Biography - Instructor Michael Grohmann | Parelli Natural Horsemanship

3 Star Parelli Professional Instructor Horse Development Specialist

How I got started:

"When I was a little boy I showed interest in horses, I wasn´t horse-crazy like the girls always are - I was just interested. When I finally had the opportunity to hop on a horse for the first time, my ego got in the way and I insisted to hold the reins and not be lead arround like a beginner (which I was).The result was a pretty wild ride. I hadn´t asked where the brakes were and the pony took off with me. (The picture shows exactly that pony before "taking off") So after that I was pretty scared of horses.

My uncle was from time to time competing in eventing and so family was invited to come and watch. After the show when everybody was packing up I walked arround the tents and parking lots and witnessed a group of mend beating a horse into a trailer with whips, boards and a lot of noise. I had no idea about horses - just knew that this way of treating an animal was wrong. All this fear and aggression - and nobody was saying anything against that. So being a little kid I thought: “Well maybe that´s the only way to get that done. But if so: I don´t wanna have anything to do with that." So I stopped showing any further interest in horses - till 10 years later.

I had graduated from college, speaker-training, became a radio dj & speaker for commercials and was basicly just caring about my media-career, clubbings & girls . It was a great time, I learned a lot, made a lot of friends and met a lot of interesting people like American Top40 legend Casey Casem (the 3rd picture down). I interviewed everybody from the Bloodhound Gang up the to the prime-minister. Something was always missing though...

...till a friend convinced me to visit him at his barn. When I got there he was playing with his palomino QH mare at liberty (nice L2 stuff) and for the first time I saw a horse having fun with a human. I was blown away by the playdrive and great attitude the horse had. I remember standing there saying: "Which special gift do you have - that nobody else has who I´ve seen before?" He laughed and told me he´d just be a student of a man named Pat Parelli. Then he proceed telling me all about looking at life from a horse´s point of view and using communication with psychology instead of fear, force and intimidation. It took only one more of these Q & A sessions and I was obsessed with the topic "Natural Horsemanship". Pretty soon I bought my first own horse, Pat´s homestudy program and started the journey. Thank you, Luciano, for showing me the beginning. “