AAoR and R+ Blog
AAoR Groundwork
Begin at the Beginning.
Don’t hurt the horse *** Don’t annoy the horse *** Don’t frighten the horse
The word “Groundwork” means different things to different people.
Academic Art of Riding Groundwork is working to improve your horses’ balance, coordination, flexibility, and overall physical wellness using the gymnastics of dressage movements, while prioritizing the horses calm mental state and emotional wellbeing. During this process the teacher aims to educate the horse in the mutually understood language used for communication between horse and human. AAoR Groundwork is usually a perfect place to start - both for human and horse, but there will always be exceptions to every rule and flexibility is key.
It is similar in some ways to other Groundwork training approaches, popularised with online marketing in the last 10 years, but there are some significant differences. It begins with very simple, easy steps and gradually builds up in complexity for both horse and human. The progression is paced to suit the horse and the human, and the developmental progression can smoothly flow into either lunge work, hand work, long reining or ridden work as appropriate for each individual, rather than following a prescribed route.
Groundwork is primarily working on the horse’s head and mental attitude, but work done at the head reflects and affects the rest of the body.
I must mention that before a horse starts School, the horses’ daily care, living environment, feeding and husbandry needs must be met, with The Five Domains strongly in mind, (Mellor D, McGreevy et al, Animals Journal, Volume 10, Issue 10 (2020)) and relaxed, trusting, safe behaviour near humans must have been well established. The horse should feel able to mentally relax in the School environment itself with the human and be physically and mentally prepared and comfortable. The “School” can be any flat and level marked out safe space which has a consistent footing, which is not slippery, uneven, stony or sloping.
L.I.M.A. Principles has been coined by Equine Science Behaviourists as part of humane and effective Learning Theory application which must be applied to all training for all animals. L.I.M.A. stands for “Least Intrusive, Minimal Aversive”. These four words express how we must avoid deliberately triggering fear responses from the use of Aversives in any part of the training process.
With the rising concern about the Social Licence to Operate concerning sport horses, ethics questions are currently being raised with the spotlight especially currently focussing toward the equestrian competition world, but this is also highly relevant to the wider, every day equestrian community, which is far larger in number than the competition horse communities and so thankfully kindness and consideration towards horses are beginning to be ever more important to actively demonstrate.
The word “Aversive” is used scientifically to describe anything that the animal prefers to avoid, and the individual determines how strong they feel an aversive is.
Every individual is different. If there are many fears, it will be necessary to carefully untangle these before formal training can begin. This must be done gradually, interpreting the responses using the Science of Behaviour derived from neuroscience research findings and avoiding the use of forceful or flooding techniques, which have many very serious pitfalls long term.
I like to deliberately aim to engender an optimistic attitude in my horses, which is demonstrated by the fact that they engage readily and are obviously trying to respond enthusiastically and accordingly to requests made, even if they don’t always get the right answers. Provided no unreasonable requests are made, mistaken responses are not punished, and the rate of reward is kept high for all efforts, this cultivation of attitude, mindset and overall mood should all prevail.
If we want horses to want to work with us, they must be able to predict “work” and being in the School to be a very rewarding and enjoyable experience.
Training in a formal sense begins long before we even enter the arena and good quality informal training, providing appropriate environments, stimulating safe and enriched habitats, and demonstrating good handling and husbandry care will all create an increased likelihood of the right level of an optimistic mood being carried into the School. Animals are very good at predicting outcomes and they base their predictions on what happened last time. Unusual or challenging behaviours can be caused by varying degrees of pain and pain responses which are either chronic (long term) or acute (sudden onset) must be investigated first by a Vet, as you can’t train pain.
There is a free Lameness Trainer App, created by Sandra Starke, Gregory Miles and Stephen May who collaborated to produce this at the Royal Veterinary College London. https://www.lamenesstrainer.com/ the aim of this is to help owners learn how to identify a lame horse.
