2025 UDS Banquet
The UDS board is working fast and furiously to put together final preparations for this year’s banquet on March 1, so save the date! We’re hoping everyone can join us to celebrate our members and their horses and to bid on some hot silent auction items. Keep your eye out for a sign up link coming soon on Facebook and via email.
New Year, New Team Members
The board is extremely excited to welcome our returning vice president, Sydni Cook, and incoming Education Director, Lori Jamison. Our new board members are bringing new perspectives and fresh enthusiasm, and it’s a delight to have them with us.
This Year’s Show Season Starts
Our first UDS/USDF/USEF-rated show will take place in Las Vegas on January 18-19. If you would like to sign up for the Sin City Dressage show, make sure to do so by their January 6 closing date.
For more shows, keep an eye on our UDS competitions page. We will continue to post competitive opportunities as they arise.
A Snapshot of Riding with Amelia Newcomb and Rachel Saavedra
By Ashley Adams
Let me tell you a little about my horse. Lopaka, KWPN bred by Deborah Harrison in 2016, was late to be started and kept a stallion until six. His barn name is PakMan, and he is developing strength for the 2nd level collecting movements and learning about collection and engagement.
I had the opportunity to ride with Amelia Newcomb and then two weeks later, Rachel Saavedra. One of the biggest recommendations I can give any rider seriously interested in dressage is to audit clinics when you have the chance. Being able to sit ring-side and take notes on all the instructor said, I came away with many filled pages of which I can not briefly share here!
Second level is the base of most of the upper-level dressage movements, and I have heard it said that second level is where dressage starts. We spent a lot of time going through the fundamentals.
Some exercises from Amelia:
• Our warm up started off with walking a small, bendy serpentine which looks like old-fashioned ribbon candy, focusing on the bend and pushing off the inside leg in to the outside rein.
• For lateral suppleness in the trot into haunches in, really bend right in a 10m circle, slow the trot down, make him look right, start haunches in way early on 10m circle by putting your outside leg back. Keep your inside leg snuggled up at the girth and keep your inside seat bone down.
• Trot-canter snowman exercise: canter two to three 20m circles, then trot at the first quarter line of the circle and change direction into a 10m circle one time, focus on the new inside leg to outside rein, then back on to the 20m circle and canter right away.
• At the end of the rides with Amelia, we finished with trot-canter-trot transitions in a longer over-the back frame to help develop supple strength.
Rachel Saavedra spent a lot of time going in-depth through the theory of the basics. I sat mesmerized as I listened and furiously took notes as she talked, connecting the dots of many movements throughout the levels.
Rachel reminds riders not to just focus on the basics during the warm-up, that you have to warm up the more challenging movements also as a check-in to see what’s going on. It’s not about concentrating on what’s wrong, but how we can use the gifts that horse has to help work on other things.
Rachel focused a lot on rider position and how that affects the horse, reminding riders that we must aspire to the same level of fitness as our horses.
• The core: While riding, she reminded us to keep the core stable and square, imagining that the shoulders and hips are the points of a rectangle. If you twist, collapse, etc and lose the rectangular shape, then you lose your ability to use your core strength. This is easy to try while you’re sitting reading this, and you will see how it affects your core.
• The contact: When you ride a “yes” stride, which means a stride you like and want more of, your hands are married to the base of the horse’s neck, in a harmony with the gaits. At first level, we are looking for acceptance of influence. When a suggestion of change is needed, you momentarily create disharmony in your aids to create influence. Riders must be careful not to take away the horse’s fundamental liberty and shut the gait down inadvertently. The aid system is a listening tool put your leg on and get a response and then keep the leg softly snuggled so you can listen to what the horse does next. Same with the contact–in a cyclical way we should be “letting the air out” of the contact so that the horse finds the release through their body but the rider doesn’t give away the contact.
• The seat bones: Rachel described the seat bones as boulders in a stream–the water moves around the boulder. This has made a huge improvement in my horse’s response to my seat, as I imagine the water curving around the boulder of my seat bone in a volte, for example.
An exercise from Rachel: Start a five-loop serpentine. Each loop is 12m so that the touchpoint on the rail is at every letter. This makes it very obvious if you are keeping your loops equal! Once the serpentine is established, at each letter touchpoint when you get to the rail, do a canter strike off and begin a 12m canter circle and then a downward transition back to the trot once you return to the letter and then continue on the serpentine.
I can not say thank you enough for the opportunity to attend these clinics. I am incredibly grateful.