Boylen has written two books, including Basic Dressage for North America. She has mentored many of Canada’s top riders, including Olympian Belinda Trussell. (Belinda and Anton demonstrate the exercises in this article.) Boylen lives in Germany with her partner and trainer, Udo Lange. She was recently inducted into the Dressage Canada Hall of Fame.
There are three exercises in the grand prix test that are make-or-break skills without which a horse will never reach that highest level of competition: the one-tempi changes, the passage, and the piaffe. Of those three exercises, the piaffe is unique in that it can be introduced at a much earlier stage of training, and it can be a useful tool when developing the horse’s ability to collect and carry more weight on the hindquarters as his career progresses. Christilot Boylen has trained a large number of horses to grand prix; she has also taught some of Canada’s top riders how to reach that level with their own horses. Many decisions in a horse’s training must be based on the physical and temperamental qualities of each individual; but the philosophy and exercises in this article describe Christilot’s basic formula for incorporating piaffe into the training program of the developing dressage horse.
Prerequisites
The first introduction to piaffe is possible when a horse is between five and seven years of age, but only when certain training benchmarks have been achieved. I actually have a four-year-old mare at home that I introduced to the half-steps (a precursor to the piaffe in which the horse is asked to take very tiny steps in a trot rhythm, but allowed to move only a little bit forward) in hand, on days when I lunged her at the end of the session. It is critically important to understand that this is not an exercise to be tried for the first time by someone who has not done it before. An experienced trainer is essential for all advanced exercises, and piaffe – in hand or mounted – is no exception.