Ride With Confidence!: Practical and inspirational advice to help you deal with your fear and enjoy your riding

by Kelly Marks (Foreword), Christina Barlow (Contributor), Julie Goodnight (Contributor)

Do you hate hacking alone? Does the idea of jumping terrify you? Perhaps it?s your horse that is spooky, not you? There are many ways to deal with these problems and this confidence-boosting book will show you how. In a sport as exciting as riding there are bound to be experiences that can leave you a little shaken, but visiting the stable yard needn?t fill you with dread. This informative book explains how to rationalize your fear and work towards achieving personal goals--from handling your horse confidently to completing a cross country course or dressage test. Feel the Fear and Ride Anyway explores the possible origins of nervousness, both in the rider and horse, as well as positive action to enable everyone to get more from their riding. Suitable horses, stable yards, instructors, even riding companions, are discussed as all of these can help alleviate fears and worries. By gathering experts from all over the world this book will offer different approaches to alleviating fear and anxiety. So by reading one great book, riders will be able to devise their own ?confident riding system? and truly enjoy their riding.

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Dark-Draco · Rating 3 out of 5]

My copy is a small book full of extracts from a much larger volume - I think it was given away free with one of the horsey magazines. Anyway, I found it a very interesting read and there were a few good tips about controlling nerves - unfortunately there was also a lot of 'advice' that felt a bit too much like plain common sense to me :) The most thought-provoking bit for me was the discussion on why you shouldn't feed titbits - not because it might cause biting, which is what everyone says is the reason, but because in the wild, a dominant horse is one that can take food off a submissive herd mate. By feeding from the hand you encourage the horse to believe he is the dominant one. Definitely something I might adopt with my yobbish youngster :)

[Susie Poulton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, not brilliant. Goes through lots of scenarios of why you might be nervous & has lots of different authors dealing with the different topics. A bit bitty but useful to read if you're worried.

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only read part of this, but it's on my "to buy" list. It helped get me back into the barn after my accidents earlier this year