I guess just as the title indicates…if you gain your horse’s respect on the ground, does this translate into respect and trust in the saddle?? I’d like to hear other’s experiences. I have a sensitive (but sweet, talented and really not spooky) 6 yr old who my trainer and I are working with…he really needs to gain trust and confidence in his rider and handler. I am just wondering if the stuff on the ground really does help because it’s new to me. He’s respectful on the ground and gives you space and all so he’s good with it and picks it up quickly.
I think it can, and has helped me with my horse. If nothing else it makes me more aware, creates good habits, and improves our relationship because I am consciously thinking about being the leader instead of just not paying attention/letting standards slip because I know my horse won’t do anything bad.
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I’m very suspicious of the word “respect,” because I think it’s essentially meaningless in contexts like this.
If you’re good at ground work and a tolerably good rider, then sure: work on the ground will translate to work under saddle - especially when the behavior being taught is clear, specific, and broken down into small, manageable, gymnastic bits. (“Over,” “back,” “whoa,” etc.)
No amount of “respect” on the ground, however, will make a horse perform well for a rider whose aids are erratic, whose seat is a mess, whose tack doesn’t fit, who has no training plan . . . you get the picture.
I think horses trust riders who are competent and fair. If they’re pals on the ground, all the better - but that, I think, is mostly just a product of kindness and time.
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I would use the word trust over respect. Proper ground work is getting a horse focused on you and creating a partnership. Depending on your riding skills much can translate to the saddle. You can teach forward, stopping, turning on the forehand and haunches, release to pressure, backing,softening, transitions etc on the ground that easily translates to the saddle. If you just run a horse around and do not do any training then it will not translate to the saddle. The more you can expose the horse to and develop the partnership the more confident it is will definitely help from a horse being herd or barn sour or also trusting you when things get a little scary.
As the handler though you need to be confident and know what you are doing. I would consider myself somewhat advanced in ground work but I have so much still to learn. It can take a lifetime as not many people understand it to learn from nor are people willing to put in the time, money or effort to learn.
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Yes, in that a better trained horse is more easily rideable horse and one that can move on to better levels of performance.
Terms like “respect” must be carefully used because the horse doesn’t have anything like a human’s definition of the term.
G.
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Some things very much can like a verbal whoa, or yielding to pressure. Certainly the early stages of backing a young horse, and standing on a mounting block and leaning over the back are specifically to teach the horse that he can trust nothing bad will happen when he sees something on his back. Another example would be hand walking a horse over a tarp before riding over the tarp.
However, as others have said, a lot of groundwork won’t make up for poor riding. If you go to ride over that tarp the first time, but anticipate a bad reaction, clamp with your knees, grab the reins and get nervous yourself no amount of prior groundwork will overcome that. But ride like he will walk right over it, calmly and clearly and you are much more likely to be successful.
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I would say ground work sets you up better for success. It’s the foundation of everything else you may go for (jumping, dressage, etc.). If you have a correct, solid, strong foundation then you are more likely to ride more effectively and efficiently for success. On a side note, it can help develop a stronger relationship with your horse because you’re essentially going back to the bare basics. To do proper groundwork correctly, it will take good communication with your horse and learning to work together.
Caveat: if it’s crap groundwork that is done incorrectly, you might as well be teaching your horse how to pick up bad habits. But if you’re doing it with a respectable trainer and truly understand the purpose of each exercise and how each aide you give is communicating with the horse, it can make a world of a difference. Good luck!
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This. I would totally agree that running them around a round pen likely won’t help much, but working with someone who knows what they’re doing can help you learn to ask for your horse’s attention and focus. One can also learn to both be a good problem solver and help one’s horse become a better problem solver as well. You can show your horse a “problem” and then show the “right answer” (give to pressure, for example.) You can learn how to ask for certain behaviors on the ground, and then see how to ask for the same thing when mounted (and can see the context.)
So when my horse and I are riding down a dirt road or wide trail, I might ask him to move from side to side (gives us something to think about). If he’s upset about something, I want to own those feet and might ask him to disengage his hips (something that one can easily learn on the ground, then ask for when mounted.) What he is learning is options, other than run!
So, no. Ground work won’t help with a lousy seat or rough hands but it can really help with learning to communicate clearly with your horse. I’ve been around a lot of dude horses, most of whom have had a career of crazy messages from their riders. But then, they get a chance to either work with or be ridden by someone who communicates clearly, kindly and fairly (something the horse knows and is capable of) and it’s a totally different horse.
