Do Cowboys, Rope Halters and Wavy Flappy Things Have a Place in Dressage?

What natural horsemanship can teach us about training the dressage horse.

Walk into a dressage arena carrying a rope halter and a stick with a piece of string attached to it and you may get some interesting looks.

Start waving the string around and things may deteriorate further.

But beneath the cowboy hats, rope halters, carrot sticks and occasionally enthusiastic quantities of wavy flappy things is something dressage riders should probably be paying attention to:

Horsemanship.

Because when you strip away the branding, terminology and equipment, much of what natural horsemanship teaches is remarkably familiar.

Control the feet.
Influence the shoulders.
Influence the hindquarters.
Move toward pressure.
Move away from pressure.
Follow a feel.
Maintain rhythm and direction.
Develop confidence.
Respond to increasingly subtle aids.

Sound familiar?

It should.

Because eventually we put a saddle on, ride down the centreline and call many of those same skills dressage.

What Actually Is “Natural Horsemanship”?

Pat Parelli unquestionably became one of the biggest forces in popularising and systematising natural horsemanship, particularly through the Parelli programme and Seven Games. But the underlying ideas predate Parelli by a very long way.

Long before Parelli, horsemen including Ray Hunt and Tom and Bill Dorrance were helping shape and spread the style of American horsemanship we recognise today. Ronnie Willis was another important influence on Parelli himself.

But cowboys didn’t invent horsemanship either.

Long before Hunt, the Dorrances, Willis or Parelli, Spanish and Mexican vaqueros were developing sophisticated systems of horsemanship in the American West. Their horses needed to be light, responsive and manoeuvrable, capable of being ridden with increasingly subtle aids while doing very practical work. Many of the principles we now associate with good Western or “natural” horsemanship have much older roots.

And here’s where things get interesting for dressage riders.

The vaquero tradition grew from Spanish horsemanship, which shared roots and influences with the wider European equestrian traditions from which classical dressage developed. They aren’t the same system, nor is there a neat historical line connecting one directly to the other, but it’s hardly surprising that we find familiar ideas on both sides: lightness, balance, responsiveness, control of the shoulders and hindquarters, progressive training and, ultimately, doing more with less.

Tom and Bill Dorrance, Ray Hunt and later horsemen helped shape and spread these principles through modern American horsemanship, while Parelli packaged many of them into a system that became accessible to ordinary horse owners around the world.

Different clothes. Different equipment. Different terminology.

But underneath it all sits a remarkably familiar idea:

Understand the horse, teach them one piece at a time, and progressively develop those simple responses into something much more sophisticated.

Natural horsemanship isn’t really new.

Neither is dressage.

They’re modern labels attached to principles horsemen have been discovering, refining and arguing about for centuries.

Good horsemanship is good horsemanship.

A horse doesn’t know whether an exercise came from a cowboy, a classical riding master, a behavioural scientist or somebody wearing white breeches.

It experiences consequences.

Pressure. Release. Balance. Timing. Feel. Repetition. Reward. Clarity. Confusion.

The question isn’t:

Which tribe does this exercise belong to?

The question is:

Does it help the horse understand what we’re asking?

The Parelli Seven Games Through Dressage Eyes

1. The Friendly Game

You can trust what happens around you.

The horse learns to tolerate and eventually relax around touch, equipment, movement and environmental stimuli.

Dressage connections: accepting the whip touching the body, girthing, mounting, leg contact, rein movement, jackets moving, arena decorations, judges’ boxes and generally remaining relaxed while the rider does weird human things above them.

Before we can influence a horse, the horse needs to be comfortable enough to receive information without reacting defensively to it.

2. The Porcupine Game

Move away from steady pressure.

This one is dressage everywhere.

Pressure against the ribcage → move sideways.

Pressure near the hindquarters → move the quarters.

Rein pressure → respond appropriately to the rein.

Dressage connections: leg-yield, turn on the forehand, turn on the haunches, shoulder-in, travers, renvers, half-pass and eventually increasingly sophisticated lateral positioning.

The dressage rider calls them aids.

The horse experiences pressure and release.

3. The Driving Game

Respond to rhythmic pressure without physical contact.

Now we’re getting really interesting.

The horse learns that an energetic or spatial cue can influence movement before physical pressure becomes necessary.

Dressage connections: the whip used as a secondary aid, directing the shoulders or quarters, transitions, groundwork, in-hand work and eventually the horse responding to incredibly subtle changes in the rider’s body and intent.

The ultimate dressage horse isn’t responding because we’re physically pushing its body into position.

