Why are Dressage horses tails set so high?
admin on September 29th, 2009
why do dressage horses carry their tail up?
Dressage maneuvers require a horse to be in a very "collected" state. Their tails help them balance. It’s like when you are walking on your tippy-toes or traversing something very narrow and you bring your hands up to help you balance.
Dressage maneuvers require a horse to be in a very "collected" state. Their tails help them balance. It’s like when you are walking on your tippy-toes or traversing something very narrow and you bring your hands up to help you balance.
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Not all dressage horses do, but most who do have it up for style, I would guess, and comfort of the horse. Most saddlebred horses wear fake tails to prop them up, it is probably a breed requirement.
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okay the tails the head the neck its all to do with fashion well back then but mainly today we capture them gallopign around the padock with talls high and necks arched ears up most of the higher dressarge levels have arbians freisan fancy breeds =]
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because they are very proper horses.
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have a horse and do dressageshows every two weeks.
because people think it looks better like that
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its balance just as the first person said….were the other people got these i don’t understand
Freisians and Arabs at high level dressage????? All the horses that have been in the Olympics in recent years have been in no way related to these two breeds.
And fasion?? Were did you get that idea….
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Not all Dressage horses carry their tails so high. A lot of them do because they are very stressed, like if you look at some top-level dressage horses, they are foaming all over and have veins sticking out. This is not neccessarily a good way to ride them even though it looks flashy.
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First, Bob, I am a dressage rider and enthusiast myself, and I used to work for a well known judge in the sport, and I wasn’t aware that dressage horses carry their tails high. I have never seen one do this in competition- not even at the FEI or international levels of the sport. Tail wringing and swishing in competition or during a test is considered to be a sign of tension, and horses which do this get points deducted from their score, so efforts are made to prevent this from happening in the first place. If a horse does carry its tail high, chances are good that this is for balance, NOT because the horse is stressed.
Dressage competitors DO NOT use tail sets on their horses- that is against the rules, and people caught doing this can face heavy fines and suspensions, not to mention forfeiture of any prizes or money won, should such behavior be discovered. I don’t know where you got the idea that tail sets were allowed from. Tail setting is something you typically see in the Saddlebred and Arabian world- it isn’t a part of classical dressage, and it shouldn’t be, because it is both unnatural and CRUEL to make a horse carry his or her tail in that position. How would you like to be forced to crawl around on your hands and knees, with your butt suspended in mid air, just because someone thinks it’s cute or funny to have you look like that? Well, that’s somewhat similar to what horses which are forced to wear tail sets are required to do. It isn’t pleasant, and there are reasons why it’s not a part of the sport.
Enough said.
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I used to work for a dressage judge, and I know the rules of the sport. I am also a horse owner, a horse professional turned medical coder, and a dressage rider myself.