Do you agree with the use of side/draw reins?

Draw reins and dressage do not go together at all, so I am not sure where you got that notion but it is quite incorrect. Yes, Dressage is good for your horse no matter his discipline as it will help him to learn to carry himself properly, be very balanced, and responsive to you. Draw reins are not any part of that training process. Side reins, however, are used for dressage but only in lunging as a part of the warm up. Adjusted correctly to get the horse stretching through his back and yielding at the poll. Only on the lunge though, never under saddle. Draw reins just force a horse's neck and head through leverage. Because proper head and neck carriage comes from the hind end, the look they achieve is false. Part of Dressage is getting your horse to accept a constant gentle, but firm contact through the bit. Draw reins work against this concept as you can't maintain consistent contact on them without drawing your horse's face into his chest--which is the opposite of what you want, he needs to be stretching forward and down to bit contact.

These aids can be incredibly useful. I use side reins while lunging to help my horse stretch and limber up and create a good bend. Used correctly, in short bursts with an experienced dressage trainer they are very effective. However a small problem can be made a big problem very very quickly in inexperienced hands. For example, my trainer was teaching me about side reins and we were using them on my gelding who has recently recovered from an unsoundness...he is very stiff and lost all his muscle. We had them on very loose, but he was objecting to going forward and tried to fling his head up in protest - he hit the side reins and paniced and starting backing up like a pro reining horse across the arena. My first instinct was to go and loosen the reins, but my trainer said that if he learns to be scared and resist them it is bad. She spent a few hours undoing that damage by reminding him that only by moving forward and relaxing and using his back correctly would the pressure be releaved. Now, you put them on and he almost relaxes into them automatically. If I had been doing this on my own, I would have ended up with a horse who feared rein pressure and evaded it by backing up. They take a level of knowledge I don't have yet, so my trainer always supervises me. They also need adjusting to increase/ decrease bend on a circle and sometimes for each gait...too much would either over or underbend the horse and unbalance him, so any work you did would be pointless at best. Draw reins I believe are ok in the early stages to teach a horse the cues to lower or raise his head, but after that I don't like them as they only place the head and don't teach the horse to bridge correctly. I like to ride with as little tack as possible to give clear communication.

Many may disagree with me, but personally, anything that "interferes with the delicate feel" that you should have between your hands and your horse's mouth, is usually, negative. There are times that a young horse can benefit from being able to be lunged with side reins, mainly to teach the rest of his body how to adjust and physically build itself to accommodate a NATURAL headset that comes from proper body position, not the other way around. I will never accept that there is an artificial aid that can and will replace a good set of hands.

In my opinion, the use of both side reins and draw reins are more of a band aid. They don't fix the problem, they just cover it up. And they can definitely cause more damage than good when not used correctly. I disagree with the use of them for this reason, unless they MUST be used by an extremely EXPERIENCED rider. Otherwise, whenever a horse would move in a way we didn't want or do something wrong we could just throw on more equipment to fix the problem! Good job in asking.

i have used them and they are a good aid because there is give and take with them. the horse chooses to submit and put their head down. they help to teach collection in and easy way. if they were really bad for the horse, people wouldn't use them