Dressage is the art of improving your horse, making him more supple in his movements, a joy to ride and beautiful to watch. To the untrained eye it looks easy, but it requires years of training and practice.  He must be a willing partner with a good mental attitude, willing to learn and wanting to please.  The object of dressage is the harmonious development of the horse in both mind and body, and every horse, regardless of its type or use, can benefit from this training.  Dressage requires the horse and rider to combine the strength and agility of gymnastics with the elegance and beauty of ballet.  Competitions are held at many levels, beginning with Walk-Trot and Training Level, and continuing through nine levels to Grand Prix.   The standard dressage arena is 20 meters by 60 meters, some lover level test might use a small arena that is 20 meters by 40 meters. 

During a dressage test all movements and certain transitions from one gait or movement to another are numbered and scored from 0 to 10.  A flawless performance of each movement is seldom achieved.  Judges rarely give a score of 10!  Test are different for each level and are written so thee is a way to consistently measure performance.  Judges are looking for accuracy of the transitions (changes of gait), obedience, suppleness of the horse ,quality of the gaits, and the rider's use of aids.  A score of 0 means that virtually nothing of the movement was performed while a score of 10 is excellent (and rarely achieved).  The individual scores are added and then calculated as a percentage of possible points to come up with a score.  The highest percentage wins the class. 

Musical Kurs, Pas de Deux and Quadrille are all original rides that are choregraphed and contains required movements while being artistically pleasing and technically correct.  They also must be executed from memory and ridden to music.  The Musical Kur is performed as an individual, Pas de Deux is performed as a pair and Quadrille is performed as a team of four.  

During USPC Championships, each rider performs two USEF Dressage tests. Each team must also present either three Kurs, or two Kurs and a Pas de Deux. For all dressage tests, riders are awarded scores on each required movement. Riding scores are added to those for Horse Management for overall placement of dressage teams.