Book Review: Master Dressage

I picked this book up after reading the free chapter he released on  his website, and I have to say that I really quite enjoyed it. I loved the practical tactics surrounding riding more accurate dressage tests, and I like a lot of his philosophy.

Mr. Dove explains that the art of dressage is a progressive training that should flow relatively naturally from one movement to the next, and he outlines the beginnings of his training progression, but the book isn't really focused on that. 

It's focused on the art of teaching one to think about dressage. To examine each movement in the test and see how it's setting you up to execute the next movement. To really think about where you must position yourself in the arena and how to ask for the most from your horse. 

This is a book talking to people who are new to dressage, certainly, but I really liked how straightforward the writing was. I've adopted a few of his terms into my teaching because he has laid it out so cleanly and with such precise wording. 

One of the sections is on improving your schooling sessions, and he provides a checklist you can ask yourself when watching a video of yourself. It's quite thorough. In the book, he writes that you can find the checklist on his website, but I wasn't able to find it, so I'll post it here. 

This is just one example of concrete advice that he has in the book. It's methodical, which is how he recommends we approach working with our horses. I like it because oftentimes when I video my students, I don't have a lot to tell them to look for specifically because so much of my analysis is just running concurrently in my head. This list is a good way to help kids internalize all the things we need to think about in our training.