There are also some excellent scientific papers written about identifying lameness and the often more subtle signs of the behavioural and facial expressions of pain in the horse:
(S Dyson, The Ridden Horse Pain Ethogram, Equine Veterinary Education (2022))
https://beva.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eve.13468
(D Lebelt et al, Development of a Horse Grimace Scale (HGS) as a Pain assessment Tool in Horses undergoing routine castration, PubMed (2014))
(GC Lencioni et al, Pain Assessment in Horses using Automatic Facial Expression Recognition Through Deep Learning Based Modelling Plos.org Journal (2021))
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0258672
Your Vet may suggest that physiotherapy of some kind would be appropriate, and I find it very effective to use The Equine Touch. “The Equine Touch is a non-diagnostic, non-invasive Equine Bodywork System which is a holistic soft tissue address, effecting mostly connective tissue – muscles and tendons, joint capsules and ligaments using a very specific move”. It was developed by Jock and Ivana Ruddock-Lange.
Use Science based Learning Theory, with Observation, Science based Behavioural Interpretation, Empathy, Sympathy, Patience, Reflective Thought and Creativity to train your horse, but a vison of your goal must be in mind and your eye must develop to recognise when your horse is losing balance, coordination or suppleness. Once you have identified the problem, as you are the horses’ friend, advocate, and supportive teacher you must find the root cause of the problem(s) and guide the horse to learn how to develop healthier movement patterns or more confident emotional responses. The training aim is to build the horse up mentally and physically and not break them down. I have been recommending to my students since publishing Dr. Rachael Draaismas’ Language Signs & Calming Signals of Horses (2018) as an essential read to educate yourself about how to observe and correctly interpret equine behaviour responses.
Sadly, there is still a huge amount of disinformation about interpretation of equine behaviour responses globally on the WWW, which is often put forwards in a very convincing glossy packaged manner. It is a good idea, having first read and digested Rachaels’ book, to turn down the sound as you watch videos online to avoid clouding your observations with the trainers’ fine words or attractive music and observe the horses’ responses to the human.
Bent says that theory without practice is an empty shell, but practice without theory is just guesswork, so educate yourself by taking regular lessons, studying from reliable accredited sources, and don’t be afraid to take advice from a suitably qualified person, as guessing and hoping are rarely successful.
Equipment used for Groundwork.
It is helpful to educate your horse in Groundwork using a good quality light padded leather cavesson with a single short length flat woven cotton or flat leather lunge line with a lightweight clip clipped to the central ring on the cavesson. Not all lightweight leather cavessons are the same, but the differences between the cheaper versions and the better-quality ones often only become apparent after some use.
A schooling whip is optional, and although some AAoR trainers elect not to use one at all, many are opting to use a straight twig of hazel or apple wood cut to something about schooling whip length. I use an old schooling whip which has worn to become nicely fluffy on its tip, held lightly it can make little downwards strokes, presses or tickle touches to indicate a body part, and I also sometimes use a twig or a long stiff feather, like a Peacocks tail feather - we used to have Peacocks living here, so these have been readily available!
The whip should not be used as a threat, because research shows that the threat of pain being inflicted is worse than the pain itself, which is why waving/flappy whips, flappy/shaking ropes or chase horses forwards with waving/flappy flags are bad ideas. Obviously, a whip is not to be used for administering punishment.
Aligning training as strongly as possible with the L.I.M.A. Principles creates a likelihood for a caring and trust-based partnership being built, rather than using the outdated dominance based leader and follower, or master and servant style relationships.
The cavesson must be fitted onto the horses’ head with meticulous care, as the horses face has many sensitive facial nerves, some in bundles entering the infraorbital foramen on the skull, and many running across the face, just under the skin. The facial nerves do not run in the same places on all horses, so we need to pay attention to specific feedback from the horse about anything placed on the face.
The image I have used with kind permission granted from Equine Touch co-founder, Dr. Ivana Ruddock-Lange, a veterinarian who developed The Equine Touch and VHT with her husband Jock Ruddock, shows the variations of the equine facial nerve positions.
I have one horse, who is a head-shaker and he prefers not to wear a cavesson but is happy to be trained wearing a soft pliable fleece headcollar.
