Lauren Jolly competes her Quarter horses english and wester with good results.

Elkay makes some very good points about training the dual purpose horse. We do both with our mare.

Our previous mare had done both but probably preferred English; I jumped her, trained her to carry a side saddle and had a day's hunting on her. She was a bit fizzy for dressage but I got good comments about her paces.

This one had hardly been ridden English and it took a while for her to learn to really go forward into a contact, but like Elkay's horse, she has a jog and a trot and a canter and a lope which are entirely different.

You can have a lot of fun at riding club level with a QH not least cos they are so unflappable (we did a team of six display to music last year in front of a big crowd and she loved it).
Some judges do mistakenly think that they are on their forehand because of the low head carriage, all you can do is try and work to get them as up in front and as engaged behind as possible.

But it is incredibly rewarding to have a horse that is so versatile, and the QH has such an active brain, I think they enjoy the variety!

Hi
In April I sold a 7 year-old QH gelding that had never seen an English saddle, had only competed Western and had only been hacked out twice in his life. After 4 weeks of "English" training he was winning Riding Club Dressage competitions and is happy to hack out in traffic. He has been to at least one Western clinic since taking up "English" and showed no signs of being confused between the two disciplines.
It is always easier to introduce "English" riding to a horse that is "established" Western, or vice versa, training a novice horse both at the same time may not be as successful. Using a different bit, for each, seems to help the horse understand that a different way of going is required.

Richard

it would depend on what level of dressage they are thinking. any type of horse can do a prelim/novice, its easy enough to do and if you are rubbish in one area you can pick up marks in another, i qualified for Derby horse dressage fianls on a Section D which did an entire test without canter, and if you are accurate then you always pick up marks for that. as long as your horse can trot not jog when they are doing the test then its easy enough to do, i also showed my appy in dressage and western at the ApHC national and she did well, won the dressage and had OK results in the western, the OK results were more to do with her strops when she is in a group of horses than her ability as a western horse

RichardA wrote:
Using a different bit, for each, seems to help the horse understand that a different way of going is required.<br /><br />Richard <br />

thats something i did with my horse, i rode in a bosal western and a pelham for dressage, and she always understood that in the bosal she goes longer and in the pelham i need her to go a little more round and to lift her head