Just a question regarding multiple riders

[Nayumi1]

So I was talking to my half sister today about her dressage horse that will be arriving on the weekend. She is rather excited about it! However she was concerned about about the fact the her younger sister will also be riding her and it got me thinking I should ask the question.

Alecia who will be training the horse for dressage competition is worried that her 'hoon rider' sister (we are Australian so hoon = silly fast) would mess up her training. Their mum has said both of them need to ride her as she doesn't want the horse getting used to one rider.

So my question to all of you is would having another rider who will not follow the training Alecia is doing for dressage cause any issues? What are your thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[Jessey]

Doing something different can give a horse a good break from intensive training which can help them not get sour, on the other hand totally different riding styles can work against each other but it really depends what each is doing as to weather or not it will cause issues.

 

[Skib]

I ride RS horses - they get ridden by several people - even if it is only me and staff in special cases, there are still different riding styles. Horses adapt to and behave differently with different riders and if you ride a horse twice a week, it gets to know what you want - but it does them no harm at all. Valegro the gold medal dressage horse was hacked out regularly by a retired dressage rider.

 

[carthorse]

I think the sister is less likely to mess up the training if she's hacking the horse than if she tries to do school work too, in fact I'm inclined to agree with Jessey that having someone do something completely different with her may be a good thing. I also think that it's a lot harder to mess up an established horse than most riders believe, I'd be more concerned about it if it was a very green horse that doesn't yet know anything.

 

[Nayumi1]

That's brilliant, at least that will give her peace of mind! The girl has big dreams but the conversation just got me thinking and was curious about it.

 

[Ao-]

If both of them are competent/normal riders and the bigger sis will do the dressage work while the other will just ride the horse as relaxation, do some ground play/trick learning, then there shouldn't be any issues. If both of them plan to teach the horse dressage stuff then yes it will be conflicting for everyone. It will the the bigger sister's horse so she needs to be the "owner". It's fine for the horse to be ridden by different people from time to time, but if she wants to make a dressage horse out of it on her own with her methods, then she has to assume the trainer role.