Whether I’m riding or from the ground, I like to think of everything that I do with my horses as dressage, having an ‘ideal’ as my template while striving for lightness and balance. Think of the ground school as prepatory dressage. No matter what purpose you have in mind, you can not prepare too much. 

Ground school exercises give you the opportunity to work on isolating the movement of the forequarters and the hindquarters. These include exercises at the walk (such as haunches in or shoulders in), bending on a circle at the walk or trot for suppleness. All the lateral flexion, vertical flexion and collection begin here. 

While applying the ground school exercises, see how fluid you can be with your movements. How polite and passively persistent are you with your suggestions? Like dance steps, are you into rock and roll or the waltz with your horse? You may need to take those ballroom dance lessons you’ve been avoiding in order to improve your dressage. 

Remember, perfect does not happen in the beginning and we should never chastise our equine friends when it is not perfect. Dressage is part of a lifetime of improving and working towards perfect. Dressage is also regarded as, simply, the art of how to ride. Ride and make mistakes, ride and fall off to get back on again. Ride on the trail. Ride in an arena. Ride colts. Ride jumpers. Ride after cows. 

Experience will give you knowledge. Experience will give you an independent seat. Without an independent seat you will find yourself caught in the rough areas of horsemanship, always ‘green’ or evergreen! In refining your riding, learn to know at all times where your horse’s feet are. 

The art of riding also requires a lot of exercise for you and your horse. Your horse’s fitness, lateral flexibility, development of the shoulder and thigh muscles are all necessary for balance. These things will not happen overnight, or once a week on Saturdays. Nor do they happen by lunging horses in mindless circles with their heads tied in and down. Only the gradual refinement of control of the quarters - fore and hind - and the rider’s control of the horse’s mind through the bit down to the feet, will we near the ultimate goal of mutual harmony and true unity for horse and rider....and don’t forget fun! 

In Natural Hoofprints Horsemanship we use a simple set of exercises to establish a basis of communication and understanding.  It makes no difference if you prefer English or Western styles. These exercises will help you diagnose and work from the perspective of where your horse is "AT" - not where he is going to be. 

They help teach you skills and habits needed to become more natural in your horsemanship. It gives you a pre-flight check system and it teaches you the things you and your horse need to prepare for any purpose, whether it is work or play. This system is, essentially, pre-dressage on up to dressage. We try to do all of this from the horse’s point of view.