It’s responding to signals predicting what we want it to do.

4. The Yo-Yo Game

Move away and come back.

On the ground: forwards and backwards while maintaining attention, straightness and responsiveness.

Under saddle?

Transitions.

Walk–halt–walk.
Trot–walk–trot.
Rein-back–walk.
Collected steps–forward.
Lengthen–shorten.

At the highest levels, even the ability to bring the horse’s forward energy progressively back toward piaffe relies on the same fundamental concept: the horse must remain responsive as we ask for more forward or less forward without losing organisation.

Dressage continually asks the horse to shift its balance while remaining attentive and responsive.

Eventually we give that ability a very dressage-y word:

Adjustability.

5. The Circling Game

Maintain gait, rhythm and direction.

Well, this one’s hardly difficult to connect.

Dressage connections: circles, lunging, rhythm, tempo, bend, transitions on a circle and eventually developing balance without the rider micromanaging every stride.

The important principle isn’t simply horse goes around human.

It’s:

Can I establish a task and have the horse maintain it without constantly nagging?

That’s enormously relevant to dressage.

A horse that only maintains trot because the rider kicks every second stride hasn’t really learned to maintain trot.

6. The Sideways Game

Move laterally.

Hello, dressage.

Dressage connections: leg-yield, shoulder-in, travers, renvers and half-pass.

The sophistication changes enormously.

The fundamental concept doesn’t:

Can you influence the horse’s body laterally?

The groundwork version might be crude compared with a balanced half-pass in collected trot, but it introduces the horse to the basic concept upon which that later movement depends.

7. The Squeeze Game

Move confidently through, between, over or under things.

This is probably the one people will initially think has the least relevance to dressage.

Until you think about what it actually develops.

Confidence.
Straightness.
Commitment to a line.
Following direction despite uncertainty.

Dressage connections: riding between the aids, straightness, narrow corridors, poles, cavaletti, entering unfamiliar arenas, passing judges’ boxes, moving toward something the horse would rather avoid and learning that the rider can provide direction without forcing the horse through panic.

It’s not teaching half-pass.

It’s teaching something potentially more fundamental:

When I give you a direction, can you confidently follow it?

Different Languages. Same Horse.

A cowboy might talk about moving the feet.

A dressage trainer might talk about influencing the quarters.

A classical trainer might talk about mobilising the haunches.

An equitation scientist might describe a learned response to an operant cue.

And the horse is standing there thinking:

You want my bum over there.

Terminology is useful, particularly as training becomes more sophisticated, but terminology can also disguise how simple the foundations actually are.

Sometimes we’re arguing over language while asking the horse essentially the same question.

Where Natural Horsemanship and Dressage Collide

Natural horsemanship isn’t dressage.

Teaching a horse to yield its quarters doesn’t mean you’ve taught travers.

Moving sideways isn’t automatically leg-yield.

Backing up isn’t collection.

Circling isn’t necessarily correct bend.

Dressage takes these fundamental responses and progressively adds biomechanical requirements:

Rhythm. Posture. Balance. Bend. Impulsion. Connection. Straightness. Engagement. And eventually, collection.

That’s the distinction.

Which brings us to perhaps the simplest way of looking at the relationship between the two.

Natural Horsemanship Is the Cake. Dressage Is the Icing.

You can’t ice something that doesn’t exist.

Before we worry about whether the horse’s shoulder-in has precisely the correct angle, we need a horse that understands:

Go.
Stop.
Come back.
Move over.
Move your shoulders.
Move your quarters.
Follow this direction.
Maintain what I’ve asked for.
Accept pressure.
Respond to pressure.
Relax when the pressure disappears.
Trust me when you’re uncertain.

That’s the cake.

Dressage takes those responses and refines them. We add balance, posture, precision and progressively greater control of the horse’s body. The aids become smaller. The questions become more complicated. The answers become more sophisticated.

That’s the icing.

And no amount of beautiful icing can compensate for a cake that wasn’t properly made underneath.

In Conclusion

Dressage doesn’t need to become natural horsemanship.

Natural horsemanship doesn’t need to become dressage.

And nobody needs to swap their double bridle for a rope halter and start waving a carrot stick around at Prix St Georges.

But dressage riders can learn from good horsemen wherever they find them.

The greatest mistake is believing that because somebody uses different equipment, different terminology or comes from a different training tradition, they have nothing relevant to teach us.

The horse doesn’t care what we call it.

Good training progressively expands the horse’s vocabulary until increasingly complicated questions can be answered with increasingly subtle conversations.

And that, really, is what dressage is supposed to be.