The padded leather cavesson must be fitted with great care to avoid being so high that it could rub on the protruding bony facial crest or so low that it falls over the soft tissue above the nostrils, or flops over the cartilaginous end of the nasal bone. Sharply worn teeth touching the inside of the cheeks where the cheek-pieces touch will make it especially uncomfortable, and it should never be fitted tightly.
The padded leather cavesson is intended to only be used gently.
The horses’ bending, *stellning, suppleness, balance, thoroughness of spine, and straightening are considered by careful use of standing exercises, forward movement and lateral movement while always placing calmness and the human horse relationship first. The Art is to introduce and teach the different aids to the horse at the right speed for the human with that horse. Bent says however, somewhat candidly, that the horse is not usually the limiting factor in the speed of progression!
*Stellning is a German word, which literally interprets as meaning posture/setting/placing and it is sometimes also written as “stelling”. The action of “Stellning” is the rotation of the horses’ skull on the first vertebrae of the Atlas joint and the gently guiding hand on the horse’s face can feel how smoothly or uncomfortable the horse finds this, which is used as an information gathering opportunity.
Synchronisation of the horse and human while moving together during Groundwork becomes an effortless natural result requiring no conscious thought and it will assist a true partnership to be formed.
Sometimes the best results in Groundwork can be created by walking backwards in front of your horses’ head, taking care to avoid the lead rein being pulled tight as you walk, and sometimes it can be better at first to partner your horse by walking next to the withers. Each of the different positions where we walk bring different benefits, and it can be said that backwards is the new way forwards! A small person with a tall horse may, however, find walking backwards in front of their horse challenging and their understandable difficulty with walking backwards fast enough may inhibit the forwards movement of the horse too much, making the horse become frustrated and irritated. AAoR Groundwork educates both the horse and the human at the same time, with feedback loops going both ways about physical biomechanics, two-way feel and correlating observations regarding you and your horses’ emotional states and paired movement patterns. Walking backwards in front of the horse has its potential downfalls (pun intended), but with practice it allows the human to observe the movement of the horse’s skull, spine, pelvis, shoulder balance and foot placements and how they vary when walking a circle in each direction. This information gathering is important to be able to understand your individual horses needs and then tailor a strategy to support your horse as they learn to overcome their idiosyncrasies and imbalances. Partnering the horse by walking forwards, can also work, but it requires the human to turn and look over the shoulder as they walk to be able to observe the horses’ body, legs and feet.
Bending and stellning is one of the first places to start in Groundwork and this is carried out while the horse is standing still with the horse’s head and neck in the right orientation. The neck itself should not become very bent during this process. The lower jaw should slide a little to the outside bend as the skull slowly and slightly rotates to left and then to right and it is important to observe the effects of the stellning action in the lower jaw, the poll, withers, and further along the horses’ spine to the pelvis. When a horse stiffens against you when being asked to bend, this must be accepted as feedback and the horse must not be forced to bend. We can note the differences between the effects of the horses’ left and right stelling. The horses head must never be pulled down by the line on the cavesson as however tempting that might be even small pulls will recruit muscles to brace or oppose the pulling hand.
The human hand can become very sensitive when practicing Groundwork and this is part of what makes it a wonderful simultaneous education for both the human and the horse, which is a valuable education to carry over into ridden work. Only correct training of the hand enables the trainer to communicate information via the cavesson and receive information from the horse. Less is indeed more, but it must be possible through the Aids to ask for less or ask for more within each movement.
An important element of AAoR Groundwork, after relationship building, synchronicity, and relaxation, is to teach the horse the Secondary Aids, which are designed to eventually support a mutual language of communication between horse and human when we ride.
The Primary Aids are our Seat when we ride, and our Body Language when we are working with the horse from the ground. We must learn to ensure that our Primary Aids of the Seat and Body Language do not contradict the Secondary Aids we are giving, as this will confuse and frustrate the horse. Strong Aids teach the horse to go against the Aids. Initially it helps the human to work in the slower gaits or while standing as this gives us time to process what we are seeing, learn to feel and learn the correct responses. I will leave discussion of the Primary and Secondary Aids in more detail to another AAoR info-post.
