Some Groundwork Fails

I tried to do some groundwork with Cherry the other day, and failed miserably. Reading through some dressage training exercises, I came across the shoulder-in volte. Oooh, that sounds advanced and complicated. I wonder what volte means! Oh, it appears to mean "circle". That's boring. Why can't we just call it a circle then? Doesn't sound awesome enough, I guess.

Shoulder-in circle. Doesn't sound too complicated. It's supposed to get them to stretch their back. Sounds good, let's try it!

I read the instructions thoroughly. Didn't seem too difficult. Get the horse going on a small circle at a slow walk, encourage him to really step under with his inside hind, then bring his shoulders in.

So I tried it. And failed.

The circle part was no problem, and the stepping under bit also went smoothly. Bringing the shoulders in? Not so much. Cherry was extremely confused. Granted, I was doing this with a halter and not a bridle as suggested. The thing is, I couldn't decide on the bitless equivalent for this exercise, hence the halter. Not the best choice, it seems.

I contented myself with just doing the step-under circle, excuse me, step-under volte, and gave myself over to contemplation. Why did that little experiment fail so badly? Why did my groundwork not go as planned?

Then it occurred to me. What groundwork? Aside from leading properly, disengaging the hindquarters, and a crude, bastardized version of join-up, I haven't done any groundwork with Cherry. After teaching her to NOT run me over and drag me around, I considered groundwork to be done. What I taught her nearly a decade ago is all she knows, and I certainly haven't done anything since.

That explains that!

I haven't decided what I'm going to do about this, if anything. Part of me wants to do more groundwork just so I can get better at it and have the knowledge in place for the next horse. The other part of me is lazy as hell and doesn't want to bother. We'll see what the winter brings.