What exactly are you wanting them to get out of NH groundwork that they wouldn’t get out of the traditional groundwork that dressage trainers put in?
You want best value for money so don’t want to waste time on pointless exercises.
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IME dressage in hand work tends to be related to performance and posture, for instance lateral work in hand.
NH ground work tends to be related to bombproofing, building trust, for instance walking over circus boxes and standing ground tied.
I do both with the horses I handle, but I have different coaches for each.
I think it’s a fantastic idea to do NH work with performance horses that will need to behave under pressure in new settings.
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What Scribbler said. I’ll add:
IME, NH groundwork teaches a horse to think on their own in the face of new things. You present them with tasks that they have to approach like a puzzle to determine the right answer. If you’re a good handler, you teach a horse that if s/he doesn’t understand a situation, s/he tries and tries until you reward the right answer. Spooking or being resistant is not an option that gets them out of the work. You cultivate their curiosity and desire to figure out the way through.
How does this translate to dressage? Some horses don’t understand, say, the concept of a flying lead change and training it makes them upset. A horse who has been taught to think through unfamiliar situations might trot, and you say “that’s nice, not what I wanted”. Then, they might counter-canter and blow through the aids and you say “that’s nice, but not what I wanted”. They’ll be curious to find the right answer to what they see as a puzzle and will seek reward, rather than freaking out and thinking they can’t do it. This follows through to everything. Dressage is constantly teaching a horse a new way of going once they mastered the increasing number of basics and build more strength. It’s all about getting the horse to put it’s attention on you and wait for you and trust you and try. Groundwork cultivates all of these qualities.
I never learned this from very quality dressage training, all training was approached in the arena. Good NH groundwork is reinforced in the barn, walking to the arena, when catching a horse, etc. It teaches them that they’re always “working” when around a human, not just when fully tacked and mounted.
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I really don’t regard things like that as being NH.
People all over the world were getting their horses used to things, coping with training problems, teaching ground tying etc long before NH was ever a ‘thing’.
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💯 kip Fladland. He’s the real deal. No ego anot ridiculous schtick but he really knows his stuff. I met him and his amazing wife when I visited my trainer in FL last season. Missy is a great dressage trainer and they work together. He knows more dressage than the average natural horsemanship person and would be a good fit for a Dressage barn looking for natural horsemanship
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In general this is true and I agree that I don’t like all what gets lumped under the NH banner.
However it is true that at this point in time, in North America, the best most thoughtful training in this direction is coming from ground worker trainers from a Western riding background who are based in starting colts and making working ranch horses. These are the folks who will do traveling clinics specifically in these techniques and who have thought about how to teach these skills to humans.
I do not know of any dressage trainer that has the depth of skill in teaching groundwork that the better NH type clinicians do.
The best dressage trainers are far more skilled and talented riders than almost all NH trainers, and honestly would probably be bored silly spending 8 hours teaching an arena full of returning riders how to safely lead their horses over tarps.
The NH clinics are values additions to a riding discipline, if you get the right clinician.
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When some trainers start ‘copywriting’ their methods, use jargon that is theirs alone, i.e. “Join up” and call it all Natural Horsemanship, that is where they are stepping into the land of woo-woo imo. I’ve learned a ton from different clinics,
but horsemanship has been around for (say) 2,000 years - it has mostly been said before.
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I think a lot of it has more to do with having a specific “method” that distinguishes them from other trainers so they aren’t just one in a field of thousands doing basically the same thing. There are some crazies that believe the more “woo woo” type stuff, like I don’t think Join Up is a magical thing that will solve all the horse’s problems, and that attracts the people that want a majickal bond with their horse or a simple one-time solution to all their problems. But I do think of NH, like REAL NH not the fad stuff, as just using a horse’s natural instincts to help it learn to have more confidence in itself, be a solid citizen in the horse-human world, learn how to handle itself in uncertain or worrisome situations, etc. I get so many compliments on how well behaved my 4 year old is, in a barn of a ton of dressage riders with horses with various issues (though all really awesome horses), and it really is just that I spent a lot of time with him working from the ground on basic skills. Not just the typical lunging, leading, long lining, etc, but how to react when something makes him nervous, how to turn fear into curiosity and playfulness, that I won’t ever put him in a bad situation or ask him to do something he can’t do. And I learned HOW to do all of that effectively from a NH trainer (more John Lyons/Buck Brannaman, not Parelli or CA). And the principles I picked up from that have actually helped my horse learn how to learn, he picks up on things scary quick.
I think the term Natural Horsemanship tends to be lumped in with some of the less reputable trainers, but I feel like it’s a valuable, separate thing and not exactly the same as your typical groundwork, in-hand sessions. I definitely see it more with cowboy types than your typical dressage/english trainers.
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Every discipline has good and bad trainers. Think of the things that are done under the name of dressage, hunter/jumper, reining, race track training. I agree that the NH umbrella contains some real idiots. It is easier to fake it as a trainer when you don’t have to actually ride. Also some of the Western background that NH comes out of is rather brutal, and while NH positions itself in opposition to the worst of the bad old cowboy mentality, ironically some practitioners can still be rougher than needed for the average pet horse, especially if their foundation is in breaking feral mustangs in two days.
All that said, NH is the most useful umbrella term for what the OP is asking about in this thread, and the good NH trainers do bring knowledge about horse behavior that is extremely useful and is not usually taught to this extent in most riding programs. If you want a show horse that will trailer quietly, stand tied, not spook at silly things, and is able to self sooth and not work himself into a lather in strange places, NH can be very helpful.
