Good morning, this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and thanks for joining us again! I want to take a moment this morning to tell you about a book that I discovered a little while ago, that I think should be in every equestrian’s library. It’s called “Dressage Formula” by Erik Herbermann.

Erik Herbermann was a long time student of the great classical German rider Egon Von Neindorff. He grew up riding with him for many many years and has basically put his method down into a book. For those of you who don’t know who Egon Von Neindorff was, he was the top German rider for many years. He is the German equivalent to Nuno Oliveira, so to speak.

People ask me all the time why we go into these stretches and things and I just try to tell people that this is not something that I invented, you can research all these books and find out all about this, if your looking in the right books. The problem today however, is that many of the books that are out there in stores are written by people who have never trained any horses! Here in the video is a perfect example of him talking about the stretch in the horse. So this is nothing new, that is what I want to emphasize.

Stretching the horse comes from the French classical school. The French started stretching their horses before the Germans did because they rode a lighter type of thoroughbred horse that needed back developement. The Germans were mostly riding heavy carriage type horses that they bred down to become riding horses. Nowadays however, I think all good riders and educated riders have pretty much come to the same place in that they use the same techniques on all types of horses and it works very well!

So once again, this is a book I highly recommend, The 4th Edition of “Dressage Formula” by Erik Herbermann. So please, when you go looking for something to read, this is one that should be on your bookshelf! I will be bringing up other books as we go along, but right now I think that this is the number one book on the market for this style of riding! Thank you very much, and we will see you next time at Art2Ride!

classical foundation Egon Von Neindorff Erik Herbermann Karen Loshbaugh Nuno Oliveira San Diego horse training stretching Will Faerber Will Faerber's Book Club