A Letter From Your WDAA President

As we close the door on 2018, I have the chance to reflect on my first year as WDAA President.  I hope I have served you well.  I know I have given it my best shot and I still am. 
WDAA implemented a few new programs this year.  Some worked out better than we could have imagined and we are still learning and working on others.

Early in the year, we rolled out our level 4 tests and a few riders have already accepted the challenges they offer.  Each test builds on the last and offers something new.  I have enjoyed watching and judging Level 4 horses this year and expect to see even more riders attempt it in 2019.

WDAA staff and board members refer to 2018 as the “Year of the Volunteer”!  We had the best volunteers ever this year in every capacity.  Ellen Dibellaand our staff worked with the Oklahoma affiliate to make our World Show an overwhelming success this year.  Kelly Coldirondid an amazing job on the World Show Program.  For the first time ever, we had a volunteer coordinator at the World Show! Katharina Nowotny-Bolesset a standard for the position that may never be topped.  With free t-shirts and snacks, as well as our heartfelt appreciation, Katharina made everyone happy to volunteer and found people for every position at the show.  I am thrilled to say she will be back again for the 2019 World Show.  We had wonderful volunteers who served on our board, our USEF Western Dressage Committee, and WDAA committees.  We had volunteers who helped riders and show managers at the smallest to the largest shows.  We even had great people stand up for Western Dressage at breed meetings and horse industry events.  Gail Matheusvolunteered to help WDAA with strategic planning in Denver last month.  I wish I could name everyone who volunteered for Western Dressage in 2018.  I just feel blessed WDAA is supported by all of you who care enough to join me in donating talent, experience, work, and time to this discipline.

2018 was also a year WDAA reached out to members as never before so that we could steer our organization in the directions you wanted to go.  Ever since 2015, when the membership voted to adopt only USEF rules for Western Dressage competition, the rulemaking process has been done according to USEF procedure.  Therefore, there is no general membership vote on rule proposals.  Proposals are hashed out in committees. To ensure that all members have input, we implemented the “Questions of the Month” in 2018.  Responses from these emailed questions have guided WDAA’s decisions regarding rule proposals without reservation.  I assure you that if WDAA was the Cindy Butler Show, we would have had different proposals this year.  If my ideas get outvoted in the “Question of the Month,” I advocate for the membership’s choice every time.  So, if you care about rule proposals, vote in the “Questions of the Month” and send proposals to us for anything you want changed. I feel strongly that more members have a say through the “Questions of the Month” than ever before because the number of responses averages twelve times higher than the number of attendees we had at the last “in person” annual meeting WDAA held in conjunction with the World Show.

Speaking of the annual meeting, 2018 was our first attempt to replace the “in person” annual meeting with a webinar.  Attendance at WDAA’s annual meetings dwindled to a little over 25 participants in 2017.  Reasons included:  the cost or inability of some members to travel to Oklahoma or to meet on week days and some World Show exhibitors said they didn’t have time to prepare for the show and attend the meeting.  In order to offer more members the opportunity to participate, we decided to try a webinar.  We thought the webinar was a good solution because it would be free for members and it could be recorded so you could watch it any time. We had an overwhelmingly positive response to the webinar and participation was six times higher than our last “in person” annual meeting.  Over 50% of registrants sent in questions we were able to address during the hour long broadcast.  So, there will probably be more webinars in our future. 

Our first attempt was quite a learning process.  Two hours before we were supposed to go live, we experienced a last minute glitch with the new host and found out we couldn’t broadcast live.  So, we recorded the webinar on the spot from Ellen’s beautiful ranch and sent it out in the nick of time so members could see it at the scheduled time.  Whew!  That was a close one! 

A project close to my heart is WDAA’s Cornerstone Education Program which currently involves judge’s perspective videos posted on our YouTube channel.  To access them, click the YouTube icon on the upper right corner of the WDAA web page.  Videos of tests from the WDAA World Championship Show are dubbed with comments and scores from the World Show judges so members can learn what scores go with what quality maneuvers and so our judge applicants can practice and learn.  Eventually, there will be more videos and they will be accessible only to members as a member benefit.  However, video education has been like a steeplechase.  We’re off and running and then we encounter an obstacle.  We overcome it and run again only to be presented with another obstacle, but we keep jumping and running so we will get to the finish line eventually..

