Let’s Normalize Groundwork in our Riding Schools

Phasing our program into a horsemanship/groundwork focused entity has been the best thing we ever did for the horses. They’re more at peace. The humans are more at peace. We’re not over-facing anyone. We’re normalizing calm.

Because the world has forgotten what calm feels like, what it means to have calm as a baseline. When we first start exploring that stillness with a client all that quiet space can feel really awkward. There’s too much inaction, too much silence between the words we’re thinking and the doing.

We’ve been conditioned to want to fill those empty spaces with something, anything, and it takes a long time working with someone and the horses before that new way of being begins to become a habit, this stillness, this waiting to respond.

But given time and the humans allowing themselves some grace to breathe through the awkwardness and projections, their time spent at the barn doing quiet, not very exciting things (to an outside observer) pays off in a connection and understanding that doesn’t just stop with the horse they’re working with — the understanding begins to twine, like foundational vines, into their understanding of themselves, their understanding of nature, of other humans.

When we’re creating space for this work, the other stuff like riding, leading, grooming, becomes easy. The school horses last longer, physically and mentally. The herds settle into place. The whole system benefits.

So as the horse industry is abuzz with phrases like “social license to operate,” the real work begins in our ridings schools. Just because we’ve done something a certain way forever doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing do now.

For our little barn, in our little community, our insistence on groundwork with the horses being the norm and not just something we do on rainy days when conditions aren’t suitable for riding, has been a game changer that offers greater insight into what our students and horses truly need to thrive, both in the barn and in their relationships to the greater world.

Let’s normalize groundwork in our riding schools by insisting that our clients explore horses from a trainer’s eye before they learn how to post the trot.

-Kim Carter 2023