Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Clinton Anderson's Groundwork for Under-Saddle Success

Clinton Anderson explains how and why groundwork works, from the editors of Horse & Rider magazine.

By Clinton Anderson with Jennifer Forsberg Meyer

In the July '09 issue of Horse & Rider, Clinton Anderson and his student Renee Humphries demonstrate how to desensitize your horse to your ground-training tools. That segment is the first in a series of basic groundwork exercises designed to increase your horse's respectfulness and make him a pleasure to handle.

Here, Clinton gives a refresher course on exactly why groundwork is so effective, plus offers key tips for getting the most out of every groundwork session. Click the link below for the full article:

Clinton Anderson's Groundwork for Under-Saddle Success

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I read this article from my Equine.com newsletter and decided to share it here. Sometimes I wonder how I'm going to get Rugby trained. My time is so very limited, my motivation is often low and now we are heading into the cold dark winter. If I don't have time (since riding requires groundwork time first - which cuts into my saddle time) or feel up to riding, many times lately I'm just opting to do the groundwork and quit with that. That's why this article was of particular interest to me and kind of made me feel better about my less than awesome training schedule.

I happen to like a lot of what Clinton Anderson does in training a horse and I have his book "Downunder Horsemanship". It's one of my go-to reads when working on a training exercise and I especially like that he breaks down each exercise with all the things that can go wrong for the horse and the handler and how to work through it. My book has yellow highlighter pen markings all over it by now!

1 comment:

Jean said...

Thanks for a good link to a good article. I know how important ground work can be. I started my youngsters that way and it has made a great difference in their progress.