Falling for Fallacies

FALLING FOR FALLACIES: Critical Reflections on Modern Dressage-and the Myths We Inherit

There are books that explain riding-and there are books that compel us to rethink it from the ground up. This is one of the latter.

In Falling for Fallacies, widely accepted principles of dressage are taken apart with uncommon precision. Ideas repeated across generations-engagement of the hind legs, collection, contact, impulsion, "connection"-are not dismissed, but examined. What do they actually mean? Where do they come from? And why do they so often fail in practice?

At the heart of the problem is what the author calls the "wooden tongue" of dressage: a language of familiar phrases that sound convincing, yet frequently conceal vague, contradictory, or incomplete thinking. Riders are told that contact becomes both stronger and lighter, that opposing aids produce harmony, that a horse becomes light by being driven forward into restraint-assertions that, when tested, often produce exactly the opposite result.

This book does not offer a new system. It does something more valuable: it restores clarity.

Drawing on a deep knowledge of classical sources-and written in the spirit of Jean-Claude Racinet's uncompromising intellectual honesty-each chapter isolates a commonly accepted belief and subjects it to careful scrutiny. The result is cumulative and often unsettling. Assumptions begin to fall away. Contradictions become visible. And what remains is a more coherent understanding of the horse, the rider, and the work itself.

For the serious rider, trainer, or student of classical horsemanship, this is not casual reading. It is a book to be studied, tested, and returned to.