Pro Tip

Zoie Brogdon shares a moment with her mount, Emilion, at a competition in 2021. the stables way after my classes are over to wash my horse, ice and poultice his legs, and give him his dinner. This routine can be exhausting after four days of showing, but I don’t complain because I enter the ring deeply connected to my horse. I have an intense internal desire to win, because I’ve made personal sacrifices to be here. And just like that, “disadvantage” becomes “advantage,” because it gives me a competitive edge, to go farther, go faster, and go fearlessly.

Despite honor and accolades, I will always see my greatest accomplishment as one moment: the first day I overcame fear and climbed atop of a horse. Kudos to nine-yearold Zoie. She made me who I am today.

Few of my peers understand what I do or why. This sport is an obsession few have. When asked “What is an equestrian?” I say, “A sacred relationship between human and horse.” To me, horses are majestic, even spiritual. Every creature has a consciousness and is able to produce feeling and connection. I find my soul when I tap into the soul of this noble animal and we become one. Mastering horse riding is about mastering self-discipline, non-verbal communication, leadership, and mutual respect for others. It’s about finding commonalities and bridging the gap between differences to accomplish beautiful things together. I compete to win, but I do this sport for what I win inside. I learn life lessons when I’m in this sacred saddle. This sport has given me more than I could ever give to it, and I can’t wait to see how it continues to transform my life.

Zoie Brogdon is a top-ranked 17-year-old jumper rider based in California. Follow Zoie’s equestrian journey on Instagram at @iamzoienoelle.

by Leslie Potter

Clinic participants watched Lexie Kment ride Montagny Von Der Heide under the direction of Sabine Schut-Kery.

1. It all begins with a breath.

“How do we create an active driving seat? Take a deep breath,” said Dover. “What does that do? As you breathe in, energy through the oxygen coming into your lungs goes up into your chest, bringing your shoulders back. It’s through that deep breath that you empower your body to act.”

To illustrate this concept, Dover invoked the childhood memory of swinging on a playground swing.

“Remember being on a swing?” He asked. “Each time you came back, you would take a deep breath—you probably didn’t even realize you were doing it—and you’d push the seat and you’d go a little higher. It’s a great visual. It is the exact same way that we push with our seat [on the horse.]”

Over the course of a horse’s training, they learn that the breath precedes a cue and will begin to respond to that, Dover said, meaning that they will require less leg or rein cue, ultimately contributing to the invisible communication that dressage riders work for.

2. There are three groups of aids that work together to create balance and rhythm in the horse. Used together, they create the half-halt.

Dover’s theory lecture centers around the idea of three different types of aids: driving, bending, and opposition. Driving aids send the horse forward, bending aids keep the horse’s hind feet following the track of the front feet around a corner and on a straight line, and the aids of opposition regulate speed, tempo, and bend.

“Through these three sets of aids, you give [a young horse] a sense of rhythm, a sense of tempo, a sense of balance,” Dover said. “And through that balance, the merging of those three sets of aids, they begin to go, ‘You know what? This is feeling pretty good to me.’

“This moment of the breath in, close legs, close fist, becomes the doorway through which we make every change of bend, of balance, of gait, of pace, and of movement: The half-halt. If they’re out of balance, we ride a half-halt to bring them back to a perfect state of balance and attention.”

Dover describes visualizing perfect movements as part of the process of riding harmoniously.

“The moment before we take in our breath, we are already seeing a movie in our mind of our horse doing this next balance from one half-halt to the next,” he said. “We half-halt and we create a shoulder-in. We half-halt and create the half-pass, then breathe out and relax the fist. We half-halt and we create the straightness to get up the centerline. We take in the breath, we close our legs, we close our fist, we canter on the spot, and within that canter, we create the halt. We’ve taken the breath, we close our legs, we close our fist, we ask the horse to trot, we breathe out, and we relax that fist, having created the trot.”

3. Find the rhythm.

In the first mounted session, clinician George Williams gave Virginia Woodcock a warm-up exercise to work on rhythm. While working at a posting trot on a circle, Williams had Woodcock sit for three steps, then five steps, and increasing until she was sitting for a stretch of 11 strides on her horse, The Safari Party.

“When we sit the trot for three steps or five steps or seven steps and so on, first, it gives you a feeling of how the horse is moving under you, that you can really distinguish the strides or the steps of the horse,” Williams explained. “And, second, I’m looking for the effect that he doesn’t change his tempo or his way of going, that he truly accepts the rider’s seat.”

By establishing this rhythm early in the ride, Woodcock was better equipped to cue her horse in rhythm for clean transitions later on.

4. Focus on rideability with a hot horse.

Bianca Schmidt came into her first mounted session with Olympian Sabine Schut-Kery riding CK Sir Shimmi, a new horse for her. Sir Shimmi came in hot, and Schut-Kery helped Schmidt to work through the horse’s tension in a new situation.

“When I have a horse like that, I think, ‘Let’s get the horse

Sabine Schut-Kery helped rider Bianca Schmidt work with a new horse, CK Sir Shimmi, to improve his relaxation and rideability.

comfortable so I get the most rideability,’” said Schut-Kery. “Just stay quiet. There’s nothing to accomplish right now other than he relaxes and through the relaxation he becomes rideable.”

Schut-Kery had Schmidt work on riding long, slow leg-yields that spanned the length of the arena. She explained that she wasn’t looking for a lot of sideways motion with these leg-yields, but teaching the horse to go forward and off the inside leg in a way that he learns to relax in response to the leg.

“When you have a horse that’s a little bit ahead of you, I try to ride exercises where there is leg required, but in a more calming and natural way. So, shoulder-ins, leg-yields. Shoulder-in already has bend, so that should help make him more supple. When he relaxes, you can start riding from the calf a little more—not more tempo. Think more control from back to front and the hind legs a little bit more through your legs.”

5. When your cues aren’t working, take a step back.

Schut-Kery praised Devon Pomeroy for being an attentive and proactive rider with Royal Dark Chocolate. She suggested