12/05/2025
I've sat down to chat with a good handful of classically trained trainers and riders. Most of them old enough to have retired their school masters and shut down their programs, many now dealing with health issues or difficulty traveling as they once did.
They all have shared with me the same concern: what are we going to do to carry on this torch?
As I've written about before, many of the masters are now dead or dying. Many of the living teachers carry a common thread of frustration at limitations: there aren't the resources like there used to be for this kind of art - and it is hard and harder to get students who will study for decades as intensely as they did to get masterful at this. Life is very different now in many way -
On one hand, you have the ever rising cost of horse keeping. Just keeping one fed is becoming unreachable for many in the middle class, depending especially on your location. Traveling and regular lessons to the extent it takes to become proficient is basically out of the question if just paying for board is that difficult.
And though we have more access to information than ever before, finding a qualified teacher to guide you WELL through that information is pretty difficult for many.
Many of us bemoan the fast-paced culture as a source of struggle, and that may be part of it for many. I, of course, run into a desire in students for faster, more convenient and cheaper in my teaching travels, but that has been the case in any time in history, I'm sure. I think there are plenty of people desirous of quality horsemanship - enough so that it could be preserved given the right resources.
One of the bigger challenges is going to be getting those remaining to come together and collaborate in some way. Those who have the skill and education to ride in a refined and very artful way often come with tricky personalities and strong convictions - as you may be aware, there are different flavors of clacissism - and even students of the same master will develop their own "flair." This can easily cause a rift between the different styles, creating difficulty in any two highly trained people to agree on much of anything sometimes.
So long as we can all agree that the love of the horse and artful riding is at the heart of it, we are going to have to find a way to collaborate. To be flexible in some ways with different ideologies with the understanding that we are all under the same "religious" branch. What an undertaking it might be to get some of these big personalities under one roof, sharing wine and talking ideas - looking past their own disagreements and finding some way to preserve the art - pooling ideas, resources, sharing their time and the gifts of the brilliance in their minds, for the good of the students willing, and the good of the horse.
Photo by Jesse Cardew
