Brilliant brilliant brilliant!!
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A must for all, horse lovers or not. An absolutely incredible story of a journey of inner spirituality and wisdom. I couldn't put the book down.
I love this authour. A MUST READ!!
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Better than I expected
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There are certain words that put me off books on horsemanship (and indeed on most topics) because they indicate that the book I have just picked up is just not really my kind of thing. Those words include "shaman", "spiritual journey" and perhaps even "soul". I don't have a problem with people finding spirituality where they will, but I reserve the perogative not to want to read about it.
By that rule I should have given up on this book on page 1 as all of those words have turned up, more than once in some cases. However I was stuck in Canada and I really needed something horsey to read, so I didn't have a lot of choice. In this case that proved to be a good thing- although he may begin with a bit of the OTT talk he doesn't go all fluffy bunny about working with horses, expressing the need to be in control and to be dominant without presenting ourselves to the horse in a way that makes us seem like the predators that by genetic inheritance we are.
At it's heart this book is all about leadership, about how to be the kind of leader that your horse would want. I found it particularly interesting that although he discusses how to be authoritative and in control he emphasises the need to do it in the language of a prey animal (he makes the point strongly that only a predator would go directly for a horse's head) rather than allowing our linear predator instincts to make it harder for the horse to be with us. It follows the author's progress following a particularly dismal demonstration to a better understanding of himself and how that could be used to make his work with horses better and consequently, through this book, to make his readers work with horses better.
Building up through chapters on alignment, forwardness, contact, timing, levelness, bending and collection. As he goes through this he explores in detail how we need to be clear, consistent and honest with ourselves so that we can be the same with our horses. Time and again he makes the point that we need to make the change in us before we can expect to see it in our horse.
Although there isn't anything entirely new here (but, practically, how much of horsemanship genuinely is new?) he has an approach that is very much his own and the book contains some really good analogies that can really help you have those little light-bulb moments of understanding and make it that much easier to explain things to other people. There is a lot of interesting work on leadership and what it means to be a good leader that actually applies to pretty much anyone who has responsibility for others and that makes for worthwhile reading if you're in that position.
It's not full of exercises to do with your horse (if you're looking for that you might want to find Bill Dorrance' brilliant "True Horsemanship Through Feel" or one of Kelly Marks' books) it's more about how you need to think and how you need to be in order to make the most of your relationship with your horse.
I'm glad I persisted past that first page- there is a lot of solid, thought-provoking horsemanship in here, much of it illustrated through anecdotes (though much less storytelling than Mark Rashid) and all interestingly and enjoyably written. It does get a bit spiritual about things in a few places, which is still not my kind of thing but there's so much good stuff here that I'll let it off.
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United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada