Club Day On Sunday 5th of November

Mike and Wendy gave up their day to come to our club and impart some valuable groundwork techniques to those who attended. Well planned and well presented in a humble and humorous way, I am sure everyone there would have, at the least, enjoyed themselves and almost certainly gone away wiser to some degree. I for one have hung up the steel toe capped hobnails and my horse (so far) seems to respect that. So thank you once again and it would be nice to think that maybe someday in some small way we could return the favour.
Surefoot

We had a good turn out with 17 riders in attendance, with plenty of onlookers on the rail.
Mike explained that as far as ground training your horse it basically boils down to this – if your horse has no respect for you on the ground then you may as well put the halter or bridle on yourself and let the horse lead you around, because that’s exactly what you teaching your horse by allowing it to be dominant in ground handling. A horse should stay out of your space. Apart from anything else this is a safety issue – no one wants their horse standing on their feet or running over the top of you! And if your horse doesn’t respect you on the ground, then he’s unlikely to respect you when you’re on his back.
Our goal is to be able to control the horse’s feet while we’re on the ground and while on his back. We should aim to be able to do the following -
· Back up
· Move shoulder or front end
· Move the hindquarters
· Move away in a circle
Once we had all tried these manoeuvres both on the ground and in the saddle, we worked on 6 – 8 metre circles around a cone. The cone is a good way to gauge how round (or not) your circle is – and it’s not always as easy as it looks. Ideally your horse should bend nicely around the circle. We also tried moving our horse over two strides (half-pass) to make the circle a little bigger, then back in again.
Next came the clock – imagine your circle as a clock - we had to stop at say 12 o’clock, move the hindquarters out so your facing the cone in the centre, walk to the cone until the horse’s nose is over it, back to the outside of the circle, then move the front end over onto the circle again. We did this in all the different combinations which kept us and our horses on our toes!
Lastly we put it all together in one smooth movement - flexing, moving the hindquarters, backing, moving the shoulder and side-pass. And don’t forget to do it both ways. Great for getting your horse supple!
I certainly found this very helpful, as I have a very pushy horse who often tries to boss me. When I first got him I found him very hard to deal with, both on the ground and in the saddle, and as I’d had no experience with this sort of horse it took me a long time to sort it out. And even now after four years we still have a few hiccups. As Mike said, horses don’t understand love and emotion – so unless you let them know who’s the boss with the right signals then you make things very hard for yourself, and your not doing the horse any favours either!
Thanks very much Mike and Wendy for a very interesting and informative day. You certainly gave us all something to work on.
Cheers Jude (PS Photos in next months issue)