will read below, prioritizes quality over quantity, and her approach is based on a superior understanding of horsemanship.

Beth Baumert: In your teaching, I love how you distinguish between schooling your horse and educating him.

Sabine Schut-Kery: Yes, I think of educating the horse so that the rider acts as a mentor. When the horse makes a mistake, the rider should actually tell him—in a supportive way—what went wrong and how he can do it better. For example, if the horse loses his bend in a movement, be sure to mention to him that he lost his shape. That’s very fair. If you take action in the moment, he can

CLASSICAL PERFORMER: Sabine Schut-Kery

better understand what went wrong.

And then repeat. In Germany, they tell us that horses learn from repetition. The horse memorizes and he recognizes our aids over time, and the rider needs to understand that and then use her aids as if using human language. For example, your aids can say, “I need a better reaction here.”

The challenge of everyday riding is staying on top of the details, such as the quality of your horse’s reactions. I often ask myself, “Did he react correctly, or was it just OK?” If it was “just OK,” that’s not good enough. These are the tough questions that you need to ask yourself each day. It’s a matter of discipline and persistence in the pursuit of high quality.

When you need a better reaction from your horse, is it appropriate to give a little kick instead of using the calf?

You don’t get throughness from a kick. That’s more of a reminder to be attentive, and it’s not always wrong. If my student says, “I’ve been squeezing and massaging with my calves and it isn’t working,” then as long as your horse isn’t too hot, you might give a little kick—in the same way you might tell your children, “HELLO!” But that’s a motivational aid, not an educational aid. It doesn’t tell your horse how to jump through the back and the base of the neck to the reins. It doesn’t explain how to take more weight behind. It’s an educational tool only in that it gives your leg aid a better voice. There’s a difference, and to me, that difference is very important. You get throughness from your calf. When you close your calf, he should get his hind legs under him and really show more thrust and more carrying power, too.

What are some common rider problems with the unresponsive horse that’s not in front of the leg?

Often, riders keep holding with the leg or the heel in the horse’s side when bringing the horse back. There’s something wrong with that situation because there’s a rhythm going on, and you want your leg to breathe and the heel to swing up and down in the rhythm of the gait. It’s like dancing. It’s rhythmic. Likewise, when the horse is in the wrong rhythm, the leg shouldn’t follow the horse’s rhythm. You want him to follow your rhythm. The rider can make the horse quicker with the leg, and then stay breathing with it. The horse will adapt to the rider’s breathing leg, not to a holding leg. Likewise, the rein breathes. I don’t need to actually see the rein breathing because the rider doesn’t throw the rein away, but the rein breathes.

Why might the horse be unresponsive to begin with?

The horse may actually want to react, but he’s usually unresponsive because he has stiffness related to not being “through.” Horses respond to softer leg aids when they’re supple, loose, and through.

So is this one of the challenges of the warmup—to make the horse supple so he can be more responsive to the leg?

Yes. Use of bending lines and

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figures such as circles, figure eights, and serpentines develop that suppleness. In bend, the horse should make a little space for your inner leg. Once you get him around the inner leg, then he can be in front of it.

What is the most common problem you see as horses are developing collection?

When you collect your horse, he must stay in front of the leg. He has to take more weight in the hindquarters and grow in the shoulders. Many horses just slow down and take little weird choppy strides, which is not true collection, and the horse is not in front of the leg. Some riders don’t realize how ground-covering the collected gaits feel, and some horses aren’t strong enough to truly carry more weight behind, so the stride gets choppy as he compromises for that lack of strength in the hind leg. The collected strides should become slower, not from laziness but because the joints bend more as the horse takes more weight behind.

The horse with incorrect collection is usually trying to please the rider. For example, in preparation for the pirouette, the collected canter is sometimes so small that I could even walk next to the horse. It’s super-submissive—I’ll give you that—but it isn’t correct. The rider needs to keep that forward stride and add to bring him back with the hind legs coming under a supple body. The rider doesn’t collect by slowing the horse down with the reins. If you ride into collection in a forward way, the gaits improve. The gaits should never get worse when you collect the horse.

That’s not always so easy to achieve. What tools do you suggest to help the rider get correct collection that is engaged and groundcovering?

The horse can compress himself most easily with an exercise that naturally asks for engagement of the hind legs, like a shoulder-in. The shoulder-in helps you gather him up: It compresses or collects the horse in a way that lets you in to his body. The horse that is learning collection knows the shoulder-in, and it’s ridden with the leg in a way that he understands. The shoulder-in asks the hind leg to come under and enables you to ride forward into collection more easily than when your horse is straight. It’s more advanced to half-halt and collect the horse when you’re going straight.

That shoulder-in is actually the half-halt! The rider might think, “I will ride shoulder-in so I can halfhalt.” Shoulder-in doesn’t slow the horse down; rather, it lets you in to his body so you can collect him in front of you by adding energy. The hind legs come under so you can ride the shoulders up and in front of you.

