[QUOTE=Red Barn;8620295]
For example: if your horse(s) are regularly coping with indoor and outdoor jump courses, dressage and roadwork, how is it that they still need to practice “yielding their hindquarters” to begin with? Weren’t Turn on the Forehand and Turn on the Hindquarters part of their pre-backing basics? How have you managed to groom, blanket, and tack up if your horse(s) aren’t reasonably cooperative and maneuverable already?
I’m not asking this stuff to be snarky or argumentative, I simply don’t get it.
…
So really, and in all seriousness: what does traditional, fitness-based groundwork lack in your book? What does the NH thing provide, and how does it make you “better”?[/QUOTE]
I’ll answer from my perspective. As I mentioned before, I’ve ridden for 30+ years, with most of that time in a regular training program. I’ve ridden a combination of trained horses or green horses, but also horses who had always been handled or in a training program, so there were already ground rules of how to behave and do things and get along in life.
Then I had to put a horse down and wanted a project, so I got my mustang. He had been “started” so had some ground work and round pen work and he had been used as a pack horse by a hunter. He was used to being in a herd, out in the open, and going along with his group. The handling he got was in no way refined or set up for riding horse life.
The traditional methods of what I knew from my years in h/j and dressage barns didn’t work with him, as he had never been taught that. Combine his lack of knowledge with a stallion-like personality and I had my hands full.
I am all for in-hand gymnastic work and I do use that with my horses, and my goal is always to move from crude (not meaning rough, per se, but basic and loud if necessary) to refined.
I had worked this horse at home, taken him on the trails, taken him to an XC park, taken him to a dressage show, and he handled it all great . . . until he didn’t. And I realized that there were some big holes and the “lunge him in tight side reins” wasn’t a means of fixing the holes. It may temporarily solve one problem, but it wouldn’t/couldn’t get to his brain - it would just “put him in his place” body-management-wise, but it didn’t do anything to further our communication in the way I wanted it to.
While this topic was originally about the hindquarters lion crouch (which I don’t do), obviously “ground work” is so much more than that. I used it to develop a feel between the two of us, to set a space up that is “ours” for lack of a better word. For example, at the first BB clinic I went to, he was reacting to everyone doing ground work and using their flags. It was a great place for me to say, “no, only I matter, the only person with a flag you should pay attention to is me, and I will lead you in the dance.” And it was so good for both of us (30 horses in the arena with various levels of experience, behavior, and handlers).
What in the past when lunging might be a spook and a turn tail and try to run became a spook and turn on the circle and maintain a soft line between us because I’ve got you, buddy.
What in the past would be a tense warm up with a braced horse became a soft horse ready to work (after the ground work) because we got in the groove together.
What in the past may have required a strong hold on the lead became an ability to do the work at liberty.
I’m not about doing disengagement for the sake of doing it; and, I don’t/didn’t do it exclusively. It is part of a wide range of skills and exercises that help me help my horse to mentally get in tune with me, to use his inside hind to step under himself and develop strength and balance, to soften up his back, to stretch out his body, to feel with me through a series of movements such that our connection is light and soft . . . all the things I would want under saddle.
Perhaps if I had access to a traditional english trainer who knew all of this stuff I wouldn’t have gone the route I did. But I find people sort of get stuck in their own boxes or work within the framework of what has worked for them in the past. And to be honest, how many h/j or dressage trainers want to work with a bull-headed mustang who acts like a stallion and wants to strike or scream at the ladies or throw his own version of a hissy-fit when they could be training a lovely WB or some other purpose-bred horse who is easy and likes to get along and will go to shows and represent them well?
It was up to me to take the situation into my own hands and find whatever tools I could find to make my horse a better citizen. And he is. Even though he is put together funny and still opinionated and can be bratty, I honestly don’t know what I’d do without him. We are very connected and through his stubbornness I have learned more and grown more as a horse woman than I would have had I stuck with a “traditional” program. At least for this horse.
