Simplicity, understanding, and connection 

Article and photos by Shawn Hamilton, Clix Photography

After witnessing acclaimed US dressage rider Steffen Peters perform award-winning tests at competitions around the world, I had no hesitation when asked to cover his clinic in June 2026 at High Wyck Farms in Meaford, Ontario. The quality and precision of his teaching matched the excellence of his competition performances.

Peters has a long list of achievements. A key member of the United States Dressage Team, he has earned multiple team medals at Olympic and Pan American Games, and individual gold at the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto. Riding his longtime mount Ravel, a KWPN gelding owned by Akiko Yamazaki, Peters won the 2009 FEI Dressage World Cup Final in Las Vegas, and individual bronze at the 2010 World Equestrian Games in Lexington. Named United States Equestrian Federation Equestrian of the Year in 2008, 2009, and 2011, he arrived at High Wyck Farms with a remarkable résumé.

Steffen Peters with Ravel at the 2010 World Equestrian Games, where they won individual bronze medals in both the Grand Prix Special and the Grand Prix Freestyle.

Olivia Stanley and High Wyck Farms

What brought this German-born, highly successful American dressage rider to the small town of Meaford just outside Collingwood?

The answer is Olivia Wentworth-Stanley, who, with her husband, Andy Ormsby, owns High Wyck Farms, a lovely 97-acre dressage training and boarding facility perched on a hill in the Blue Mountains.

Related: Dressage Symposium with Christoph Hess

Steffen Peters with Olivia Wentworth-Stanley, who owns High Wyck Farms with her husband, Andy Ormsby.

Stanley began training with Peters in San Diego, California in 2010, when she purchased her grand prix horse, Zeldzaam, from him. Plans to bring Peters to Ontario for clinics were thwarted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Stanley reconnected with Peters in Florida in 2020 and renewed their training relationship, this time with her eight-year-old Dutch Warmblood, NFK Nique.

Stanley’s dream of hosting Peters at High Wyck Farms has finally come to fruition. No doubt, all the participants hope the clinic will become a regular event. The 12 riding spots — six per day over two days — filled quickly, and the bleachers were full of auditors.

Olivia Wentworth-Stanley on NFK Nique.

Keeping It Simple

From the moment the first horse entered the large indoor arena, Peters broke the training process down into basic concepts: understanding, respect, connection, and precision. His goal was to make each horse and rider comfortable and ensure they were working from the same page.

Simple things we often do without thinking, such as praising our horses, can have a significant influence on their training. When petting their horses, Peters encouraged riders to add their voices and make the praise loud enough to be heard.

“They need to hear it as well as feel it,” he announced. “When a horse does what you want, make sure you tell them, Yes, that is exactly what I was looking for.”

Related: From Grassroots to Grand Prix: Reviving the Future of Equestrian Sport Through Public Engagement

Steffen Peters shows Amelia Reid on Forevermore how to teach respect for the halt from the ground

Beginning with the warm-up, Peters highlighted the importance of coming down the centreline and halting squarely on all four feet to make a good first impression on the judges. “I always use walk-halt transitions in my warm-ups,” Peters explained.

He asked each rider to halt and then immediately, yet quietly, correct the position of their horse’s feet. It did not take long for the horses to understand the task.

A correct halt requires enough leg to prevent the horse from stepping backward and enough contact to prevent the horse from moving forward. This is something that can first be established on the ground — when you stop, the horse stops; when you stand still, the horse stands still.

FEI Junior Sydney Boldt on Lili D. 

Respect comes from clear aids. Once a horse responds to a request, Peters suggests backing off and leaving the horse alone. If someone asked you to walk and then continued asking while you were already walking, you would become annoyed. Until the horse changes the requested gait, pace, or action, no further aid is necessary. This teaches the horse to think independently.

“The training opportunity comes when your horse changes from what you have asked and you immediately correct it. The corrections are the training moments that matter,” Peters explained.

Thinking of aids as reminders rather than ongoing support tells the horse: You can carry this now.

Steffen Peters with Allie Schmidt and her Hanoverian mare, Gwendolyn.

Related: Horse Expo Canada’s Elite Horsemanship Summit

Respect Through Connection and Attention

“Riders seem more concerned about the movements and action of the sport,” Peters told the crowd. “But what is more important is how easily we can get our horse’s attention — the connection. The contact and the reaction of the leg is not negotiable. Some things are negotiable, but not that.”

Peters used the image of a wet towel on a horse’s back to illustrate how sensitively a horse should respond to the rider’s leg.

“That should be enough to move a horse forward. It is tempting to go into a piaffe or pirouette with a great amount of leg, but it is better to have a level of engagement that the horse respects naturally.”

The same principle applies to the rein aid.

Justin Ridgewell on Alchemist, riding grand prix level.

“Horses have two choices with a bit,” Peters declared. “They can learn to accept it and work with it or fight it. Habits like grabbing the bit or going against it will not go away unless they are addressed.”

As Meredith Risk rode Zen, her five-year-old Hanoverian gelding by Zhivago, Peters observed, “Sometimes he gets powerful, but make sure it doesn’t end up in the bridle.”

This raised the question of how a rider can create energy while maintaining light contact.

“You need to say to him: Look, buddy, when I say half-halt, I mean it. Sit a little more deeply and tell him to respect the half-halt. The rein aid has to be respected. Once that is respected, we can use it less. Forward should not be stronger in the bridle but should improve self-carriage.”

