Connect with Your Horse from the Ground Up: Transform the Way You See, Feel, and Ride with a Whole New Kind of Groundwork

Introducing a new approach to specialized groundwork for horse training, this guide provides more than two dozen exercises to help horses and their handlers find a reciprocal connection on the ground before the rider takes a position in the saddle. These exercises—done both standing still and in motion—are shown to drastically change the way a rider sees and feels about the horse, and immediately improve how the horse moves, responds, and works. Aspiring to the ideals of lightness and ease promoted by top riding instructors and classical texts, the exercises found in this manual help handlers achieve the goals of discipline and joy that they have for their horses—leaving behind the mechanical, stiff movements that inhibit horses from expressing their innate curiosity, trust, and freedom of motion.

Peggy Cummings is the author of Connected Riding. She lives in Poulsbo, Washington. Bobbie Lieberman is an award-winning writer and journalist, the former senior editor of EQUUS magazine, the editor and publisher of Modern Horse Breeding, and coauthor of Ultimate Horse Behavior and Training. She lives in Amado, Arizona.