All I pay my psychiatrist is the cost of feed and hay, and he'll listen to me any day.
Author Unknown

Respect without fear is one of the most important qualities a horse can have around humans. In a herd environment, horses learn to yield to each other in many different ways - left, right, forward, backward, up and down. For a horse to be a cooperative partner, it needs to believe in your ideas when you ask and yield to you without opposition in all directions. If a horse has not gained this obedience on the ground, he will struggle to understand his role under saddle. Building mutual rapport and confidence with on-line exercises will directly translate into a more willing attitude once mounted. Gaining individual control of each area of a horse's body (head, neck, shoulders/ribs, & hindquarters) re-establishes the same respect system it learnt from it's mother's direction from birth.

Horses are social animals and those that have not had the opportunity to grow up with the dynamics of herdmates, often have little undertsanding of how to relate to yielding. Similarly, many horses that are kept in confinement without the stimulation of playing dominance games with other horses, will be full of pent up energy and want to play these rough striking, kicking, biting and shouldering games with humans. Isolated living conditions tend to develop anxious displaced behaviours in horses such as weaving, lip popping, wood chewing, biting, aggressiveness, fidgeting, and a host of other so-called 'vices'. I strongly advocate being mindful of our horse's natural mental, emotional and physical health which in turn greatly enhances the positive qualities of ground manners.