Dressage rides to the top

Dressage, the horsemanship competition at the Summer Olympic Games, has recently received a boost in notoriety from the involvement of Ann Romney, but the exercises that the horses are put through date back thousands of years and are practiced around the world, including at a horse farm in Bowie.

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July 22, 2012

Q, a dressage mount owned by Aviva Nebesky, goes through its exercises at Horsepen Hill Farm in Bowie.

Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post

July 22, 2012

Nebesky, who owns Horsepen Hill Farm. prepares Q for a ride.

Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post

July 22, 2012

Nebesky kisses Waterford SE, a.k.a. Fredi, another horse at Horsepen Hill Farm.

Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post

July 22, 2012

Nebesky straps on Q’s saddle. It’s not a poor man’s sport, but “we’re not all millionaires,” Nebesky says.

Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post

July 22, 2012

Nebesky and Fredi make their way around the ring. The basic skills Nebesky teaches are useful, she says, for a $1,500 trail horse. As evidence, Nebesky begins to move Fredi on a diagonal — crablike — across the arena. Dressage aficionados call that a “leg yield” and refine it into the more complex “half pass.” The ability to control simultaneous forward and sideways movement could help a rider avoid an obstacle on a trail such as a fallen tree. Nebesky stops and gives Fredi the aids to turn his hindquarters in an 180-degree arc while his forelegs barely move. That “turn on the forehand” is key for anyone opening a gate on horseback.

Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post

July 22, 2012

Q's mouth foams during a dressage session. The foam isn’t a sign that the horse is hungry or unhappy; it is an indication of how relaxed the horse is, toying with its metal bits “as a baby might chew on a pacifier,” Nebesky says.

Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post

July 22, 2012

“Dressage,” says Nebesky, 54, “is just the French word for training” — and people have been training horses for centuries. To plow fields. As public transport. And to carry warriors into battle. The cavalry is the source of all this fancy hoofwork. As long ago as 430 B.C., the Athenian historian and hippophile Xenophon wrote treatises on training obedient, agile — and, yes, showy — mounts for military purposes, and the regimented displays of Vienna’s Lipizzaner stallions reflect those combative roots.

Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post

July 22, 2012

Nebesky demonstrates dressage with Fredi. She says people are lured to dressage because training horses is good for body and soul. A horse’s movement is therapeutic, mimicking the way a human walks, which is why Ann Romney, the wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, says she took to riding after receiving her multiple sclerosis diagnosis.

Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post

July 22, 2012

Nebesky works with Fredi. The mental challenge of controlling and then bonding with a 1,000-pound animal is empowering. Many of Nebesky’s clients and competitors are baby boomers, wary of risking aging bodies on cross-country gallops or over fences. And in this litigious society, safety appeals to some teachers, too, says Nebesky, who broke her back in a jumping accident, “because when you fall off a horse, you tend to get launched.”

Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post

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