Connected Ground Work 11/16/08

This pic is Spirit from a couple of summers ago. Such a dude. Anyways, I was going to do a short schooling ride with Spirit today, just him and I, but I ran out of daylight - freakin' Fall! But that's okay cuz I found an article in an August 04 Equus magazine that had a call out box titled 'Connected Ground Work - The Cheek Press'. Anyways, I started to work with Spirit on this instead of the ride and it was wonderful. Here's what I did, basically... Stood on left side of head, placed left hand on bridge of nose. Making a loose fist, right hand, positioned it in centre of the cheek with my wrist straight. It says in the article to start by trying to rotate the head barely one or two degrees, with the front hand encouraging the head to come towards me and the back hand encouraging the cheek to move away from me. Said stuff like take a deep breath and wait, then slowly release the pressure on the cheek, take hands off horse and observe him quietly for 20 seconds or more. It says to repeat the exercise two to four times with the key being to give the horse the suggestion of movement and then allow the horse to willingly yield from the pressure on the cheek rather than to force the movement. I tried it out a couple of times on one side, to check it out. I ended up laughing at myself because I was expecting to have to work hard to get him to release. Was thinking to myself, 'don't have over-expectations Hal, just try and see what happens.' HA. He responded by bending to pressure as if his big old head was a little tree branch. Bending gently to pressure. Relaxed, just the way it was meant to be, with his lovely eye looking into mine and his ear tilting towards me as if to say "Well, you're a wierdo but if you want to push my head around, I'll sure let ya." My big, ole sweetie pie. Until I do groundwork, I forget how much I just LOVE the trust building. The connection. The fun. The communication. Anyways, I am going to use this exercise again this week, more completely and also from the same magazine 'Connected Groundwork - The shoulder press.' Yahoo.
Oh yah, a little aside. I was talking with a woman at a tack shop about the 'freak' that Spirit does and she said that maybe when he was a pack/trail horse that he got into trouble when he didn't keep up or that maybe with his background that he was spur broke. More stuff to think about :)