Top 12 List: Signs That You Love Dressage

12. Watching grass grow, watching paint dry, and observing lower level dressage tests is NOT boring.

11. Stored safely in your freezer and treasured for eternity is a nasty, gooey old rag used to wipe Brentina's bit in 1995.

10. For the love of the discipline, you learned to spell 'Alois Podhajsky.'

9. There is NO good reason to jump a horse over anything unless the gate to the dressage arena is stuck shut.

8. You notice a naked guy riding in your arena and your first thought is, "He needs to sit deeper, and his horse isn't really through."

7. You own 372 bit, and you're certain that the one you saw in the tack shop today is your magic passport to Third Level.

6. Because somewhere out there is a horse who will: obey you better than your cat; drool less than your dog; stay with you after your kids leave home; and teach you even more than your instructor. You just know it!

5. Every halt is the first salute of the rest of your life.

4. You married a man you'd only known for eight months (whose bloodlines are not well documented and whose movement is, well, ordinary) but you spent 15 months researching saddles before committing to one and you dedicated two years to finding your perfect equine dressage partner/soulmate.

3. Reiner Klimke never lived at Graceland? Ummmm . . . so WHY is it a shrine?

2. The exhilaration of scoring nines. Okay, eights. Okay, two fours or four twos. Or eight ones.

1. When you die and ascend to the Pearly Gates, it's gonna feel just like a perfect upward trot-to-canter transition.

Reprinted from Hunter & Sport Horse Magazine

Mar/Apr 2005 Issue

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