It’s also true that a number of NH practitioners have deleted that term from their promotional language. I’ve take some useful groundwork clinics with a Canadian, Paul Dufresne, whose tagline is “Training for Courage,” and he doesn’t use the NH term at all. But that’s exactly what he does.
We can debate all we like whether NH is more or less “natural” than any other way of subjecting horses to human demands, but that’s the term that’s stuck for this overall approach to ground work.
IME, OTOH, some of the guys who do good groundwork absolutely work on posture. If you watch someone like Brannaman, he can make a horse stand square and lean forward or back, without moving a foot. I find the way those guys make horses get very accurate about moving one foot at a time or backing one step at a time is very, very useful for the rein back in dressage.
They also work on having the horse learn to slow his mind down and get very aware of where his feet are and on his handler. And the dull ones are taught to “come to attention” a bit more and get mentally sharper and more accurate. It turns out, for example, that backing a horse in a figure 8 is hard! It’s hard for them (at least at first) and hard for us. Backing on a curve is a great exercise for getting a horse to squat on the hind leg you want.
And people who learn to do groundwork with their horses tend to develop some very good body awareness that translates into the saddle. I ride so much better, and so much more accurately with my legs once I learned to move my feet with intention or accuracy on the ground. And that led me to being able to feel a whole lot more about where each leg was. I think those are valuable skills for dressage.
I did take my dressage mare to a cattle clinic. That helped her learn to go forward and into something scary-- a cow or the judge’s box at C.
I took my dressage mare to a trail obstacle clinic. She did learn, among other things, to step up on a platform and turn around-- your proverbial circus trick-- that taught her that she could stop her feet and think and trust even when unsure. That’s not the MO of a forward thinking, sensitive dressage horse.
Make of all this what you all will, but I think there’s a lot that dressage horses and dressage riders. can learn from a good Natural Horsemanship trainer.
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Very good points.
I should have said that even very good in hand dressage work tends to be limited to performance and posture, possibly by definition.
Good ground work especially from someone who has an idea about making Western performance horses absolutely builds posture and lateral mobility, as well as bombproofing.
@Wicky Greg started Lanie. He was wonderful to work with and I learned a ton which i still use with every horse today.
I’d say that it’s a major drawback to dressage that the bombproofing isn’t included. Not only does that ignore the original purpose of the training, to make a war horse, for God’s sake, but it also seems to ignore the problem of making a flight animal able to deal with that inherent conflict of interest he has in being ridden. What I mean is that at some point, we will do something that will scare the horse. And if we don’t do anything to teach him how to manage his fear, we just have obedience as the one thing we want from him, regardless of how he feels about it. If, on the other hand, you engage in a kind of training that explicitly focuses on putting a horse into a situation that scares him and controlling his experience, structuring it so that he leaves it feeling triumphant and confident, I think it’s a fairer kind of training for the horse.
As with the cattle clinic I went to, lots of the reason I went was to get a good horseman to help me structure an experience where my mare was ridden forward toward something that scared her, just going because I said so, and then found that she could feel confident with the cattle that she could boss around. The cattle moving away from her was crucial. I don’t think she should have the same about merely going object that just didn’t move and get worse. But she did get lots of that (and really enjoyed it) with a complicated trail course.
I haven’t read all of the responses yet, so my apologies if someone’s already recommended him, but Mark Rashid for sure. While I can’t say I 100% subscribe to the philosophy of any western-oriented trainer, I’ve incorporated more of his approach into my own than I have for pretty much any other dedicated NH-ish trainer. Especially with regards to high strung horses.
OP, do you want to start with a budget for your clinician, including travel?
Or do you have a set of horses and riders in mind who want something in particular?
I can think of a few people that could do different kinds of clinics for you. And if your riders are open-minded, they’ll all get good stuff from it. But some of the folks I can think of are on the West Coast, so getting them to come to NYC (and paying for that travel) or having someone come from, say, Michigan and perhaps bringing a demo horse might make this really expensive.
Let us know how we can best help you find the right person! It sounds like it will be a fun and useful clinic.
Sounds like fun! What are you particularly hoping to achieve in the clinic?
“Groundwork” is such a broad spectrum… It’s a shame he isn’t traveling to the US anytime soon (that I’ve seen), but Tristan Tucker is a dressage rider and has a really great way of teaching “natural horsemanship” – more ‘mental training’ designed for dressage horses.
I’ve not officially purchased his coaching/training program, but have watched many, many of his videos and live streams and they are incredibly helpful for horses that are spooky, looky, have trust issues, trailer loading issues, etc. There is so much free content from him that is helpful. I’d say it’s in the style of Warwick Schiller perhaps? If you can’t find anyone locally to come in, perhaps pool with some interested parties to go in on a coaching membership. It offers monthly themes, tons of videos, etc. Q&A, step by step videos.
I do focus training and learned a lot from TRT (Tristan Tucker)
Brendan Wise is located in Md and is very good. He rode under John Lyons for quite a while and has transitioned over to dressage and extensively rode with Jean Claude Barry. He really focuses on ground work with his horses. Teaching many dressage maneuvers in hand first. He is very patient and kind.
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Gonna second this. He’s very good at presenting information, and sympathetic with the horse. And he’s got a youtube presence so you can get a sense of what he’s like. I always enjoyed going to watch him at the PA Horse Expo.
Third Brendan Wise.
