Classical Dressage has surged in popularity among horse-lovers as an antidote to the blatant cruelty we see at the pinnacle of the sport today. Anja Beran — a modern Classical master — has also warned of a crisis, and even of a future in which the sport may be forbidden. I agree. Frankly, it can't come soon enough.
Anja describes Classical Dressage as an approach "orientated completely according to the nature of the horse," aiming for a horse that "happily and confidently submits to the will of the rider," without physical or mental damage.
I would genuinely love to know what sources this is based on, because I can't find the books that actually support these claims. If you have ideas, please email me.
Here Is the Problem
Classical Dressage rests on the belief that conditioned compliance is equivalent to understanding. That premise belongs in a world in which animals were studied as bodies to be conditioned — not as thinking, feeling organisms with their own experience of what is happening to them.
Baucher's horse stood still. Fillis's horse piaffe'd. De la Guérinière's horse achieved shoulder-in. The methods worked — in the sense that they produced the behaviours. But producing a behaviour is not the same as the horse understanding the behaviour. And an animal that complies because it has learned that resistance is futile is not the same as an animal that participates because it genuinely understands what is being asked.
Modern equine learning science tells a different story from the one classical dressage has always assumed. Horses are capable of far more genuine cognitive engagement than the old framework recognised. They form expectations. They solve problems. They have preferences. They can learn with far less pressure — and far more understanding — than the classical tradition assumed was possible or necessary.
What This Means
Classical dressage is a better starting point than modern sport dressage. That much is true. Its emphasis on lightness, self-carriage, and the horse's natural movement reflects genuine insight — arrived at through careful observation over generations.
But it is not the finishing line. And treating it as an ethical endpoint because it is old, because it is traditional, because it is "classical" — is itself a faulty premise.
The question is not whether something is classical. The question is whether it is true, whether it works, and whether the horse's experience of it is acceptable by the standards we now hold.