Personal Membership Message

By: Jack Brainard

The concept or idea of dressage training on a western horse isn’t a new one, and the potential of this has long been realized. However, until now, no one has come forth with a plan, or program, to bring these facts into being, and to inform and educate western riders as to its unlimited potential for the betterment of their horses. Recently a small group of die hard Western Dressage enthusiasts have taken the bull by the horns and after much hard work and legal counsel have formed a new organization called the WDAA (Western Dressage Association of America). Its purpose is to educate, inform, promote, and teach dressage principles to western riders. This will be done by clinics, demonstrations, videos, competitions, newsletters, seminars, private lessons, etc.

The WDAA is a non-profit association, and at present consists of a small group of dedicated enthusiasts who are convinced that their new organization has merit, and very soon its benefits will be realized on the national scope.

We in the WDAA realize that we are a fledgling concern and that we are lacking in finances and promotion, but we are convinced that through our hard work and effort thousands of horsemen will be riding better horses.

We also remember about the start of two other beginning performance horse associations who were also in our situation. One, The National Cutting Horse Assn., started with less than 50 members. It now has over 50,000, and boasts of over 40 million annually in its monetary prizes. Likewise another association for performance horses comes to mind; it is the National Reining Horse Assn., once started with 10 members and now has nearly 20,000, and also distributes millions in prize money to its competitors. Their cause and goals were no more unique or reasonable than ours, and they certainly had no more potential as to the backlog of horsemen who would like to ride better horses.

We realize that in its beginning stages we will be faced with many obstacles which may impede our progress. Our first, of course, is to find the cadre of instructors to teach Western Dressage.

We also know that our participants in Western Dressage will be riding horses of different breeds, size, sex, type and color and will certainly not perform the lofty piaffe, etc… as well as classical dressage would require.

Neither will our riders have any or much dressage background, but we feel we cannot only improve their horses abilities, but the riders as well, and above all have fun doing it.

The bottom part of this story being we think Dressage movements will improve our horses and we are going to combine them with ours for better horses, We are going to show grass roots horsemen how to have fun riding better horses with the help of Dressage movements.

Why not join our association at its beginning? Five years from now you will be glad you did, and we assure you that you will ride better horses, and have fun doing it. We have confidence in our endeavors. Try us for satisfaction, accomplishment, enjoyment, and achievement with your horses. We are for real!