This year, California dressage trainers enjoyed the same opportunity as Easterners—to learn young horse training methods taught by an expert. Katrin Burger of the Oldenburg Verband in Vechta, Germany, instructed trainers at Red Hawk Ranch in Murrieta, Jan. 14-15.
Burger’s lessons were refreshing to those who regularly ride in and audit clinics. With all riders, she made them strive to the highest standard of performance. She focused on correct, skillful riding and training of the young horses, aged 4 through 6.
The themes of this Young Horse Specialist Program were to ride the horse forward, active, and light in the hand. Burger summed up her coaching in what she told Robin Garrett of San Marcos, riding Fortune: “Ride him from behind into the hand, with soft contact. The poll must be the highest point—hold the poll up. Go to medium trot, and hold the rhythm.”
To encourage the active hind leg, she told Garrett, “Just a half halt to control the hind legs, and the next two steps are more swinging than before.”
She helped riders practice the concept of throughness, to help the horse to work through the back. “Think every stride to push the hind legs into your hand. The horse must stay through the poll.”
To Niki Hall of San Juan Capistrano, riding Volando, she said, “The outside rein leads the horse. Use the inside rein to make half halts and bending, the flexion of the neck. The outside rein is more important.”
She repeated these concepts with every one of the 12 riders. She kept lessons short for the young horses, saying, “Don’t do the training too long. Keep it interesting every day, not boring. It’s very important that the horse likes to go forward, and wants to go forward.”

Open To All
Oldenburg breeders Bob and Lynn DeGour of Red Hawk Ranch hosted the program and offered several of their homebreds as demonstration horses. They planned this event open to West Coast trainers, as a counterpart to the invitation-only seminars presented in Maryland at Hilltop Farms.
“It is such a pleasure to be able to attend an event that showed a very positive exposure to the training of young horses,” said Dantia Benson of Somis, who’s training her own young horses. “Katrin was so easy to understand and communicate with.”
Deborah Hausman, Sherwood, OR., said, “Katrin is a person who loves what she’s doing. She doesn’t have any political motives.”
The program was deliberately not affiliated with any show associations. Multiple breeds were represented, with Hanoverians, Dutch, and Swedish horses joining the Oldenburgs.
Hausman has competed in Young Horse tests in Europe. She commended Burger’s teaching, saying, “It helped to build my confidence to know I am on the right path of training.
“This program is everything about basic riding. That’s what people in America miss.” Burger analyzed each horse on the first day, pointing out strengths and weaknesses. She told Sheryl Kunkle of Temecula, how to ride Manhattan to maintain his swinging back. “He has a very good rhythm, and look at the back that is very loose. Be careful with such a horse. Use simple transitions between trot and canter.”
To show riders how to improve the young horses, Burger didn’t hold back in pinpointing faults. To another rider, she urged, “Try to ride him with more expression. He has to use his hind legs, and you must give him the rhythm he has to have. If you give an aid, then there must be a reaction.”
Rhythm, the first element of the German training scale, was a constant reminder in her instruction: “Hold him with your leg. Think about the rhythm.”
She told another rider, “It’s important that the horse has to go forward. He has to learn to hold the rhythm.”
Burger reminded trainers of the distinction between schooling and showing. “In the competition, you are not able to show 100 percent. Look a little more to train at home, more than you can show in the test.”
She also helped trainers think about preparing for the FEI young horse tests. She had David Wightman and Kathleen Raine, both of Murrieta, ride the 5- and 6-year-old tests, on Welcome and Breanna, respectively. Merrie Velden, Fresno, rode Sandromere in the USEF 4-year-old test.
Part of training for the tests is the horse stretching its neck long, forward and down. “Show her the way down,” she instructed Ampara Visser on Red Hawk’s Royal Dream. “It’s a lesson asked in the young horse classes. Few horses do it perfectly, so train it at home. It comes at the end of the tests, and judges will remember it.”
She did caution that the exercise is difficult for young horses until they develop muscle. And the rider must maintain the active hind leg.

Walk This Way
The walk is an important part in the tests, equal in score to trot and canter. To Laurie Falvo Doyle, Escondido, on Flaming Heart, Burger said, “She has a good ground-covering walk. Only a few horses with a spectacular trot have a good walk also.”
She helped riders understand how to improve the walk—to urge the hind legs to reach further forward. “You want an overtrack by two hoofprints,” she explained.
Burger led all riders through the training scale with the young horses. For Doyle on her 5-year-old, she said, “Think about collection. Go more on the hind legs, and uphill.”
Besides collection, one of the scale’s later elements—added to rhythm, impulsion, swing, and contact—is straightness. She told Velden on her 4-year-old, “The horse has his hindquarters to the inside, because it’s easier. That is not as important on the circle, but it is important on the straight side.
“Bend him a little to the inside to help him, so his hind legs stay outside, and his shoulder is put onto the line of the hind legs.”
To every trainer, Burger emphasized correct riding, which the horse reflects. “The seat of the rider is very important. Sit closer to the horse—you have to activate him a little more,” she said. “The job of the rider is to present the horse in the best way.”
Besides riders and horses already named, the trainers in the program included Katelynn Murphy with Red Hawk’s Serendipity (on the lunge), Murietta; Marilynn Sabovich with Qumo, Bakersfield; Mary Kehoe with Wolkenprinz LHF, San Juan Capistrano; Trude Hestengen with Manticka, visiting from Sweden; and Jo Moran with Redondo, Valley Center.