The holidays have begun! Meaning that most of us will be running at least four directions at once for the next month, leaving little time for horse training. When you don’t have time to saddle up the round pen is a great place to get some work done. If you don’t have a roundpen, then lunging also works well. This month my challenge is to do at least one groundwork session with your horse each week. Start out with your basic routine and pick something that you can identify as a sticking point for your horse. Does your horse not canter on cue while lunging? Does your horse turn his hips to you in the round pen to change directions? – rude! Is your horse a spaz doing groundwork? Spend time helping him chill out.
Why Do Groundwork?
Groundwork can be a great place to troubleshoot your relationship with your horse. Your horse will only give you as much cooperation in the saddle as he does on the ground. So if you take him to the round pen and he is cantering around frantically and turning his butt to you to change directions, he’s probably not going to give you a very pleasant ride. It might be an exciting ride, but not pleasant.
Groundwork can be used to establish leadership, teach new cues and body language which in turn improves our riding. Lunging can easily translate to ground driving, also known as long lining. This technique can be used at all levels of training from “baby basics” to extremely advanced manuevers as demonstrated by those such as the famous performing Lipizzaners. A horse with a firm basic understanding of lunging can also be helped through scary situations safely on the ground. Overall, groundwork is a tremendous educational tool for your horse.
Basic Goals
As a baseline, make sure your horse understands commands for walk, trot, canter, halt and change directions. It is wise to learn some of the horsemanship norms for groundwork signals so that if your horse is ever handled by someone else he is not completely lost. Since most of the normal signals are derived from natural horse body language, horses usually pick up on them easily. It will make your life simpler to follow mainstream types of signals. Having said that, your body language or exact verbal signals may differ somewhat from others. But if you are consistent and your horse understands you it’s fine. Remember your job is to build a common language with your horse.
Advantages of Groundwork
You don’t necessarily need to be tacked up for groundwork, which means it’s a time efficient training session option. Time restrictions aside, I like to make sure my horses don’t associate my ability to control them with wearing tack. I have known a number of horses that behaved completely different when bridled vs. wearing just a halter which tells me they viewed the tack as the control, rather than the human as the leader. A simple way to change a horse’s mind on this is to lunge or round pen with minimal tack sometimes, just to do it. Back to basics. Bringing your horse back to just you and him eye to eye can add a whole new dimension to your relationship.
The less tack you use, the more communication and cooperation is necessary for success. This demonstration of “working at liberty” is a lovely example of what is possible when groundwork is trained completely.
Advancement and Final Thoughts
If you and your horse have a firm grasp of the basic commands on the ground, then pick something new. Will he lunge over some small jumps? Ever tried liberty work, trick training or long lining/ground driving? The possibilities are endless! Don’t be afraid to reach just a little outside of the box and try something new. Pick something that looks cool, make a plan for how to introduce it to your horse in small pieces and go do it. Even a few short minutes spent on the ground is better than just rushing past your horse in the daily hustle this holiday season.
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The most dangerous place to be around horses is stagnant. If you are not trying to improve, things will go wrong quickly.
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