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| And now the Rest of the Story... History of the Amazing New Dressage Test Submitted to the OADG Newsletter, July-August 1995, by: Joanna MacDonald. Karyn Curtis, Ed. |
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| 1995 Marks the 21st Anniversary of The Amazing Dressage Test (For Horses Unsuitable to Become Anything) [Note: There used to be dressage classes "For Horses Suitable to Become a Dressage Horse" ] |
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| Almost every dressage person in the English-speaking world
has giggled over this test; it has become an anonymous classic. Hardly anybody knows where
it came from. Karyn Curtis and I know. We wrote it. Here's the story: In May 1974, some Spiritwood riders went to the OADG Spring Dressage Show at Copanspin Farm (then Marchcroft, now Riverside) in Dunrobin. There was Lorraine MacDonald, with her TBX mare Baska; my employee, Big Sue MacMillan, with her 3-year-old Quarter Horse, Flyer; and me with my 5-year-old grey mare, Azteca, known to her friends as Tattie. It was our first dressage show ever in our lives -- except for Lorraine, who had been in just one. A bunch of little kids came to help; Karyn was one of them. It turned out to be The Dressage Show From Hell. The rain came down in buckets all day without stopping. The show was held in the indoor arena with no place to warm up. We were up to our knees in mud outside. The ramp of the truck got slippery. The horses went crazy and we didn't get any ribbons. We finally got home, soaking, shivering, miserable and disgusted. The word dressage was enough to make us throw up. We all sat around the kitchen table: Lorraine, her husband Angus, Sue, me and a lot of little kids. There was also, I remember, a bottle of wine. And we got silly and we wrote The Amazing New Dressage Test to express what we had just been through. It went, anonymously, into the OADG Newsletter; then it went into the OVH Pony Club Newsletter; then the Corinthian (now Horse Sport) picked it up; then the Chronicle printed it; then , over the next ten years, it went into many regional U.S. dressage newsletters, to England, to California, back to Canada via Vancouver, and it's still travelling. Horse and Country printed it last year and, I ask you to believe, a friend sent it to me from Yellowknife, NWT, saying "Isn't this the funniest thing you ever read, who do you think wrote it?" Do you want to know what happened to the cast of characters? Flyer was sold as a hunter/eventer and was re-named "Cashel" and, when I last heard, was still in retirement in Oxford Mills. Tattie achieved a respectable Medium 2/3 and ended her days as a school horse here at Spiritwood, teaching about a million people how to do shoulder-in. I don't know what became of Baska -- I last saw her picture in a tack ad for a Toronto store, modelling a blanket. Big Sue MacMillan went back to Edmonton and married a dairy farmer and has two children. The little kids all grew up; ponies were replaced by horses, horses by university, careers, husbands. Karyn came back to Spiritwood. I never left. Lorraine MacDonald is an FEI Dressage Judge for Canada! So now you all know the true history of The Amazing New Dressage Test... |
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