Successful Dressage Horses Don't Need Long Legs

I'm sure I'm going to discuss the topic of conformational challenges and successful dressage horses several times in the future, but it's an extremely interesting topic for me since the BHB is not "the ideal" that many people have in mind for a dressage horse. Yet, the same "conformation challenges" he has are seen in some of the top dressage horses.

Heather Blitz on Paragon, one of the longest-legged horses in International Dressage.

I was reading a Dressage Today article from the January 2014 issue that I can't seem to forget! The article "Building the Ideal Dressage Horse" states that "Most good dressage horses are on the tall-and-narrow side." While that might be completely true for some riders, such as Edward Gal, I'd like to highlight a few top dressage horses that do not fit that particular mold. Just walk up to an FEI jog and you'll find several horses with big barrels, wide shoulders, and non-spidery legs. In fact, I was recently watching the live-streamed Global Dressage Festival specifically to look at conformation and movement and noticed that very few horses in the FEI PSG had long, spidery front legs. In fact, most of the horses seem to have front legs much shorter than their hind legs, but all of them had a very powerful hind end. The horses with the shortest front legs seemed to have some of the biggest reach in the extended gaits. As far as the Grand Prix horses go, I believe I did see a tendency towards longer legs than the PSG horses.

Short front legs and "10" extensions!

In a clinic video, Carl Hester mentions that his star mount Uthopia has extremely short front legs. Uthopia also happens to be around 16hh and regularly receives 9s and 10s for his extended trot. Bonus of short legs and a compact horse= they always know where their legs are so they can figure out how to stretch them out! Another horse he owns, superstar Valegro, isn't so narrow-chested and long-legged either! Valegro is also 16.2hh, so not a tall horse. From personal experience, it's so much easier making a 10m circle with a 15hh horse than an 18hh one, so I'm not sure why everyone wants the big horses. He went on to talk about how the hind end is what really matters to him, the power and the amount of step underneath. That gives me hope for the BHB, because he has a fantastic hind end, but definitely also has the short front legs.

I'd love to have Amber ride the BHB in a clinic with Carl Hester someday. Since he has been so successful bringing along horses with the same conformational challenges the BHB has, I feel he could help the BHB progress in a short time.

Front view of Valegro-- No spider legs!