BY KEN FAULKNER
Image by Kathy Stewart.
HOW DOES A pro-active, thoughtful rider or trainer achieve such a dream horse? The answer is good handling practices and groundskills. A well-educated horse is usually quieter than a less or poorly handled horse because a young or less educated horse is more apt to become a prey animal more quickly. Prey animals resort to nervous energy, sudden movement, flight and defensive action as a way to survive. Can you see such movement in some of the horses that people try to ride? As a horse becomes better educated, he is more settled with his surroundings, more desensitised to sights and sounds and experiences, thus helping him be less reactive or resistant.
Training a horse is a method of handling that causes cognitive stimulation by habitual training. Groundskills are a great and effective method of harnessing and regulating your horse’s energy, obedience and affection for a rider of all levels of experience. Using groundskills to achieve various tasks greatly enhances your chance of success when riding.
Ken uses trotting poles to help with ground skills. Image by Kathy Stewart.
Surplus energy is usually the reason horses want to move more than we want. Lack of obedience is the reason your horse may not steer or go where you want, and lack of affection is why he sometimes feels alone.
In our training program we have a list of groundskills that stimulate a horse’s mental, emotional and physical needs. In the first groundskill, I ask my horses to bend laterally, because a defensive horse will want to stay straight in his body.
The second groundskill is about yielding to feel (touch) because a defensive horse will resist and even push against feel. Can your horse yield his hindquarters, forequarters, backwards, sideways and even forwards to your touch? Yielding to the halter is also feel. I think this is one of the miracles of horsemanship (asking a horse to yield to feel).
The third is about responding to your energy and also driving from the side of the horse.
Ken Faulkner working with two year old Lace on the ground. Image by Kathy Stewart.
The fourth is an impulsion check, asking your horse to walk and trot forwards and backwards with softness and good impulsion.
Groundskill five is designed to teach lateral flexion in a circle. Lateral flexion with good forward movement, or engagement of the back end, is an important part of building collection.
The sideways element of groundskill six is great to help with engagement. Sideways is good for riding stability in manoeuvres such as circles, turns and transitions.
The last groundskill helps deal with a horse’s natural sense of claustrophobia. A defensive horse will want to run away from scary things or situations, so it will naturally avoid small or tight areas.
Ken riding two year old Lace for the first time. Image by Kathy Stewart.
Remember folks, consistency and repetition are important elements of training but unfortunately they can be boring for both horse and rider, so to keep your horse interested, don’t be afraid to use plenty of imagination and props to put purpose to your groundskills.
The use of items such as poles, cavalettis and barrels or anything else you can think of that adds purpose to your groundskills will help. With the use of a confidence course, such as tractor tyres filled with sand, seesaws, telephone poles to make L and Z shapes and corridors, the fun of learning can take a lot of stress out of training. Horses need to learn how to learn.