That’s an example of how you can educate your horse so he understands what he’s supposed to do. Everything is forward. Even the bringing back is forward and in front of you. The shoulder-in educates the horse and helps him commit to a reaction that is forward and in front of the leg when you bring him back.

Talk to us about what you call the body language of collection.

In the posture of collection, I lift my chest up so my core is long and engaged. My hands are down, my shoulder blades are back and down, and I’m sitting down.

Teach your horse this. Implement an agreement with him that he can rely on: You sit up in the posture of collection and close your legs, and he goes forward in balance, growing in front of you without speeding up.

What other elements or aspects of training are key to developing collection?

Straightness is necessary before you can ask the horse to take more weight equally behind. Overbending the horse like a banana is a common problem, and then he can’t transfer weight equally to the hind legs. If you inadvertently overbend your horse, you prevent the shoulders from turning. Then when the shoulders can’t turn, the horse slows down.

How do you suggest that riders manage the inclination to overbend their horses?

I ask them to bring the horse’s head to the inside without bringing the neck to the inside. Academically, that’s known as flexion in the poll. Use your inside wrist and say, “I want to see your inside eye.”

That’s really difficult, but it’s how you want to go down the long side. The good news is that once you are successful, you can ride a shoulderin from that, you can ride a half-pass from that—you can ride anything. You don’t have to change anything because when you can do that, you gain access to your horse’s body.

Can you say any more about educating the horse, especially for the rider who might not consider herself a trainer?

THE POSTURE OF COLLECTION: Schut-Kery demonstrates how the rider’s body language asks the horse to collect: sternum lifted, core long and engaged, hands low, shoulder blades back and down

FORWARD INTO COLLECTION: Schut-Kery’s 2015 Pan Am Games teammate Kim Herslow rides Elvis HI, a Lusitano gelding owned by Ailene Cascio

Yes. I often do an exercise in the walk first, just to get the feeling of it. Because the walk is slower, you can more easily figure out how to make your aids such that you get the right result. It is easier to make an agreement with the horse. That is educating him.

I notice that you give your horses frequent walk breaks.

Yes, and when they’re really stretching, the back is looser, so I encourage my horses to stretch and sometimes to stay connected in an extended walk. I also practice taking the reins in the transition to a marching medium walk, and I want him to slow down—not in a lazy way, but in a “gathering” way. Sometimes horses get hectic in this transition, so they need to be educated about the walk. Why have problems in the walk? It’s unnecessary if you educate the horse. It’s the same with trot-canter-trot transitions. I ride those transitions frequently, always with the expectation of an 8. Why not? Those transitions develop a horse that is loose and in front of you, and when you get to the show, they are everywhere—and you want an 8 or 9, right? Why not?

Speaking of shows, what about preparing for a competition?

If I’m educating a horse, I don’t change the training plan because I’m going to a show. I just keep training, and then I show at whatever level I’ve achieved in the training.

You clearly take your horses’ emotions into consideration in the training.

Sometimes the horse “blocks” because of emotional tension. Even if your horse’s anxiety seems unreasonable, you need to pause until the horse doesn’t feel stressed, because if he’s worked up, the information simply doesn’t go through any more. Look at your horse’s interior—his personality—and ask yourself why he does what he does. Sometimes he’s just learning and isn’t sure. There are some things I would work through and other things I would leave alone and think, “Tomorrow’s another day.” But when you feel like an exercise isn’t working, take him out of it and start again, encouraging him to give you the response that you’re looking for. When he makes a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. On the other hand, when the horse does well, praise him.

Can you say a word about the role of the whip?

The whip is a supportive aid for enhancing the rhythm. It should never replace the rider’s leg, and once the horse is trained, you don’t need it any more. However, educating the horse with the whip helps him learn to become more active in the rhythm without getting faster. Little taps are also an encouraging aid that says, “You should give me a little more effort.” Then focus on what you want. In the canter work, especially, the whip should help him gather himself from behind so he feels in front of you without speeding up. Eventually, you want that result to come from your seat and leg, but the whip helps to educate him about that.

Do you have any final words of advice?

Figure out which exercises help your horse. Give him aids that he recognizes and he’s comfortable with. That’s giving him his job description. You want the whole horse to come together and more through on your aids. That gives you a feeling that you have control in selfcarriage, and you’ll notice that your horse lets you sit a little better. All those little pieces that we read about in the books are signs that the horse is more through and more ridable. Don’t underestimate all those little things. Then judge your horse by how he lets you sit. That tells you a story about him.

Meet the Expert

Beth Baumert is a USDFcertified instructor through Fourth Level, a USDF L program graduate with distinction, and the author of When Two Spines Align: Dressage Dynamics. She currently serves as president of The Dressage Foundation. For many years she owned and operated Cloverlea Dressage in Columbia, Connecticut, and served as the technical editor of Dressage Today magazine. She divides her time between Connecticut and Florida.