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For my mare, yes. For my gelding, no. My gelding, now retired, was always a nervous Nellie on the ground (still is). No amount of groundwork ever changed that. He would go from a trembling, snorting, rude beast to calm, happy, and compliant as soon as a rider was on. I’ve never really figured it out 
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If nothing else, doing a good job of groundwork (and by that I mean basically any training exercises that are not done while riding including basic halter training and desensitization) makes it a heckuva a lot easier to work with the horse on the ground. Go figure. You wouldn’t believe the number of supposedly high-end dressage horses I’ve worked with over the years in a veterinary setting that have no ground training/manners. Barging over people, little or no response to very, very basic ground requests to back up, shift over, pivot, or stand still, and nearly impossible to trot out in hand in a mannerly fashion. Personally I don’t have any problem using the term “respect” in this sense. Maybe horses don’t understand the term in the same way a person does, but they don’t understand ANY words or phrases in the same way a person does. I think some people take issue with “respect” because to them it implies a sort of physical dominance implemented and maintained by pain or other aversions. It does not necessarily imply that to me, noting that there certainly are trainers out there who achieve the same basic end by pain and fear.
I also think that the process of learning just about anything, if done positively, teaches a horse the process of figuring out what a person is asking of them, and what’s in it for them. I recall a story a long time ago about a person who had sent her horse to a BNT in the jumping world. Dropped in for a visit and found him training the mare to push a giant ball with her nose. She confronted him with “I’m not paying you to teach my horse to push a ball with her nose.” “He replied, ‘I can’t teach her how to jump until I teach her how to learn.’” Keeping up the conversation of learning/training in a low pressure/low danger setting helps keeps this horse engaged and focused on figuring out what the people in his world want. Elisa Wallace seems to embrace this philosophy. She works on trick training and things that have no real direct relation to riding, competition or much of anything else to keep things interesting.
Working on ground training, particularly if you have somebody watching/teaching an inexperienced person, can also help the handler learn about how pressure-and-release, and the timing of things, works in a relatively low-pressure, low-danger setting. Of course, an inexperienced person working on the ground with no guidance can get into very nearly as much trouble as they can when mounted, because many people don’t recognize that their timing is way off (just like they may not understand that they are sending mixed messages with hand and leg aids while mounted). I was watching some show once where a woman was trying to get her mare to not be afraid of plastic bags and such. She’d lead her up to a bag, the bag would blow, the mare would shy, and the woman would say, “Oh, easy, sweetie, there, there,” pets and rubs, thinking that the mare was being reassured and would get more confident. She’d been struggling for weeks and the mare was getting worse instead of better. Trainer comes in, makes a test run to see how close she could get the mare to the bag before there was a reaction. Then led her away from that point without commentary. Led her back to a spot about ten feet out from “panic zone.” Stopped calmly, praise, walk forward a few steps, praise, turn away, come back and stop just a hair closer, praise, etc. Basic principles of rewarding good behavior as it happens, not giving reward too late or after bad behavior.
And, of course, there are a bunch of relatively advanced groundwork training things like long-lining (ground driving, never sure if there is a real difference in the terms), that can have clear and direct translation into ridden work, or else the Spanish Riding School probably would not still be using them.
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I think in some cases, yes it can. It makes bonds stronger and signals clearer. But as always and anything you do with horses, there can be to much and you’ll achieve right the opposite.
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The answer to the question in your title is that groundwork translates to riding work, directly. What you do on the ground with your horse, he will recognize and respond to when you are on his back. If you are giving him the same signal on his back that you do on the ground, he responds the same.
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Well I do a bit more than ground work, I do in hand work which is so much more. It educates and develops the horse in a way for them to better understand what you are asking for US. We start out with the basics of yielding the shoulders specifically the elbow and then graduate to all lateral work in walk and even trot and up to piaffe in hand. It is amazing when you have that kind of training on the horse, plus what you do with your body to correctly be able to work them in hand absolutely transfers to US.
I was lucky enough to learn for over 9 yrs from Mark Russell who was a master with in hand work and had learned from Nuno Olivera. Unfortunately we lost Mark to tragic accident in 2016, terrible loss of an incredible trainer.
I don’t think you can have a safe riding horse without good ground skills.
In hand work absolutely can teach a lot of lateral work and response to the bit.
But good ground work does not automatically translate to riding. If you mess things up in the saddle no amount of ground work alone will fix it.
Horse learning is specific to context. You on the ground is different from you in the saddle. Think how many horses will willingly go over a bridge or past an obstacle lead but not under saddle. They have more of a sense of you as a leader sometimes if you are on the ground.
So you need all of it.
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I think this part of groundwork can be a very important transition from in-hand work, especially for the spooky horse. For some of them, they feel abandoned when you aren’t up by their head or in the vicinity. Being able to direct them from the side and directly behind them is, I think, valuable for the horse who might similarly feel abandoned when you are on his back, rather than visible by his head.
This isn’t true for all horses, of course. And I suspect that the better horseman you are on the ground, the less time you need to spend creating these intermediate steps. But try some long lining or line driving and see if you seem to unveil a set of problems you knew about under saddle, but thought you had solved in-hand.
