Get Grounded Equine

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Get Grounded Equine

Experiences with horses vs. making the horse 'work' for us. No space for monetizing, just humbly sharing my inspirations.

Foundation training that shifts perspectives on working at eye level via liberty, trail hiking, obstacle navigation and line driving.

12/10/2025

Over-arousal The ball will fly when you step up on the matts. What’s going on when pattern recognition goes dim? Why did this pup go from 9 seconds to 52 seconds to hit the mark?

Regardless of species, any type of reinforcer can lose effectiveness when it evokes over-arousal. This is a snippet showing how the chosen reinforcer (getting to chase a ball) has taken this pup into over-arousal and thereby affects her cognitive ability to quickly repeat the behavior.
Some people are aware that aversive reinforcers can cause over-arousal, but few understand that appetitive reinforcers can as well. Over-arousal indicators can be subtle and not easily recognized because of different personalities. Few people realize that diminished cognition is included in the list of reactive signs and behaviors.

11/23/2025

The Work of Harmony
The layers of harmonious 'being together' is an honorable goal, quite possibly all that needs to be. Having a practice of long distance moving together within the context of natural trajectories greatly lends to that concept of harmony that I believe so many of us are seeking.

11/19/2025

Find Your Noble Purpose
Allow your horsemanship to be a practice where you can see your actions become aligned with your core values. Let’s shift our mindsets from getting them to perform for us to letting them be the space where we play out and see ourselves how we truly want to be.

11/13/2025

What is more important than this mare stepping into the trailer?
If you could just put down your ‘product’ mindset and get more cozy in process……
It will be helpful for people to understand that marker training does not ask horses to do things they are not ready or willing to do. Proper use of marker training must include knowing, understanding and honoring the boundaries set by the horse within the learning moment. As the teachers, we offer puzzles or situations without demands or overt pressures. We are quiet, set our boundary with the lead rope, and make no other demands which shows her we honor her boundary. She is allowed the peace and think time to explore and problem solve. We mark and reinforce any small behavior that she offers and heads her in the direction we hope she fully discovers. Because we are not making any specific hard line requests, there is very little correction. When she has gained more confidence and trust, she will offer more and together the process develops into a final set sequence of behaviors. This kind of shaping is the life force that develops motivation and a life habit of ‘try’. The answer is: an attitude of effort.

11/11/2025

The Sour One: Avoiding "I've Had It!"
Let’s invest more time to consider what our requests mean to them. These two photos are a year apart, a year of building confidence, body awareness, and balance related to an elevated bio-mechanical maneuver (a 180 turn). In the first photo, the young mare is at the level of needing the space and time to figure out how to bring her feet underneath and use her hind end for stability. The rider knows her responsibility is to maintain a lens of how the mare is feeling and how all the little parts of understanding come together for her to figure things out.
For the green horse, a gaping mouth, a refusal to step up or forward, swishing tails, kicking out, pushing through contact……signs that indicate “I don’t understand, I don’t feel it is a good idea, I need to slow it down, or I’m too overwhelmed right now in this context”. These behaviors are trying to communicate, literal requests for clarity, thinking time and support.
As green horses gain experience, continue to have support and a person who listens, these behaviors fade. However, relationships built without effective support and listening become sour and the behaviors are now speaking more about an “I’ve had it” perspective.

Their foundation will have a huge hole if they can’t tell you in a thoughtful way that they are unsure or don’t understand. If you don’t show an attitude of support for their development, you risk life long negative communication behaviors that say ‘I’ve had it!’. Soured attitudes come from repeated feedback of not listening. In my foundation training, I actually set up scenarios where we can practice the protocols that help the horse trust that they will be supported when they properly communicate their lack of understanding or confidence.

11/09/2025

Balancing the two parts of FEEL
Fading FEEL to Tell by Expanding FEEL to Listen.

Our brains get so weighted in directing that we are atrophied in listening. This kind of exercise in ‘feel’ can help build our attentive listening skills. This mare has a pretty good concept of targeting into a position of walking with me that is reliable in simple contexts. When I shift moving together in the context of these obstacles, she shows concern and evasion with any part of the moving together that requires ‘stepping up’. In this, a dilemma has been constructed where we can have a thoughtful conversation in where we both listen, influence, and set boundaries. Instead of the lead rope being a device for ‘directing’ through pressure signals, it is flipped to be a device for listening and boundary setting. It is the responsibility of both of us to maintain that loose lead. Because I am focused on connection in the elevated spaces, she learns my boundary when she feels pressure by stepping too far away. Because she is more interested in evasion/away from the step ups, I honor her boundary by maintaining that loose lead in her comfort zone. You will see her 2nd feel into the boundary I set, meaning she stepped far enough away where she took herself into a feel of pressure, she not only brought herself back but fluidly stepped up for the first time. This is where I step to her, and do what I call ‘bank’….a moment of high rate reinforcement.

11/05/2025

What is the common standard to know when they are ready to move on and advance? I see so many horses rushed to w/t/c and all sorts of bio-mechanical this and that before they have truly developed the ability to focus and move with a human over, through, around, under in a variety of contexts. My standard requires a lot of opportunities and tests to see consistent regulation, flow and focus together before we proceed with adding layers of skill.

11/04/2025

I'll meet you in the secret place.
Where we move together in a sacred space.
A place where we both speak and both hear each other.

10/22/2025

Shifting Weights
Mutual feelings of satisfaction will not come from fixed scripts. It's the poets who will lead us to a path of curiosity, exploration, open mindedness, creativity and hypothesis. Both of us need scripts, but the storyteller must have the heart of a poet.

10/21/2025

Allow your horsemanship to be a practice where you can see your actions become aligned with your core values. Let’s shift our mindsets from getting them to perform for us to letting them be the space where we play out and see ourselves how we truly want to be.

10/13/2025

Halt to trot and a quick trajectory change. All in the context of nature.

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97455

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http://www.getgroundedequine.com/

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Time for a New Narrative

Understanding how horses move together, influence each other and can be influenced by people through movement is the core of my work. A huge portion of horsemanship practices today are based on false narratives that strive to produce robots disguised as ‘partners’. When considering many mainstream methods, we would rather put our energy towards: ourselves being respectful rather than demanding respect, improving our emotional and physical self-awareness, and refining focus with our horses.

Many have adopted false belief systems about horses, allowing them to subscribe to dictatorship type methods and/or heavy reliance on as well as inappropriate use of mechanical aids. Sadly, some of the most frustrating counter intuitive practices are being subscribed to by the natural horsemanship community.

My goal with this page is to offer new thought and practice that can resides outside the mainstream as well as cause moment for each of us to rethink commonly held beliefs and practices. Much of this comes from countless first hand experiences of working with and observing horses in groups. The remainder comes from a desire to move together with horses in a synchronized way discovered through hiking and liberty with horses.