Restorative and Rehabilitative Dressage
Where has dressage gone wrong? Dressage in many cases no longer has the horse in mind--the horse's well-being, correct development, and training for preservation of soundness fall to the wayside because of human desire and ego. This mentality completely defeats the true purpose of dressage. Dressage should be aimed at continuously working to develop the horse gymnastically, strengthening and enhancing his abilities with a rider.
With Dressage for Prevention and Preservation, and with Restorative and Rehabilitative Dressage, a combination of over 30 years of classical dressage training with over 20 years of equine veterinary practice is unified to both scientifically and artistically develop horses and educate riders in dressage. Our mission is four-fold:
1. Dressage for Prevention of Unsoundness and Preservation of Soundness: This is Dressage training for development of the horse. The horse is brought along correctly in his work from the very beginning. The training process should not break down horses or cause unsoundness! Training is focused on prevention of unsoundness and preserving soundness from the very beginning.
2. Dressage for Restoration: Dressage exercises based on 4 main classical principles aids in restoring the horse's soundness through finding root causes of pain, addressing them directly both therapeutically if needed from a veterinary standpoint AND in combination with dressage exercises based on work in hand, long rein, and under saddle.
3. Dressage for Rehabilitation: Dressage can be focused on rehabilitating horses suffering from prior injury, weakness, and imbalance. We take a WHOLE HORSE approach to rehabilitation, focusingon the GI system, musculoskeletal system, and podiatry. We utilize an in-depth understanding of ANATOMY and BIOMECHANICS along with PHYSIOLOGY to design programs that utilize training in work in hand, long reins, and under saddle to HEAL HORSES. If you heal the physical body, you also heal the mentality of the horse, and vice versa. Muscular attachments, origins, insertions, and how each individual muscle/tendon/ligament unit functions individually and regionally for the horse is a focus in this work.
4. Dressage as Artistic Expression and Creation: When one culminates the above work restoring and rehabilitating the horse into his true and real potential, the result can be expression of lightness and artistic interpretation between horse and rider. Training should from the beginning be aimed at enhancing the horse's natural athletic abilities, not destroying them in the name of human egotistical pursuits!
So, how does this all work? How do we get started? SEE BELOW FOR DETAILS and enjoy the beautiful scenery on the way!
Preventative Dressage:
If you are wanting to develop your horse, whether starting a young horse or wanting to add dressage as an element to your riding and partnership with your horse (no matter the discipline you ride) to further enhance soundness, then Dr. Babits can customize a program for you. Often this entails lessons and a plan to reach those goals. It is an affordable and fun way to work towards achieving a lasting partnership with your horse. Additionally, Dr. Babits will take on horses to train in dressage, with empathic understanding based on classical principles to maintain and enhance soundness of the horse.
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Restorative and Rehabilitative Dressage:
As an equine veterinarian, Dr. Babits consults with you on the problems and resistances arising with your horse. Whether through already performed diagnostics, or further diagnostics, the root cause(s) of the resistances and problems are discovered, and addressed. We look at relieving the pain and discomfort, even through veterinary therapeutics if required, and then healing, maintaining, and preventing further injury through proper training protocols and exercises for each individual horse. This may be done through in-depth consultation and then lessons, either Virtually or at your farm (if in the local region), or here at The Academy of Equestrian Arts in Youngsville, New Mexico. If you bring a horse here, we can customize your stay: if you wish to leave the horse for restorative and rehabilitative training for a month or longer, or if you wish to come for a long weekend, or a few days to get the process started, we can customize helping you and your horse to fit your time and budget.
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Costs: Costs will vary depending on how we best help you and your horse, whether you come here to the Ranch, or whether Dr. Babits comes to you, or we work through consultations and Virtual lessons and sessions.
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Do Today What is Best for the Horse Tomorrow...
The Academy of Equestrian Arts
The Academy of Equestrian Arts is a sacred place of listening and learning for both horses and people. It is designed to strengthen and deeply connect the Horse-Human Bond through conversations between horse and human based on knowledge, empathy, awareness, and science. A melding of classical riding principles with the practice of equine veterinary medicine ensures the foundations for true artistry to be created between horse and rider. Working to achieve brilliant performance and artistry in lightness allows the transcendence of horse and rider into unified dimensional planes where the thought of one becomes the thought of the other.
HERE AT THE ACADEMY:
One LISTENS TO HORSES.
One works on four main CLASSICAL PRINCIPLES:
STRAIGHTNESS
SENDING FORWARD IN RHYTHM
STRENGTH THROUGH SUPPLENESS, AND
STABILIZATION OF THE EQUILIBRIUM.
One understands and practices lightness from the beginning of work through the advancement of training.
One values the willing expression of the horse.
One understands and practices work in Lightness in Equilibrium.
One works with the horse in a Resistance-free state, aiming to understand root causes of resistance, and how to decontract such resistances.
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The Academy of Equestrian Arts trains horses and teaches riders in the following aspects of horsemanship:
1. Work in Hand
2. Work in Long Reins
3. Work in Classical Dressage/Academic Equitation/Classical Riding Under Saddle
4. Alta Escuela
5.Doma Vaquera y la Garrocha
6. Basic Horsemanship/Listening to Horses
7. Horse Health Education
Dr. Elizabeth R. Babits, BVSc, DVM
Riding in a Painting
Dr. Babits has a rare combination of qualities, being both a practicing equine veterinarian as well as a life-long trainer of horses. "I have been as much a student of the horse as well as a teacher to the horse. Although I have been molded by classical dressage masters, in both French classical work as well as in the traditional Spanish equestrian arts, much of my knowledge and work that I do with horses has come from observing, listening to, and learning from the horse. I always tell people that if they have a question about the horse, first ask the horse, and then ask the question, "why?"
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Bessie's life is devoted to that of the horse. "I want to ensure that my horses are pain-free in their work, understand without force what is being asked, perform without resistance, and love what they do. In that way, together, with love, trust, respect, and honesty, we can perform as one, becoming a centaurion creation of artistic brilliance that could not be achieved alone." Her goal is to help horses and their riders develop connection, trust, rapport, and oneness without resistance. That mission involves continuing the time-honored teachings of classical dressage and academic equitation melded with modern equine veterinary knowledge and techniques to assist horse and riders in performing free of pain and resistance.
Located in the cradling foothills of iconic and sacred Cerro Pedernal, The Academy of Equestrian Arts and Willow Creek Stud are surrounded by the magnificent natural world, where red mesas flirt with azure skies, and moody clouds taunt the ground with shadowy rain illuminated by the sun's arms spreading a veil of magenta one can simply step into. Life riding, working, and living here in this remote realm is a life lived quietly, in a time of days gone past yet vibrantly in the present, a life in harmony with the sunrise and sunset, and night time skies aglow with glittering stars. There is peace, solitude, great beauty. Time spent here becomes real; life is whole, and in the present.
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The ranch and Academy reside at the base of Cerro Pedernal, which for over 10,000 years has been a source of native chert for stone tool processing. The land feels Anciently Alive. From PaleoIndian and Archaic times, to Puebloan peoples, the Gallina culture, Jicarilla Apache, Utes, and Navajo, to Hispanic generations until modern times, Pedernal, as the mountain is known, has drawn and gathered peoples over time, leaving an energy and force behind which is easily felt upon traversing her canyons, meadows, and cliffs. Bordered by thousands of acres of pristine wilderness in the Santa Fe National Forest, one can immerse completely into the history and become a part of it here.
The location was chosen to allow complete immersion and focus with the horses. It is here, that you too can come, and ride into the painting, live it, be it.