During AAoR Groundwork, we can teach the Shoulder In, Quarters In (or Travers), Renvers, Pirouette, Half Pass, Piaffe, Passage, Levade and more. All movements can be made using walk, trot and canter, so AAoR Groundwork is useful all the way through the horses’ education, and it can be used for all gaits. Once the movements have been trained, it is incredibly useful to use some of the exercises listed above for maintaining or building muscle strength when unexpected situations arise making riding not possible, such as weather limitations, injury rehabilitation, saddle fit problems or age-related degeneration.
Groundwork is just one of the AAoR components where we try to affect a series of changes to our horses balance and coordination during training, with the aim of preparing them for ridden work or repair them from their own genetic or epigenetic heritage, or training histories. Splitting down training approaches into parts is sometimes necessary, but it is important to keep in mind the “whole”, and the relationship each part has to the “whole” as all parts are inter-connected and each part affects the entire system. This was why I discussed the Five Domains earlier, and mentioned the importance of behavioural interpretation and pain recognition as these are obviously important parts of the “whole”.
This keeping in mind the “whole” is sometimes referred to as “Systems Thinking”, though I think of these as different aspects of the training loops which are entwined and entangled and prefer to use the description “Loopy Training”.
So, Groundwork is an excellent preparation for progressing into lunging, hand work, long reining, driving or ridden work and the sequence of choices can be fluid enough for you to choose which would be the next best approach to use to help you with your own horse. Groundwork remains a supportive constant and is used periodically throughout the horses training. There are many aspects to Groundwork which I haven’t covered, and it is best to find a trainer who can teach you correctly as unlearning takes a lot longer than corrective re-learning for both horse and human.
******************************************
If you would like to learn more, there are some excellent educational videos which can be purchased to live stream on demand from Bent Branderups’ video website here: https://www.bentbranderupfilms.com
If you are curious about becoming a trainer, please watch this YouTube video. Since recording this, Bent has begun to teach online for limited numbers of students, but he is only able to observe and comment about changes needed if the quality of the internet connection is good enough.
https://youtu.be/BxTqU55ts_s?si=ftlfdlAOtuCRziCt
There is a list of AAoR currently Accredited and Certified trainers available and some will be able to offer online training if you have a good internet connection, or pre-recorded video lessons if you do not have good internet where you ride. Each AAoR trainer will have their own nuanced personalised approaches and specialities and they will not be scripted clones. The risk of choosing to learn from a person who is not accredited and certified or who has not passed any of the AAoR tests, is that you will not have the AAoR training taught to you. If the horse training and riding styles demonstrated by the trainers in the AAoR are what attracted you to learn more about the AAoR in the first place, it makes no sense to learn from a person who has had no experience of passing the tests in Groundwork and Lunging, or the ridden Squire test and above.
You can find out more information about the Knighthood and the list of members, and find trainers in their various countries here:
https://knighthoodoftheacademicartofriding.eu/fundamental-ideas/#
There are no AAoR Accredited Certified Trainers residing in UK at present. As I have passed the AAoR Groundwork and Lunge Test and Squire Test, I am offering tuition myself, but I must inform you that I am not an AAoR Accredited Certified Trainer.
I will look at another aspect of the AAoR by Bent Branderup in another info-post.
Remember:
There are only three answers you can receive from a horse:
1. I can
2. I can’t
3. I don’t understand
Some good advice:
“Anything that is forced cannot be beautiful” Xenophon.
“Don’t try to impress others but do try hard to impress your horse!” Bent Branderup
“Who am I in my horses’ eyes?” Bent Branderup
“Two spirits who want to do what two bodies can” Bent Branderup
“Spend time well” Bent Branderup
Contact me Jacquie.flyingfox@btconnect.com if you would like a lesson or to organise a clinic.
Some of you who know me will know I am also a Bat Ecologist and a Sculptor of horses in bronze. My website contains information about my Artwork and my Equine Training.
My website is: https://www.jacquiebillingtonart.co.uk
In case you are curious, (!) our Bat Ecological Consultancy Website is here: https://www.greenaeco.com