Horsetalk.co.nz Horse skills behind a good piaffe explored by researchers Dressage by Henry Wynmalen). Any dressage horse capable of performing a top-notch piaffe is a skilled animal indeed, the findings of fresh research suggest. The piaffe is a difficult balancing feat in a specific posture, equine researchers Hilary Clayton and Sarah Jane Hobbs noted in the journal Animals. It is acknowledged as one of the hardest movements performed by dressage horses, in which the animal raises and lowers alternating diagonal limb pairs while remaining in place. For a horse, it is an artificial movement that requires balancing skills, and is required to be performed in place only at the highest levels of competition.