Book Review • Field & Stable
THE BALANCED HORSE – The Aids by Feel Not Force By Sylvia Loch Published by Kenilworth Press – ISBN 978 1 905693 85 6 (£25.00)
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ust when we might think that Sylvia Loch has written all she can on the subject of aids and balance, she comes up with more gems of wisdom and a completely fresh approach. The true art of riding cannot possibly change, unless horses change dramatically in their conformational makeup, or the laws of Nature and gravity change and Newton is proved wrong! Even with intensive selective breeding for competition, horses remain essentially biomechanically the same as they were at least 2,500 years ago. This book brings new enlightenment to old principles by putting the facts in a new and understandable way. It is a prolifically pictorial book and the photographs are amazing. There are many sequences showing stages of particular movements, with captions describing the aids as well as the horse’s movements. The author is the rider in most photos and one can only be enthralled by her faultless position and obvious harmony with each horse. The reader is uplifted by the occasional photo where Sylvia comments on a slight fault of her own or that of the horse. This gives us all hope (human and horse) that we can make mistakes but still go on to greatness! In one shot Sylvia deliberately rides in a way most common in the competition arena; showing the very derogatory effect this has on the horse in extended trot – so different from the other shots of the same horse in this movement. The line drawings are also
wonderfully done and illustrate the text exactly, making it easy to see where things can go wrong and why. It will appeal to novice and experienced riders alike. No matter how experienced or how well read one may be, there are points made clear in this book which many experienced classicists may have taken for granted but never thought deeply about before. It is a very in-depth book, but nevertheless there are very many basic principles which are made crystal clear for the novice. One of the most difficult things to explain is always rein contact, and is especially confusing to the novice. Below is a quote which I think comes the nearest to summing up in a nutshell the many nuances we should all bear in mind:“The amount of contact will vary considerably from horse to horse. It should be constant but allowing with the newly backed horse; firmer with the novice horse – whose balance may be faulty and who will need more support – and grow lighter by stages with the advanced horse. And herein lies the great myth about contact. For dressage, we should not be riding around with washing-line reins except in the stretch or, for a few moments, in a descente de main.” All of the principles are backed up (although there is no need for back-up) by many quotes from the Masters which appear at the end of each chapter. I thoroughly enjoyed these quotes as many are from books which I do not possess and which I would think are now hard to obtain. The other point to be made here is that these quotes are
from across the board internationally – the French school, German School, English, Dutch, and so on, which confirms in my mind that there is uniformity in classical riding; the differences are minimal. The reader is taken on a virtual ‘feeling’ riding journey from training the novice horse right up to the higher airs, including one-handed riding, which is often neglected. No thinking rider should be without this book, regardless of which discipline they wish to follow. The laws of Nature are the same in all riding, not just dressage. Anne Wilson
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