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Good point.
I guess that’s why “double longeing” (long lining from the longing position) is so handy. If you’re good at it - and I wish I was better! - you can use the lines just like the reins you’d use in the saddle, except that you’re standing on the ground where the horse can see you.
Stuff like that gives the handler a lot of information too, so learning goes both ways.
I think it’s important, though, to decide whether you’re doing ground work for psychological reasons (say, instilling “respect”) or for gymnastic/performance reasons (say, improving straightness). Some work on the ground might do both, of course, but some . . . nnnnnnnope; not at all. Just look at all the arguments about Parelli!
John Lyons said “The horse you lead is the horse you ride.” --I think the ground work I leaned and practice made me a better rider BECAUSE it taught me to break down what I wanted to accomplish into smaller steps, and to build on my success. Secondly, ground work gave me confidence. I’m a little old lady. 1200 pounds of spooky horse on the end of a lead rope scares me! Ground work has made all four (five if you count my daughters horse) of my horses lovely to deal with on the ground. They stand quietly for brushing, washing, tacking up, farrier and vet. They move away with a gesture. What taught me the importance of ground work was my Granddaughters passion for Showmanship. She was a timid rider --but she loved her horse. She’d work with him for hours and hours. Eventually, they were, well, a dance team. She would lift a shoulder and he’d move a leg. She’d nod her head and he would back. She’d kiss and he’d pivot --they won many, many shankless showmanship classes. That horse is a delight to work around. He’s a nice riding horse too --and she did ride him well, but her passion was on the ground.
So for me --the answer is 100% yes —I do 15-20 min of groundwork every time I ride —it’s like stretches before a track meet --we need the time to put our minds in the right place.
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Within reason, the horse you lead is the horse you ride. But there are limitations- a horse may happily do in hand work where the handler walks really slooowly to remind the horse to match the pace, etc, be super attentive to you at the barn…but riding that same horse back toward his friends from a solo trail ride- he may not slow his feet as willingly as they ARE animals with emotions. So unless you ALSO do the ground work out there where you ride- out away from his pals, on the trails, etc- you are likely to find one doesn’t translate all the time, to the other.
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Very interesting feedback on this. I am a relatively competent rider but definitely could be better, thus lessons and training. Horse I am working with is 6; he’s new to me since Sept. He is a TWH from KY, but was born in TX, lived in CA, and then moved back south to KY. He’s been around a lot and been shown quite a bit, but by professionals. I am an ammy. He is sensitive, and my biggest issue with him has been mounting believe it or not. I’ve had a few snafoos mounting this horse and he picks up on emotions very easily. So, on a bad day, when I am tried and crabby, it is not a day to ride him. My older guy who is 16 could care less.
Even after riding this horse by myself all winter when it was dark and cold in the barn, I had a setback mounting a few weeks ago and thought, okay- we are getting serious about training here. We need help, I don’t want to be killed and I’d like to be able to take this horse to shows and feel confident. Once I am saddled on him, he’s good and has a great work ethic. But he gets worried and scared mounting. So my trainer who has been working with him about a month now, took him to her place for a few weeks for some boot camp work. She does a lot of a ground work which got me thinking I should perhaps be a little more focused on this instead of rushing to ride. 10-15 min with this horse to gain his focus and attention prior to just getting on and riding is probably super huge for him. But of course setbacks have lessened my confidence so I am trying to get mine back as well.
Anyway, I am rethinking my approach to this horse because he isn’t like my other guy and requires a different approach. An approach that makes me keep my anxiety and emotions in check. I just wondered how much of what we may work on in groundwork sessions is going to translate into easing his anxiety when mounting. Let’s be honest. he is a bit anxious just naturally, but he really doesn’t jump or react to things either- he just becomes tense and looky- which still makes me uneasy.
Sorry for the ramble!
@TWH Girl maybe play with him just standing while you stand beside him on a mounting block? Or stand beside him on a bale of hay, stuff like that?
I had a very trappy feeling TWH who had been gotten after badly about mounting- I think someone tried fighting with him about parking out and he got realllllly anxious about being mounted. we spent a lot of time just connecting on the ground doing baby longeing on a 12’ lead rope (just walking and reversing in a walk and halting). that graduated to me standing on a two step mounting block and doing the same thing, and leading him to me while I was above his eye level, LOTS of rubbing and treats and just hanging together so that I became a safe curiosity, not a scary adversary. that graduated to offering him sugar cubes from the mounting block on the near and the offside - so I would offer it OVER his back and he would have to look to the right to accept it from my right hand while I was still on the block- that took trust on his part to take his eyes off of me in order to look away and get the sugar. I taught him to stand square for mounting, and as he got better, made a point of mounting and just rubbing him, more sugar, etc- as he learned he could trust me.
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