Finding Unity in Dressage: Carolyn Resnick’s
Dance with Horses Clinic
By Camille DeWitt

During the closing remarks at Carolyn Resnick’s classical dressage clinic held in Valley Center on Sept.7, all 25 equestrians attending were asked to comment about what they had learned. When it came my turn, all I could say was “I feel that I can finally close the book on fighting with horses.”

That might sound a little dramatic, because you didn’t hear my contribution to the opening remarks during the clinic orientation that morning. I explained that I was at the clinic because I was tired of struggling to rehabilitate the emotionally “challenged” horses that have found their way to me throughout my life. Without formal training, over the years I was nevertheless able to establish trust and help them become secure, well-functioning horses. The exception was my last horse, a forceful Thoroughbred mare, who was a particularly powerful teacher.

She taught me that there must be enough resistance in me for her to hang that hat of hers on because she never missed an excuse to try to throw me. Although she didn’t succeed, after six years I was starting to get my feelings hurt because instead of a nice relaxed hack I knew I would be in for a rodeo sometime during the ride. However, it was a good sign that I was smart enough to give up, because I was left not only uninjured but wondering, after 35 years of owning and training horses, how much I didn’t know. I only knew I didn’t want to fight any more.

I now own a sweet and gracious 3-year-old Andalusian stallion that I purposely chose because he was handled very little before he joined me, and then only with kindness. He is innocently eager to please me, and above all I want to preserve his state of trustfulness. I came to Carolyn’s work with classical dressage in my search to find the most gentle methods to train this lovely stallion and, incidentally, to retrain myself. Carolyn’s sensitivity with horses appeals to me in a deep way, because a horse finds himself doing exactly what she asks and there is neither fear nor resistance. The performance just flows out of him—what he does really looks like it is his idea.

During the clinic we saw that Carolyn teaches her horses new behaviours in a process broken into many tender, bite-size lessons. She begins her relationship with the horse by literally giving him his freedom; she starts his groundwork not in a round pen, not on the lunge line, but at liberty in a rectangular enclosure where he can indeed get away from her if he wants to. The psychology here is that if he chooses to leave her side, he will be able to choose to rejoin her. And he does rejoin her, because she makes herself more interesting than anything else in his environment, even though he is free.

Carolyn offers herself to this herd animal as his companion. She encourages him to view her as his leader, reinforcing him continually with kind gestures, by playing on his instinct to follow. She can then begin to ask him to perform small acts of obedience. She adds on a new level to his performance only when he is so comfortable with what he already knows that it has become a natural, reflexive part of him. He feels relaxed and confident because Carolyn believes a horse never does anything wrong, so he is never disciplined. He is just brought back to where he was last comfortable and the desired behaviour is introduced again in small increments.

She builds methodically on the basic liberty groundwork when she begins the Uberstreichen exercises. She teaches the horse to yield to downward pressure on the poll and to yield to a direct rein on a snaffle bit while she stands beside him. She sends him around her on a long line until before he knows it, she is single-lining him on the dressage court and he is starting, yielding, and stopping on request. Before he is ever driven to contact with the bit, he must have a strong ability to articulate his hocks. Therefore, Carolyn focuses on developing the horse’s gaits through the half halt, and encourages the horse to articulate his hocks by learning to pick up his feet (suspension) and push himself forward (extension) in order to keep pace with her changing speeds. This work prepares the horse for dressage training by developing his desire to stay in “unity” with the trainer, and also sets the horse’s attitude to enjoy learning and performing in dressage.

To watch this many-layered process unfold so naturally over a period of a few hours left us in wonder, I would have to say. If all the horse handling and training experience represented by the participants at Carolyn’s clinic was added up, it would undoubtedly reach a total in the hundreds of years. However, there appeared to be a consensus across the participants that they had never seen horses cooperate more willingly with a trainer than the horses Carolyn worked with that day. A couple of students brought their horses to the clinic and received evaluations from Carolyn as they worked on the ground or in the saddle. One student, who had received with his horse instruction from Carolyn the previous day, commented on the remarkable improvement in his horse’s performance from the first session alone.

It is a joyful experience to watch the spirit of horse and human meld in a courtship of this kind. The bond is evidenced by a rhythm and grace in movement that happens because these two beings create between them a partnership of unity. I will continue to attend Carolyn’s series of clinics that she plans to offer every couple of months. It is a long commute to Valley Center, but I feel I have found the best philosophy and techniques for elevating my training methods, beginning my study of classical dressage, and most of all, becoming a horsewoman truly worthy of my horse.