Meridith Risk and Zen practice shoulder-in. 

Additional Aids for Attention

Riders have three natural aids — seat, legs, and hands — but each must work effectively. The goal is to perform every movement with minimal aids, but what can a rider do when a horse does not respect those aids?

“When we ask a question, we really want an answer. How do we make an aid work that is not working?”

When Kayla Ishoy, daughter of Canadian dressage riders Cindy and Neil Ishoy, entered the arena with her six-year-old Westphalian mare, Donnerlittchen, known as Lychee, she readily acknowledged one of their challenges.

“When she gets annoyed with me or thinks she is done, she grabs the bit and takes me with her.”

Peters replied, “When a horse gets resistant in the contact, we don’t want to give and we don’t want to resist, so what else can we do? We can always use an extra aid, such as the whip. Not as a punishment, but to simply get their attention — to teach them to respect the natural aid. Our voice can also be used for encouragement.”

Peters believes it is easier to correct problems at the walk, so that is where they began.

Lychee reacted quickly when Ishoy clicked her tongue and added a small tap with the whip, followed by closing her leg to drive the mare forward. It appeared to be an “Aha!” moment for Lychee — her rider meant business. It was another teaching moment.

Kayla Ishoy on Donnerlittchen.

“I use the whip only when I don’t have enough attention from the horse — not just to move forward, but to respect an aid and get an answer. To say: Wake up, pay attention to me,” Peters explained.

“When she gets too much, collect and add cadence,” he added. “Go deeper and rounder until you get to the point where you feel you can let her go.”

Related: The Madden Method Symposium

Steffen Peters riding Olivia Wentworth-Stanley’s Dutch Warmblood gelding, NFK Nique.

Peters also asked Ishoy whether they had experimented with a double bridle.

“I am a big fan of the double bridle,” he admitted, “because I want to get things done. If I can be more refined in my rein aid, more efficient and effective by using something, then I want to use that. Your main goal here is, when you increase the collection, you want to increase the suppleness. A big part of your horse’s career is to figure out the collection,” Peters explained.

“Some people teach hind leg, hind leg, hind leg. I teach suppleness, suppleness, suppleness,” he added.

When asked a few weeks later which lessons from the clinic had remained with her, Ishoy responded: “One of Steffen’s suggestions was to begin incorporating a double bridle as a tool to help refine the communication needed for collection. Rather than seeing it as something to create collection, he explained how it should be used to support a horse that already understands the work. Lychee is currently showing third level and schooling fourth level movements. Since implementing the double bridle into our training program, it has proven to be a valuable addition.”

Amelia Reid on Forevermore.

The Teaching Moments

Addressing mistakes is one of the most important things riders can do when training their horses. It defines the difference between simply repeating an exercise and actively training. Corrections can be gentle, but they must be quick enough for the horse to understand. If you are going to do something, make sure it makes a difference. Never ignore the small mistakes.

“When a horse breaks from a canter to a trot, it doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is if it is not instantly corrected — that is the training moment. Use your strength to correct a movement, not to maintain it.”

Peters observed that many of the riders gave their horses too much love when their horses needed to learn greater respect. That respect comes from corrections that are clear, quick, determined, and direct enough for the horse to understand. Consistency in those corrections teaches the horse what is expected.

Watching Peters ride Stanley’s horse, NFK Nique, was a delight.

“I see that you have to wake him up, but you have to do it very tactfully,” he commented.

The horse reacted dramatically to Peters’ requests, swishing his tail and, at one point, bucking. Peters simply remarked, “A bad reaction is better than no reaction. With this horse, we want to create the energy but maintain the suppleness.”

When Stanley rode NFK Nique the following day, they worked on cadence and suppleness developed through softness and responsiveness. Peters noted that natural talent and ideal conformation do not necessarily mean a horse can carry himself correctly.

“Self-carriage comes from cadence throughout the whole body.”

They moved between small and large movements, teaching the horse how to carry himself in a way that felt comfortable.

Peters finished the session with a memorable observation: “Horses with tremendous talent require tremendous discipline.”

This will be a pair to watch.

Little Things That Make the Difference

Peters went on to teach higher-level movements with many of the participants, but what resonated most with me were the small details that ultimately make the greatest differences.

“When we polish the little things, they become big things,” he explained.

“The judges look for preparedness,” Peters continued. “Preparedness begins with the small details.”

Participant Dakota Taylor reflected on the same lesson: “He made the little things work, focusing on the small things first. Don’t ride through it, fix it first.”

Dakota Taylor on Damarei.

Praise, teaching moments, connection, and attention can all come together to produce precise movements, smooth transitions, and respect for the rider’s aids. Ultimately, these elements help create the most productive frame and tempo for each horse, depending on conformation, fitness, and temperament.

Peters refers to this as self-carriage — what the judges are looking for and what riders should feel.

“We want to show our horse comfortable at the poll with its face near the vertical, so the rider can truly feel the horse moving beneath them.”

One does not have to be a dressage rider to learn from Steffen Peters’ teaching. However, if I were a dressage rider, he would most definitely be my go-to clinician.

Related: Tiffany Foster Symposium: Making Riders Think

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Main Photo: Olivia Wentworth-Stanley on NFK Nique.