Looking into 2019, I have a few goals:

Western Dressage has only been included for the past 2 years as its own division in the AMHA Open Competition Program, but it’s growing every year. Year-end winners in 2018 included Hollyhock Frida Kahlo owned by Denice Wax, who was Champion in the Introductory Level as well as Reserve Champion in the Basic Level, with Blueandwhite Cadence as Champion. We are pleased to welcome Hollyhock Frida Kahlo to the WDAA Horse Lifetime Points & Awards Program (WHLPAP) this year, where she will join over 360 other horses of all breeds competing for western dressage awards at WDAA recognized shows throughout their competition lifetime. The Level 1 Champion in the AMHA Open Competition Program was MtnTop Goodness Gracious, owned by Kristal Homoki, followed by Danville Dinero CH, owned by Nady Peters as Reserve. Danville Dinero also earned top honors at Level 2 in the Open Competition Program. Danville Dinero was enrolled in the WHLPAP in October of 2016. Since then, he has earned six of the seven award levels in the WDAA program, most recently reaching Gold Medalist status by earning over 500 points, with at least five of his tests ridden at Level 3 or higher.

More information about the AMHA Open Competition Program can be found here: https://www.morganhorse.com/programs/open-competition/
WDAA Horse Lifetime Points & Awards Program information and enrollment form are located here: https://westerndressageassociation.org/wdaa-horse-lifetime-points-and-awards-program/

Entering the third year of the Strategic Plan, US Equestrian President Murray Kessler told Annual Meeting attendees that equestrian sport’s national governing body has much to celebrate and more to accomplish

US Equestrian members gathered in sunny West Palm Beach, Fla., in January for the organization’s Annual Meeting, where President Murray Kessler had good news to report and paid glowing tributes to US Equestrian’s many members and volunteers.

The meeting’s theme, “Members Make it Happen,” seemed especially appropriate at a time when U.S. equestrians are still basking in a season of outstanding results, including 12 medals (three of them gold) at last fall’s FEI World Equestrian Games™ Tryon 2018. But Kessler pointed out that, in addition to the unprecedented sporting accomplishments the U.S. achieved last year, US Equestrian members—including active competitors, volunteers, licensed officials, and fans—are “making it happen” in many crucial ways, both in competition and behind the scenes.

During his keynote presentation at the meeting’s General Session, Kessler noted that the membership has grown dramatically since US Equestrian implemented its ambitious Strategic Plan in 2017. Kessler reported that membership has jumped by 35% since the plan’s launch and by 76% since 2016, for a total of more than 144,000.

That’s powered growth in other important areas, too. Revenues have climbed, rising eight percent, while the organization’s reserves are up 16% since the Strategic Plan’s implementation. Sponsorship, too, continues to expand; the 12 sponsors added in 2018 bring the total number of partners and sponsors to 69.

Kessler described the Strategic Plan’s five-step “virtuous circle” that has led to this growth, and he detailed key developments and accomplishments for each step in 2018:

Step 1: Improve Core Processes and Capabilities

By Cindy Butler

If I wanted to ride in Western Pleasure, I wouldn’t be at a Western Dressage show! So, why have rail classes here? Well, there are lots of reasons. First, Western Dressage rail classes offer an opportunity for riders to introduce their horses to the arena in the comfort of a group setting before having to enter alone. Western Dressage promotes a leveled training system beginning with small steps and moving up a challenge at a time. Therefore, the rail classes are included for you to use as part of your training process. The rail classes offered in Western Dressage focus on different goals than Western Pleasure. Let’s look at Western Dressage’s rail classes one at a time and keep in mind that you can substitute saddle gait for jog anytime when considering gaited horses as all these classes can be offered for gaited horses:

Because of my love for the western horse, along with traditional dressage, I knew western dressage was made for me. In my years of classical dressage, part of my training was devoted to produce a more willing western equine partner.

In 2010 I purchased Truly Unsurpassed (“Calico”) with the idea that one day we would participate and grow in western dressage as a team. I never dreamed that Truly Unsurpassed would live up to her name. When I made the decision to start this new journey together in western dressage, I made a plan, and within three years, we earned top honors in the WDAA shows, performing from Basic level all the way to level 4, the highest level for western dressage. During WDAA World Championships in 2016–2018, we earned several World Championship awards. In 2017, Truly Unsurpassed earned her first USEF National Horse of the Year in level 2, followed by 2018 USEF National Horse of The Year in level 3.