Dressage Queens
posted by citizen.K on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 / 
Print & Hang in the Barn
Now, there are a lot of snobs out there. The hunter/jumper world is full of these snobs; people who wear a horse more than ride a horse; it’s the image, the status, the gobs of money everyone knows you have (or at least spend) on one of your bigger accessories, the horse.
Dressage Queens definitely stand alone in their ability to be not only the most obnoxious of all “horse” people, but also the most annoying, egotistical, and often inadequate said “horse” people I have ever dealt with.
My definition of a dressage queen: A woman who owns a horse, usually a nice horse, that is too much horse for her, she has every accessory known to riding, and has every excuse, besides her inability to ride, for why her horse is not going well.
How to determine if your barn has a dressage queen:
When you show up to a barn and there is a loud voice, this is your first clue that you might be approaching a dressage queen. Once you get closer to that loud voice, look for manicured nails, the second sign of a dressage queen. Don’t listen to what the voice is saying, you might get sucked into an hour long conversation you never intended on being a part of, the third sign of a dressage queen. Look for the tack trunk the loud voice is going to, if it is filled with every color pad, matching polo wraps, at least 10 different brow bands, or basically a well stocked tack shop, that is your fourth sign of a dressage queen.
Excuses and drama are a fifth and final guaranteed sign of a dressage queen.
Next, see if she rides; you will find that if she does mount her horse, it won’t be long before she’ll screech with terror about her horse’s terrible “problem” usually associated with not moving off her seat, her leg, not being round, not coming through from behind - none of which is rider error (of course), always a problem with a) the footing b) the farrier c) the vet d) the trainer e) the turnout. Excuses and drama are a fifth and final guaranteed sign of a dressage queen.
There is no way to deal with a dressage queen. You cannot claim to speak Spanish; she knows Spanish so she can scream at the help. German won’t work either; she may have even learned so she can schmooze with the German dressage clinicians. Pretending to suddenly become deaf will not shut her up; she doesn’t actually need anyone to be listening for a reason to talk. Sympathizing with the dressage queen will only make her worse and she will end up misconstruing anything you say and spread some gossip about you throughout the entire area horse world. You can’t complain about her, even though most everyone else hates her, she probably pays more than anyone else in the barn, so she’s not getting kicked out. You basically either have to shut up and keep focused on what you are at the barn to do, or you need to find a different barn.
Don’t be afraid to leave your barn. If a dressage queen has infected your barn, know there is a barn free of evil (you might have to look VERY hard). There is no other escape but to leave. You and your horse will be better off.
11 Responses to “Dressage Queens”
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April 20th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I’m an event rider and have gone to a few dressage barns for clinics and I just thought all dressage people were like this!!!!LOL
April 20th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I find anyone who has a horse that is too much for them and cost a lot of $ no matter what the event whether it be dressage, eventing, hunter/jumper, barrel racing, reining, western pleasure, etc. are like this in one way or another. The horses tend to be too clean - at least in my opinion for everyday living- and not allowed to be a horse. My first dressage queen experience was with a bunch of Saddle seat riders and Western pleasure riders. They all hung out together, liked to gossip about others, complained daily, gave advice when not needed nor asked for, never entertained their horse’s problem might be a fault of their own, and seemed to have every horse accessory known to man. It is rather frustrating to b around these types. I tend to say “Hi” and be polite and try to avoid any other kind of interaction with them as it never has turned out well for me in the past.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:23 am
TRU DAT HOMESLICE! I was hacking a horse in the indoor yesterday and some dressage rider was also hacking and I thought I heard her say something to me (an easy mistake when your name ryhmes with “Hey”, “Hay”, or “‘K”) so I replied “Did you say something?”. BIG MISTAKE. She somehow interpreted my reply as “I would now like an improptu dressage lesson from YOU” and began to instruct me on how I should push the horse I was riding (an overweight Percheron/TB/Akal-Teke/Quarter Horse cross) deeper into the corners to make “box turns”. I said “Yeah, I don’t ride dressage, so I don’t really care about box turns.” And kept riding. She apparently didnt hear me. She started calling out for me to turn at certain letters. So I started messing with her. When she said go left, I went right. When she said diagonal, I did circles. I even started jumping over the jumps I had set up. She didn’t shut up for 15 minutes even though I tuned her out after 2. Then, after I was done riding, she free lunged her horse in the arena (against the rules because we just got awesome new footing) and her horse dropped a GIANT deuce in the washrack and she left without cleaning it up. NICE! I tattled on her. Stupid crazy biatch. And her horse is ugly too. And fat.
