What type of horse is best for dressage riding and just what makes top dressage horses so good?

Well, that’s the question we’re trying to help you answer, by demonstrating the qualities in all types of top level dressage horses.

Top dressage horses have that little something else; that presence, that flashy movement and that sense of enjoyment that says, "I’m that good and I know it".

There is something special, something every horse owner or rider can see, when they watch a top quality dressage horse, but just what is it and how do we define it?

A good start has to be, ‘learning by example’, and watching top quality dressage riders and how they ride.

This will tell us a lot about how a quality dressage horse, the classical dressage horse, is put together.

How top class dressage horses look, move and react will surely train our eye to see the same or similar features and aspects in our own horses.

Horses that we may consider buying or features we may see in other dressage riders or owners horses.

Some Very Good Examples of Top Dressage Horses …

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Is a Top Dressage Horse a Classical Dressage Horse?

Not necessarily, all horse breeds can be used for dressage, although warmbloods, thoroughbreds, lipizzaners, andalusians, and lusitanos are favoured breeds for top dressage horses.

Lipizzaners are particularly well known as dressage horses, these pure white stallions have been dressage horses of choice for centuries.

However, popular horse breeds most often seen at the Olympics and other international FEI competitions are in the warmblood horse breeds category.

The dressage horse and the classical type of horse used for dressage are horses like Bonfire, Nip tuck, Escapado and Salinero. The tall, leggy horse that is extravagant in its movements.

But any riding horse can benefit from the use of dressage principles and training techniques.

Competitive dressage is a discipline in which all breeds are given an equal opportunity to compete successfully.

Therefore, many other breeds are seen at various levels of competition and in non-competitive dressage displays that involve the airs above the ground.

Here the Baroque breeds of horse, most notably the Lipizzaner, are seen most often.