Charlotte Dujardin :Taking the Trot from Ugly to Awesome in a Dressage Horse

Sure, and I love hot horses. I hate kicking. I'm a lazy rider. I love to just sit and steer. So, you saw how his trot started at the beginning. Actually, I'll just do it again. So, this is his trot. Now, you look at that trot and you think, that's a nice trot. You don't go, wow, that's amazing. But you think, he uses himself in the right way. His mechanics are nice. He's got a good hind leg. So, he has a good action. He's very powerful in his hind leg. He has a good front leg and it's just a nice trot. So, that's my aid. My aid with my hands for the stretching is down and low. So, then all I do, well, she says, shorten up my reins and then I sit and then I create suspension. And now, oh, this is where everyone goes, because you make a horse look very normal and you can turn it into something that looks very special. So, when you're buying a horse, the most important things for me is the walk and the canter because they're the two paces that you can't change. You can make them better, but you can't change them. So, you can see with the trot, by teaching the horse suspension, how you can change the trot. So, I never worry about how bad a horse has a trot because I know with my training and my system, I can make it look spectacular. Even a really ugly horse, you can make look really special. So, don't worry if you have an ugly horse. Karl tells me I have lots of ugly horses and I tell him, you wait because one day you're going to regret saying that. And guess what he has? And now he wants to ride my horses. So, I get the last laugh. So, how do we do this? What am I doing? How am I doing this? So, basically, all I do is I sit. So, I want to bring his neck up. So, now he's up to the bridle. He's, again, in his own self-courage. I'm not holding him. He's got to be light and I touch him with my leg and I half out with my rein and I start to get this, which is the passage. So, I start to create lift and suspension just by shortening and touching him with my leg and then I ride forward. And so, when I ride forward, I have to try and keep the suspension in the trot and it has to stay regular. Good boy. And he's sort of taking you from his hind end through the connection in a good way. Absolutely. And he has to, like there, he gets a bit carried away. He wants to show everybody how good he is, but he, again, I can't tell him off for wanting to try too much.