Prism Dressage and Equine Services

09/02/2025

08/27/2025

Olympian Isabell Werth explains how elasticity and suppleness allow your dressage horse to do his job well and how to help him achieve these key qualities.

08/24/2025

🐴DRESSAGE SOLUTIONS🐴 Improve Rein Connection

To improve your rein connection ...

Imagine your point of contact with the bit is in your elbows, triceps and back, and that your arms, wrists and hands are just extensions of the reins. This allows the connection to be held in your body rather than your hands and allows the hands and arms to be soft.
~ Jessica Miller

🎨 Sandy Rabinowitz

08/21/2025

https://dressagetoday.com/instruction/creating-excellence-dressage-putting-it-into-practice-sue-blinks/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwMUbN5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHkO7NgXhLT9sO2pG5ui0DZbuxOs5aJrvRASJhibsfnkFFnB2dgqx4UTWOh_l_aem_PZm_iPlJHum9hB605XeI9A

Olympian Sue Blinks shows how her multifaceted approach to dressage excellence works in teaching movements like shoulder-in and piaffe.

06/20/2025

Stephany Fish Crossman evaluates an adult amateur to explain how rider biomechanics are key to a successful partnership with your dressage horse.

06/20/2025

🐴DRESSAGE SOLUTIONS!🐴 How To Know If Your Inside Leg Is Effective?

To help you determine if your inside leg is effective in sending energy to the outside rein …

Imagine that, as a result of using the inside leg, the outside of your horse’s neck seems like a balloon filling with air and the outside rein feels like a bungee cord with positive tension and an elastic connection.
— Martin Kuhn

🎨 Sandy Rabinowitz

06/04/2025

🐴DRESSAGE SOLUTIONS: Improve Your Pirouettes🐴

To help make your pirouettes regular, balanced and effortless…

Imagine the face of a clock and make each step cover 10 minutes.
— Carl Hester

🎨 Sandy Rabinowitz

05/20/2025

Take a lesson with Steffen Peters, dressage star for the USA. “Increase the suppleness, don’t just hold in front – better, right away he’s more active behind. When you get him softer in your hand and you make him let go, he will be quieter in the mouth. He’s super, but don’t let him think he’s a big horse, let him think he’s a small horse; there’s no need for him to be a bully. The most important part of his body is not his hind leg, not his back, it’s his brain, get that and he’ll learn to use his muscles to carry you, not against you.”
https://www.horsemagazine.com/thm/2010/07/wow-a-clinic-with-steffen-peters-part-1/

05/13/2025

Qualities that make a good leg-yield:

✅ The horse moves both forwards and sideways on two tracks.
✅ The rhythm and tempo remains consistent.
✅ The horse's body stays straight with the shoulders about one hoofprint in front of the hindquarters, and a very slight flexion at the poll away from the direction of travel.
✅ If in trot, the horse's inside legs pass and cross in front of the horse's outside legs.
✅ The horse moves freely forward, working through his back without tension or resistance, and the balance is uphill.
✅ The contact is elastic and consistent.
✅ There is a clear start and end to the movement.
✅ The positioning of the leg-yield remains the same throughout the movement, without steep or shallow variations.

For more help with this, check out this article on our website - https://howtodressage.com/article/leg-yield/

Illustrations created and copyrighted by How To Dressage

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05/07/2025

04/15/2025

"I study dressage because it's one of the purest forms of communication between species. The arena is small, but the game is infinite."

This thought struck me during my training today. We work within the confines of a 20x60m rectangle, yet within those boundaries lies an endless pursuit of connection and refinement.

What fascinates me most about this art isn't just the technical movements, but the silent conversation happening with every shift of weight, every subtle aid, every moment of balanced harmony. The horse doesn't respond to our words but to our energy, our intention, our true presence.

In a world that constantly demands more, faster, louder, dressage teaches the opposite wisdom: less is more. The lightest touch yields the greatest response. Patience compounds over time. The journey never ends because perfection isn't a destination but a fleeting moment of perfect understanding between two beings.

I've come to see the dressage arena as a microcosm of life itself. We all operate within certain boundaries, yet the depth of what we can discover within those spaces is limitless if we approach them with curiosity rather than constraint.

04/13/2025

There’s a dangerous trend growing in the horsemanship world. The idea that you have to and should “build a relationship” before you start building skill.

That mindset is holding people back. And much worse it’s creating confused and dangerous horses.

Here’s the truth:
You don’t pick between relationship and skill. You build both. At the same time.

If you’re only focused on “bonding,” but you’re not setting clear expectations, clear boundaries, clear understanding your horse has no idea where the boundaries are. This creates uncertainty, inconsistency, and eventually frustrating problems that can get dangerous quickly and could be avoided all together.

And if you’re just drilling skills with no feel, no connection, no trust, no regard for the horse’s needs, good luck getting any try or longevity from your horse.

Horsemanship is about leadership. Leadership is the ability to influence.

And true leadership means showing up consistently with vision, clarity, direction, fairness and serving others.

When you combine partnership and purpose, the results speak for themselves. Horses become more focused, more relaxed, and more willing because they understand what’s being asked and they trust the person asking.

This approach is what I’ve called building a Working Partnership with our horse. In fact it’s how I work with my wife, my kids and everyone else too.

What we do develops the skills.
How we do it develops the partnership.

We develop a Working Partnership by having deep Purpose in what we do, developing our Partnership through how we work with the horse and ultimately bringing out the best Performance (potential) in every horse by intentionally bringing together Purpose & Partnership in our work with our horse.

If you want a better partnership with your horse… Develop better timing. Better communication. Clearer boundaries.
Stop separating the emotional connection from the technical work—they’re not in conflict. They complement each other.

These dangerous trends are built on what makes the human feel good but disregard the true needs of the horse.

True leaders focus on serving others.

To have a deep partnership and reliable skills with our horse- we must focus on serving the horse’s needs on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level.

Together We Rise.

-Colton Woods

And if this post resonated with you, I wrote a free ebook called Be A Leader Worth Following that you’d definitely enjoy. If you’d like a copy for free just comment YES and I’ll send it your way.

Here’s to truly serving the horse and being able to look towards what really matters.