In AQHA’s FREE Riding Dressage report, the industry’s best horse trainers show you how to get started in the exciting sport of dressage. Plus, they explain how the fundamentals of dressage can help you in other horse disciplines.

In the Riding Dressage report, you can prepare to show dressage with these nine lessons from AQHA Professional Horsewoman and Certified Horsemanship Association master instructor Carla Wennberg, with The American Quarter Horse Journal’s Andrea Caudill:

1. Enter at A: What is dressage, and how can its basics help all riders?
2. Proceed Working Trot: Improve your departures.
3. At C, Medium Walk: Improve your horse’s self-carriage in downward transitions.
   
4. Circle Left 20 Meters: To ride a circle, your horse has to be straight.
5. At E, Circle Left: Use lateral work to strengthen your horse.
6. At A, Down the Centerline: Turning a corner means improving your horse’s flexibility.
7. HXF, Free Walk: Teach your horse to stretch.
8. At X, Halt and Salute: A correct halt is all about being balanced .
9. At A, Down Centerline: Preparing to show a dressage test.

Dressage horses aren’t the only equines who can benefit from these lessons.

If you have a horse that pulls on the bridle, tosses his head, rushes or throws up his head during transitions, the exercises in the Riding Dressage report can help those problems.

The dressage lessons can also help:

• Sharpen your horsemanship or equitation patterns.
• Get rid of trot steps in a reining lope departure.
• Balance a young colt just starting under-saddle training.
• Show horses that try to dive into the center of the ring.
• Hunter under saddle horses that need to stay straight on the rail.
• Canter circles in any discipline where horses might try to drop a shoulder.
• Maneuvering around obstacles on the trail. (It will help you keep your horse between your legs, not leaning on them.)
• Improve transitions
• Get your horse more balanced and responsive, and more!