Western Dressage

Over ten years ago I was riding with Al Dunning when I expressed an idea that I had been working on. I called it Western Dressage and it referred to the discipline of leg cues used in Dressage being coupled with reining maneuvers. I wanted to control all the parts of the horse through cues to fix dropped shoulders, flex problems, guiding, weight shifts, and so on. He said it was a good idea and that I should peruse it. Subsequently I developed what I dubbed “The Program by Carl Wood”. It takes a movement such as rollbacks or lead changes and breaks them down into there simplest parts then teaches the horse those parts individually and then gradually putting them together to make learning easier for the horse. I have successfully taught “The Program” to students and apprentices from not only all over this country but also from as far away as Holland, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and Israel. Movie and Television personalities have learned to ride using “The Program”. Not long ago Al Dunning and Lynn Palm got together in Florida and worked on the same concept and they publicly referred to it as Western Dressage. It is truly an honor to have influenced two great trainers that I have always truly admired. But most of all the idea I had years ago seems to be taking route in the western disciplines. I believe that the level of competition has risen to the point that such a program is necessary to be able to achieve the highly advanced technical moves in today’s shows. Someday maybe I will write a book but in the mean time I will keep on teaching “The Program” to all that wish to achieve more and to be more a partner with their horse. Carl Wood