Get Grounded Equine

10/13/2026

What if our foundation 'work' had more emphasis on showing them we trust their judgement and less about psychological reactance. This photo is a moment captured during a FIRST ride. The rider has rapport to communicate boundaries, but is more of a passenger than anything. The mare was left to make her own decisions about how to proceed during the experience. We were tickled to see her offer this step up on the bridge in exploration of it all.

10/02/2026

Everything radiates from a default stand. It becomes the indicator of readiness to begin. Once it gets established in the simplest context, you can start asking for it in more complex contexts as we see in this video.
I did not grasp this concept fully with the first few horses I explored marker training with. I got too focused on free shaping movement before establishing this one anchoring behavior. I now see it is better to have acts of moving together at liberty come out of a well understood default stand, utilize the default stand for ‘start overs’, and return to the default stand more frequently for processing and regulating.

09/28/2026

Invasiveness must be precisely measured.
The preliminary practice to backing is to evoke energy, then direct that energy into a mutual understanding. GG preliminaries hold a very solid commitment to evoking the appropriate amount of energy that allows the nervous system to be present and thoughtful while defining the parameters. The skill of calibration is often lost when using lunging rituals as preliminaries. Lunging rituals often over stimulate, sends the horse into a bracing/bolting mindset. Thoughtfulness has left the building and the energy then requires a level of control and confinement that is counterintuitive to the process.

09/17/2026

Already Leading!
2nd time no header with the lines…..and and first time no header on the trail. I attribute success to hand walking on the trail, building rapport with R+, and waiting for readiness before adding more.

09/14/2026

I just saw a self promotion ad selling how to 'build thinking'. Again, another ego denying the mental capacity and intelligence that exists outside of themselves. The intelligence is already there. We just need to focus on holding spaces in our experiences that make it safe for the intelligence to express itself. This is where the safety, the cooperation, the flow states exist.

09/12/2026

Honoring feedback means you don’t override stress signals by using aversive measures to extinguish unwanted behavior. By observing this mare standing quiet at the park with no buddies, I knew she was capable of managing the added stress of a solo trail walk with the lines.

09/11/2026

Progress-Adding Touch
This filly’s increased confidence has allowed some progressive nuances to unfold. She is now able to fully expose her left side while reaching towards my hand. I also inserted touching her chest into the pattern. You will see a remnant moment of her guarding (touching my backside) which actually now starts the sequence. It will be interesting to see how/when that part of the sequence fades away.

09/09/2026

The Gouge in the Coffee Table
The more I walk away from trophies and embrace process, the better I exist at my core. A traumatic experience can be like a deep gouge groove in wood. Having a background in wood craft, I know what it takes to remove a gouge.......many patient steps of sanding from coarse to fine grit. If you skip grits, a remnant of the gouge remains.
Even the best intentions for this filly's early survival have landed her with a 'gouge'. Within her first 24 hrs., she was restrained 3x to be tubed with colostrum and then poked to draw blood, poked again to receive a plasma infusion. All of this procedure was done on her left side.
Not surprised, over the last few months, she has never let me touch her. I just let her be until she started showing curiosity in me a few weeks ago.
The photo shows a repeated posture she would display towards me during engagement. At first, I thought it was some kind of communication directed by flashing me her right eye. Now I realize what she was really doing was protecting her left, the location of multiple traumas.
Two main take away points I will share. 1. Sometimes what might look like attitude or threat may very well be an honest expression of vulnerability. 2. Facilitating restoration of a vulnerable state requires a focus on process and embracing the small incremental grits of sandpaper.

09/08/2026

https://vimeo.com/1224974104?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
Using sequence patterns to build trust and understanding. This clip is a milestone I want to share in a series of sessions where we are learning to trust and understand each other. 4 months old, unhandled and very suspicious of me when we started, she starts owning the experience by offering behaviors within a structure of reliability.

This 4 month old filly is learning about me: my smell, my body movements, and my significance. Using a process of building a sequence pattern together is helping her see me as a predictable thing.