Dressage in hand: Increasing Equine Welfare and better horse performance

Currently the whole world is in a clear trend to leave tradi�onal ways and values behind. Our beloved equestrian sport, therefore, is also coming under scru�ny by the masses. While decision makers, lobbyists and government officials debate whether Equestrian sports and the keeping of horses is ethical considering the new ever stricter animal welfare laws and the pressure equestrian facili�es might be on the climate.

Therefore, it is no luxury to improve equine welfare wherever we can, to prove that equestrian sports and the keeping of horses can be ethical and place equine welfare first.

In my more than 30 years of working with horses, I worked the last two decades almost solemnly professionally with rehab horses who had been injured, traumatized or both. Incredibly successful so, I might add. Many ‘last resorts’ or ‘incurable’ horses found their way back to health and happiness in my hands. What I learned from this massive amount of experience is that there are very simple ways to improve equine welfare, when at the same time, have horses perform better for their humans. The answer is what I call ‘Dressage in hand’. Dressage in hand is a specie appropriate way of training horses which can help them to heal injuries, traumas, or when started with at an appropriate age, make for fantastic lifelong healthy and content leisure and sport horses.

The key here is that horses speak through body language. Almost every horse owner knows that. But what most do not know is that the movements we call ‘dressage movements’ are in fact the language of horses with which they communicate with each other and… their humans. In fact, horses never make random movements, they are always communicating something to someone. Horses also cannot lie; their body shows exactly as the mind thinks or feels. How then does dressage in hand help equine welfare and what is it exactly? Dressage in hand, is literally what it says: You walk next to your horse with the reins in your hand and you ask for all the dressage movements you normally ask under saddle, but now via body language and rein aids. Although this is new to many riders, it is a very ancient practice to prepare and train horses, since thousands of years. It is for instance still practiced in institutions such as the Spanish riding School of Vienna to keep an ancient European practice alive. I, however, have mostly developed and taught it to horse owners all over the world, to improve horse welfare and help horses perform better at what is possible for each horse specifically. Nowadays, most horses have problems of some

Josepha Guillaume

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For all these horses, dressage in hand can help. Asking the movements from the ground can prepare the young horse’s body for carrying humans in a healthy manner without ever any resistance or even one buck when backing starts. It can help rehabilitate injured and traumatized horses, it can keep the senior horse fit and engaged or it can be a great sport to do with unridden horses as there are competitions now you can enter, in hand. Dressage in hand improves the mental and physical performance of any sport horse, which is a good tool to have in your toolkit. We must put the horse first and focus more on preventing injury at a far too young age, as is alas very common within equestrian sports. Next to understanding the equine body language it is also of vital importance to recognize discomfort and pain. Often horses are disciplined as being naughty and unwilling, while they show clear pain signals. Alas, these signals are often overlooked. Therefore, researchers have drafted an ‘equine pain face scale’ with which you can more easily tell, if a horse is in pain. Horses are prey animals, who therefore suffer in silence. Catching pain signals early prevents (lasting) injury due to overtraining and promotes safety for horse and rider, as horses never have to get to the stadium where they can no longer endure pain and explode, causing dangerous situations.

By Collier Wimmer