I pretty much agree with everything you say. And think ground work is very important.
I never joined any organisation.
But I did go to a lot of demos and learned by mimicking. If I were you and you are short of money, I would try without paying. I will write you a long post about what I watched.
The first thing that Peace and Rashid do with a new horse is simply to lead it forward. They walk beside it, at its shoulder, walk a few steps and then halt. The horse is expected to halt too. If it does not stop when the person leading stops (and that is likely the first time) then they move to the front of the horse and use a hand to back it up to the place where it ought to have halted.
They then repeat. Usually it takes about 3 times for the horse to learn.
They may then continue to lead in walk, halt and back up, while going through and round obstacles. Going between oil drums or over tarpaulins.
I did have VHS tapes while I was earning. But these days You tube will very likely have ideas for you.
In the Intelligent Horsemanship demos ground work is eventually taken further by controlling each foot of the horse from the ground. One exercise is leading the horse through an S shape pattern of poles lying in the ground, so that no foot goes over the poles. I have done this both in a demo day and in a lesson, but when helping on a RS and livery yard, I didnt have access to a school.
After a few sessions, a horse should walk nicely with you on a loose rope.
The punishment for a horse that does not observe your requests e.g. barges across you to reach grass, are to walk in a small circle and also to back it up.
Rashid's premise is that horses want to co-operate. There are situations though where a horse is heading home for feed where the desire of the horse to reach home is a bit much. If I were teaching a horse to lead nicely for me, I would start its lessons on neutral ground, in the field or leaving the stable rather than heading home for a meal.
But as with riding, there may be a bit of toughness involved. I could always tell the livery horses whose owners let them get away with bad manners. The circling has always been important to me, but Rashid has recently changed his mind and said that it only teaches horses to circle. My view is that I am an older woman and circling with back up has worked for me. So I will go on doing it.
However, when I met my new share for the first time last year, and was ready to put her away, she towed me back to her box to get at her food. I forced her out of the box again, circled her once in the yard and led her back in. She never did anything wrong with me ever again. I cant explain this,
My feeling is that the food has something significant to do with it. My old share was a horror for biting and I was told never to come between her and her food. I disregarded this. I expected to lead her briskly into her box and untack her before she touched her hard feed waiting.
Obviously it is not sensible to get between an aggressive horse and its food. That final step only comes after you have done the ground work with leading, halting and backing up.
But how quickly and with how much intention one does something, has a major effect.
I am unsure about having an expert to help. The expert often leaves the owner feeling inadequate or less skilled. I read John Lyons and my view was that I was far cleverer than any horse. I would start by leading your cob for 6 steps forward in walk . Then stopping. Then more steps in walk etc. And build it up from there. Grooming is a ground work activity (though it may not strike you as such). One handles the horse all over to check its skin (Parelli) One lifts its feet. One gets it to lower its head and moves it about.
A lot of it is bluffing the horse. I was leading the mare home and an RI who was passing asked me to trot up the mare. As if for a vet. I turned the old mare back and trotted her up and the RI was astonished because I had turned her away from home and from her dinner, yet she trotted. But I guess the truth is that once a horse recognises that another person is in command, one can ask just about anything. It is a con really, as all horses are physically stronger than any human.
Kit Maynard does interesting work with no rope (or, if near other people with an almost invisible spider line) and a length of rope attached to a schooling whip (like a Parelli carrot stick but cheaper) You can see him on line.
My experience was with a horse that bit. I dont have experience of one that kicks. But I did use John Lyons a lot (a friends gave me his books) and this I think is a article on Lyons handling a horse that kicks.
A horse will only become dangerous when he is scared. If you have a horse that is difficult to catch in the stall, or on the ground, John Lyons teaches you how to approach a horse in a stall so horse owners can stay safe and develop solid training methods to improve ground manners.
www.equisearch.com
At our RS going to lessons involved leading the horse quite a distance on public roads from the yard to the arena. When I came to share the horse and to ride her solo, our RI said the reason the mare behaved for me when I was riding was that she behave well for me on the ground. I dont know how this can be as riding is so totally different. But I was educated on NR by people who felt groundwork was important and it is certainly one way of increasing one's safety with horses.