May 11th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
LOL! I’m still laughing. By the way, I DO love dressage!
May 18th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
ouch……but not always true….focus and talent are out there…. but not disguised by bling browbands and stirrups….that kind of DQ is talented…and the type of sovereinty that reigns the dressage arena without calling attention to herself…..except by the numbers she walks away with written on her testbook scores….
June 9th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
LOL! I’m totally a hunter jumper queen. I can ride though, but I have all the gear and sometimes I talk too much
I’m also nice to the barn help. So maybe I’m not a queen, more like a princess :p
July 9th, 2008 at 4:03 am
Great, I’m a Dressage Queen? Come on , ok I have countless number of “pad with matching polo wraps, at least 10 different brow bands, or basically a well stocked tack shop” but then again: there’s no drama! I’m riding, I’m not complaining about everything, I do not have problem with my horse. Any, honestly!
Wait, is it because previously I was Jumper? God dammit! I’m not a Dressage Queen after all?
Can I be at least Dressage Princess-Queen to be?
:D 
Great text! I love it!
August 13th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
I hate people that are like that. Stuck ups, they only make excuses for there poor riding, god it gets on my nerves.
July 20th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
This is so funny and stereotypical too. Of course, almost every dressage person I’ve met fit that description to a T.
I worked at a private Dressage facility for a few months. I was reminded frequently that they paid $80,000.00 for one horse and $60,000.00 for another. They were beautiful Warmbloods, imported from Germany too - woo hoo! Anyway, they were absolute fanatics.
Another woman I know is THE Dressage Queen. She has a gorgeous warmblood mare that she cannot ride. She has the trainer out daily to ride her instead. She has approximately 4 saddles, because everytime her horse takes a wrong step, she’s convinced that the saddle is pinching her, so she has a custom one built - again. She’s also a know-it-all. It’s impossible to ride in the ring with her without tons of critique and commentary. I do not ride dressage, but show Morgan horses. I appreciate dressage and some of the fundamentals of it, but I honestly feel that I could ride circles around this lady. SIGH SIGH SIGH
October 17th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
I think the one thing you might have missed are these people’s abilities to talk about their horses and their (often conflicting) perfections literally nonstop. Every conversation you have always goes back to how fabulous the horse is, what the two have won together, past victories on past perfect horses. It NEVER ends!
I have a client with a horse that REARS AND SPINS, and the woman has offered to let me use him to teach students because “he’s a total badass but he just LOVES kids” . Once I had to stop her from inviting an 8 year old to lead her horse out to graze….
Yikes.
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:58 pm
HAhahahahaa…..Amazing wording. LOVE this text.
I used to board at a barn that had a DQ….I would have boarders come up to me and ask if she ever actually rode her horse. She would come to the barn, in her Ariats, full seat white breeches and her perfect little Arista quilted vest and white turtle neck. Every day. She would get there just in time to monitor my feeding, and she would hang around until lunch….then leave in her BMW, go to Greenhawke and come back just in time to catch her poor trainer and get advice on what would work better:
‘The Fuzzy girth or the slightly less fuzzy girth?’ or my favourite ‘what colour should I put on him today? He seems a little down, maybe pink would cheer him up’
That horse was mortified i’m sure……
She would usually hang around till dinner, just to make sure I had fed him before alllll the other horses because he might get jealous and and he’s the last horse in the barn, by the door because you know, he has to get his fresh air.
This one time one of the younger people at the barn was feeding while I was away and I guess the scissors from the hay wheelbarrow ended up in his stall….Please tell me this has happened to other people?
So this DQ has a meltdown on me when I get home and she thinks someone is trying to ‘murder’ her horse. No joke she thinks someone is out to get her and her horse. It took everything in me to not keel over laughing….